Expanded gun lab will help firearms crime investigations across Manitoba: Winnipeg police
Justice minister says province will spend $3.2M on expansion, plus an additional $442K on Phase 2
The Winnipeg Police Service says it is expanding its firearms analysis unit to help police services across Manitoba with gun crime investigations, with support already underway this week.
Winnipeg's existing firearms investigative analysis section lab hopes to begin receiving firearms from across Manitoba by the end of the year, Deputy Chief Cam Mackid said at a news conference on Friday.
The province is spending $3.2 million per year on the project, with an additional $442,000 to renovate the existing firearms investigative analysis section lab at the police service's headquarters, adding new equipment, infrastructure and staff.
A provincial spokesperson told CBC News the expansion will eventually establish a firearms lab in its own building.
The timeline to establish the stand-alone gun lab is yet to be determined, the spokesperson said. The location and total cost is unknown at this time.
This announcement comes nearly two years after the previous Progressive Conservative government committed an initial $5.2 million to establish a provincial gun lab at the Winnipeg Police Service's downtown headquarters, with an annual operating budget of $3.1 million.
A spokesperson for the province told CBC News Friday afternoon the funding is a $100,000 increase to the previous government's commitment. However, they said the money was never budgeted by the PCs and was "simply announced on their way out of office."
Mackid, who oversees the police force's homicide unit and its drugs and gangs unit, said he sees the impact of gun violence "on a daily basis," as a third of all homicides in the city were related to firearms.
"As an investigator in the major crimes unit for many years, I've personally seen innocent, hard-working citizens lose their lives to gun violence, through senseless robberies and other crimes," Mackid said.
Last year, Winnipeg police received 2,600 firearms-related calls for service and seized more than 1,400 guns — nearly half of which were "crime guns," Mackid said, or guns directly linked to crime, such as robberies, shootings and homicides.
Since 2020, Winnipeg police have used the integrated ballistic identification service to process images of used shell casings.
Mackid said these casings are "much like fingerprints" and can be used to connect a single firearm to multiple crimes through the Canadian Integrated Ballistic Identification Network, a Canada-wide database that stores digital images of expended cartridge casings.
Having in-house access to this system has reduced wait times for results from a year to less than three days, Mackid said.
Before this, cases ran the risk of running cold, as requests had to be sent to the RCMP's national forensic laboratory service, which is "very backed up" with these types of investigations, Mackid said.
"If it comes in a day or three days after the fact, we can communicate with our partners in different jurisdictions and hit the ground running and make those links very quickly," Mackid said.
Other Canadian municipal police forces, including Saskatoon and Edmonton, have announced similar gun labs to serve their respective provinces.
With the new funding, Winnipeg police will receive and process spent cartridge casings for all provincial gun crimes investigations from police services across Manitoba.
Police said they hope the shift will lessen strain on the RCMP's forensic lab service and make investigations in the province more efficient.
The Brandon Police Service said it "fully supports" expanding Winnipeg's firearms analysis lab to serve forces across Manitoba.
"Tackling illegal firearms and reducing gun violence is a shared priority, and we strongly welcome the province's investment in enhancing public safety," Brandon police Chief Tyler Bates said in a statement to CBC News Friday.
"We anticipate this initiative will have a positive impact on addressing criminal activity and improving investigative processes across Manitoba, including right here in Brandon," Bates said.
Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said the provincial government is "committed to ending gun violence" and the newly announced funding will help them get there.
"I want to send a message to those gun criminals, whether you're trafficking in illegal firearms or you're using guns to harm our communities, we will find you, we will prosecute you and we will make a difference on public safety in our province."
With files from Zubina Ahmed