Spring 2007 SWGGUN Meeting Summary
SWGGUN
recently met at the Albuquerque Police
Department Metropolitan Forensic Science Center
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 17-19, 2007.
Nineteen of the Board Members were present at
the meeting; two additional members were not in
attendance.
Spring Meeting in
the Albuquerque, NM
Elections for the office of
Chair and Secretary (2008-09) were held.
Gregory S. Klees (Maryland) was elected to the
position of Chair and Ms. Kimberly Haag (New
Mexico) was re-elected to a second term as
Secretary. Congratulations to both of these
individuals on their dedicated work within the
field.
Work was
completed on the development of a PowerPoint
presentation to assist the Criminal Justice
System in understanding and addressing the
issues of evidence admissibility in the field of
Firearm and Toolmark Identification. This tool
is designed to be used as provided for courtroom
demonstration or in a format that can be
modified to meet your specific needs for the
case at hand. This is another extension of the
SWGGUN
Evidence Admissibility Resource Kit and can
be found in the “Appendices” area under “Visual
Aids”.
The ISO
Transition committee continues to work on a
draft document to assist examiners in
identifying areas that the firearm and toolmark
examiner community may want to consider when
attempting to achieve ISO 17025 accreditation.
This committee continues to seek any input from
all firearm and toolmark examiners within the
discipline that may be considering ISO
accreditation. The committee is seeking input
from subject matter experts within the area of
ISO Accreditation.
A
committee was formed to research the topic of
“Verification of Casework” and will begin to
compile information on verification of results
in the Firearm and Toolmark discipline. The
goals of this committee will be to define
“verification”, those individuals qualified to
perform verifications, frequency and the scope
of such work. Individuals are encouraged to
provide any input in this area or copies of
current policy to the committee chair Mark
Keisler at
mkeisler@isp.in.gov
.
The
summary of the SWGGUN Survey results compiled
and posted here display some minimal changes
from the previous post due to an exhaustive
quality assurance assessment of all the raw data
and are posted here for your review. The survey
was sent to 225 laboratories from a list
obtained by the National Forensic Science
Technology Center (NFSTC) and we received 180
individual responses.
Ongoing projects that are
being addressed by SWGGUN are:
-
ISO Transition-defining
the standards.
-
Daubert Challenges in the
field of Firearm and Toolmark
Identification.
-
SWGGUN Survey regarding
general use of CMS.
-
Guidelines for the
Verification of Casework
These
committees are working to develop a product that
can be posted on the SWGGUN website for review
and comments from the forensic community.
SWGGUN continues to operate its own website at
www.swggun.org
and solicits valuable input from the discipline
through a number of different mechanisms during
the development stages of the guidelines in
which we produce. These guidelines/documents
are then posted on the website for your review
and we encourage peer review of these
materials. Feel free to contact a Board Member
with your comments/concerns or visit us at the
“Feedback Forum” tab above.
Thank you for allowing
us to serve you. Board member information can
be found under the “Members” tab. We look
forward to hearing from you and encourage your
continued participation in these ongoing
projects that ultimately affect our work
product.
Thomas L.G. Price
–Chair, SWGGUN
