While at the VI Summit of the Americas in Cartagena a few days ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the following announcement:

“For years Canada has been working with like-minded countries to make the Americas a safer place, providing necessary equipment and training, and technical and legal assistance to those fighting on the front lines against drugs, transnational organized crime and terrorism.”

“The new Canadian Initiative for Security in Central America sends a clear message that Canada is a strong and committed long-term ally in the war against crime in the Americas.”

The Canadian Initiative for Security in Central America (CISCA) will be managed by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. The first step of the initiative comes in the form of forensic ballistics identification equipment. Montreal-based Forensic Technology will provide law enforcement authorities in Costa Rica with the IBIS Trax-3D system.

The new forensic ballistics identification will help investigators in Costa Rica acquire, correlate and analyze bullets and fragments in firearm-related criminal cases. Cartridge case evidence acquisition and analysis techniques have proven very valuable in the field of criminal investigations. Since 1991, the Forensic Technology company has been development systems that help investigators find the proverbial “needle in the haystack”, suggesting possible matches between pairs of spent bullets and cartridge cases, at speeds well beyond human capacity. This gives investigators more time to concentrate on field work.

Firearm use has been sadly increasing in Costa Rica over the last few decades. In a civil law country where the preponderance of evidence in a criminal case leads to convictions, rather than case law and courtroom antics, advanced forensic ballistics technology can go a long way in fighting crime.