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Indiana Crime Guns Task Force established to track guns and suspects

The task force will ultimately include law enforcement agencies from Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Marion, Morgan, Johnson, and Shelby counties.

INDIANAPOLIS — The Indianapolis Crime Gun Intelligence Center is now a regional task force. The new name for it will be the Indiana Crime Guns Task Force.

It will allow for a coordinated and uniform approach in processing, collecting, and analyzing gun evidence throughout central Indiana. That means better tracking of crime guns and shooting suspects who travel beyond county lines and throughout the state.

"We have seen repeatedly that crime does not know county lines. That is why this regional task force is instrumental in allowing law enforcement from all over Central Indiana to work together, identify criminal behavior and stop the mobility of crime throughout our communities," said IMPD Chief Randal Taylor.

The task force will ultimately include law enforcement agencies from Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Marion, Morgan, Johnson, and Shelby counties.

The Indianapolis Crime Gun Intelligence Center is responsible for the following accomplishments:

• Seizing 717 firearms
• Arresting 813 people on state and federal charges
• More than 24,547 entries into National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN)
• Following up on more than 3,959 leads

The hope is becoming a task force will expand the reach and greatly add to those numbers.

"ATF has a long history of working with our state and local counterparts, including the formation of a Crime Gun Intelligence Center with IMPD a couple of years ago," said Roland H. Herndon, Jr., special agent in charge of ATF's Columbus Field Division. "This regional CGIC is the next logical step. Criminals know no jurisdictional bounds, and by bringing together all of these agencies to share intelligence and investigate violent crimes as a unit, we are enhancing our commitment to our communities to address the violence wherever it is occurring."

Herndon also believes they'll be able to get more witnesses to talk because the whole task force will be there to protect them.

To fund the task force, $10 million for operating costs over the next two years was approved in the state budget.

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