**New Jersey State Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives Form Historic Partnership**

The New Jersey State Police (State Police) recently entered into a
groundbreaking agreement with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF) that will facilitate the tracing of all guns in New
Jersey that come into police possession through arrests, investigations,
and found property. The partnership with ATF allows the State Police to
use the ATF's eTrace system to identify trends and relationships between
crimes and gun transactions by pooling all reported information to the
ATF.

The ATF eTrace system can disclose the identity of a firearm's first
purchaser, when it was purchased, and where it was purchased. This
allows state law enforcement officials to determine whether there are
patterns indicating where guns used in a crime in New Jersey were
originally purchased and who purchased them.

Previously, an individual police department would seek trace information
from ATF and only that department would receive information. This new
partnership creates a state database, which can be searched by State
Police analysts, and the relevant information can be shared with all
municipal departments in the state.

"Firearms tracing identifies the illegal source of firearms and provides
law enforcement invaluable leads to target firearms traffickers," said
Special Agent Mark Potter of the Philadelphia division of the ATF.  "The
New Jersey State Police and ATF have partnered in this country\'s
first-of-a-kind state clearinghouse for gun tracing."

"By partnering with the ATF, the New Jersey State Police will now have
direct access to national firearms-purchasing data.  This will
streamline the tracing of illegal firearms back to the source, giving us
a better shot at finding and arresting the person who pulled the
trigger," said Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey
State Police.

The tracing of these weapons will be accomplished through an addition to
the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) that officers will
complete after entering National Crime Information Center (NCIC) stolen
gun inquiry information. Once the trace data is entered by submitting
officers, analysts at the Regional Operations Intelligence Center (ROIC)
will prepare and upload the data to the ATF eTrace system to initiate
the trace. When the trace is completed, the ATF will mail a reply to the
originating agency as it had in the past. However, the ROIC analysts
will now mine the statewide trace data returns for trends and
indications of potential gun trafficking. With the new system in place,
New Jersey law enforcement agencies will no longer need to complete the
ATF gun tracing form. The New Jersey State Police believes this new
system will greatly enhance New Jersey law enforcement efforts to
identify gun traffickers who bring illegal guns into New Jersey,
ultimately reducing the number of illegal guns on our streets and
providing linkages between crimes that occur in different policing
jurisdictions.

Prior to the implementation of the eTrace system, New Jersey was able to
trace approximately 3,600 of the estimated 30,000 guns per year believed
to make their way through the state. After nearly four months of having
the eTrace system implemented and functional, this new system has
already traced 1,600 guns (that is 44 percent of the entire total of
last year), and seven indictments have been made. After observing the
initial success in the first few months of implementation, New Jersey
plans to increase its efforts in tracing guns coming through the state
and is anticipating even greater future returns as more local law
enforcement agencies begin to comply with the new system. With even 50
percent compliance, the ROIC would have access to data on 15,000 guns.
However, the goal will always be 100 percent compliance with the
program.

In addition, New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram issued a law
enforcement directive that orders all local police departments to report
data on guns used in the commission of a crime to the New Jersey State
Police and the ATF. The Attorney General's directive orders that local
police departments promptly enter information on the make, model,
caliber, and serial number of a weapon seized in connection with a crime
to both the NCIC system---which can determine whether a weapon has been
stolen---and into the New Jersey Trace system within 24 hours of the
time the weapon was recovered.

"The new system for local police is a significant step forward in
creating a database to track gun trafficking," Milgram said. "We will be
able to track purchasers, retailers, and wholesalers. It will be the
kind of information and intelligence that will allow us to prevent crime
and save lives."