Agency overview | |
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Formed | 2008 |
Headquarters | Birmingham, England, United Kingdom |
Website | nabis.police.uk |
The National Ballistics Intelligence Service, or NABIS, is a British intelligence service dedicated to managing and providing detailed information regarding firearm-related criminality. The service aims to use its database to store ballistics information about police cases involving firearms, and consequently maintain it for future use and reference. [1] The service operates four facilities to test and analyse firearms evidence to help link it with other cases. [2] These are based in Birmingham, London, Manchester and at Gartcosh in the Scottish Crime Campus in the town. [3]
The service was officially launched on 1 April 2008 [4] and can be roughly compared to the Integrated Ballistics Identification System operating in the United States.
Four regional forensic hubs operate within four host forces/organisations: Greater Manchester Police (GMP), West Midlands Police (WMP), Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and the Glasgow unit of SPA Forensic Services. [5] The staff are around 40 in number. [6]