The Dominican Republic will shortly have a ballistic and biometric laboratory that will enable the Police to check the property ownership history of firearms owners, and will be linked to the firearms data held by the Ministry of Interior and Police.
The Director and Deputy Director of the laboratory, Antonio Valerio and Samuel de Moya, told the director of El Nacional newspaper, Radhames Gomez Pepin that the laboratory will be able to check the ballistic fingerprints of legally registered weapons as well as holding the owners’ biometric data.
This will enable them to give immediate assistance to investigate cases and the Ministry of Interior and Police will have control of the universe of legally held weapons by civilians, the Police and the Armed Forces.
There will also be new regulations for obtaining a firearms license, where the owner will have to go to a shooting range, have an anti-doping test, a firearms examination and biometric prints.
In the future any bullet recovered in a shooting incident can be immediately matched to the weapon, as long as it is legally held.
Valerio said that in the future the laboratory would be linked to other State data, such as whether the owner of the weapon pays tax, where they live, if they have a vehicle and other things.
www.elnacional.com.do/nacional/2013/9/10/172145/La-Policia-RD-tendra-moderno-laboratorio-balistico-biometrico