US ATF trains 24 Mexican experts to trace guns in Mexico City
The three-day course on Oct. 14-16 included seven specialists from the Mexico City prosecutor's office; the US Embassy says it connects all 32 states to the e-Trace system.
For three days, Oct. 14 to 16, staff from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the US federal agency that regulates guns, explosives, alcohol and tobacco, taught a gun-tracing course at the IFPES, the training institute of the Mexico City Attorney General's Office, according to El Universal.
Twenty-four ballistics experts attended. Seven work for the Mexico City office and three for the federal Attorney General's Office (FGR); the other 14 come from nine state offices: Guerrero, Quintana Roo and Veracruz; Chiapas, San Luis Potosí and Tlaxcala; and Tamaulipas, Nayarit and the State of Mexico.
The course combined theory and practice with e-Trace, the ATF platform that, given a gun's serial number, returns where it came from: manufacturing data and the date of its first sale in the United States. The experts practiced how to request a trace, read the answer and use the data in an investigation.
The US Embassy says that, after this course, all 32 Mexican states and the FGR are connected to e-Trace, according to Crónica. William Dokurno, of the Embassy's Narcotics Affairs and Law Enforcement section, called e-Trace "a key tool for investigating arms trafficking."
The head of the IFPES, Jorge Adrián Gómez Carreño, said, according to Crónica, that the goal is for staff to consult and share information better.
With more experts able to use it, more people can request a trace of a seized gun directly, without relying on a single office. Its real effect will show in the number of traces requested and in how they are used in case files.
Neither source links to a statement from the Mexico City office, the Embassy or the ATF, and there is no official figure for traces requested.
