In Part 5 of a five-part series, Lance Witten looks at the Ballistics division at the Western Cape SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory.
Cape Town - “Remember,” says Captain Kagiso Banda of the Police Forensics Laboratory’s Ballistics division, “you’re still in South Africa.”
The Cape Argus team was invited to a rare behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the police’s state-of-the-art crime lab in Plattekloof.
The amount of space the ballistics division takes up is mind-boggling.
Multiple floors, maze-like corridors and stairwells, an indoor 50m underground shooting range and even a firearms museum is housed within its halls, not to mention the office space, sprawling lab space and hi-tech imaging, matching and logging areas.
One of the labs tests proximity. “This helps us determine the distance at which the shot was fired. The cartridge needs primer to be fired out of the barrel. The primer and propellants are made of nitrates. When the bullet hits the body, some of the nitrates are still attached to it. Therefore, the more nitrates show up and the broader the pattern on the clothing of the victim, the closer the shot was fired.”
This is used in the determination of whether or not a shot was fired inself-defence.
“If I am 10m away, there was maybe enough time for me to duck or run for cover from the alleged attacker. But if I fired a shot from that distance, that’s not self-defence and the nitrate pattern will show us this.”
There are bullet traps in every lab. “You can’t be too careful. If there is a cartridge in the chamber, we need to make the gun safe first. So we discharge into these bullet traps. It slows the velocity down to zero. Safety first. Always safety first.”
In the general workspace, firearms that were perhaps not well taken care of, rusty, sticky, or are jamming, are laid in troughs of helicopter fuel, which breaks down rust and dissolves any solvents which may be affecting the weapon’s performance.
Through a maze of more stairwells, the Cape Argus team is led up to what Brigadier Deon Meintjes, who runs the facility, calls the “ballistics jacuzzi”.
The shooting tank hangs suspended from thick reinforced steel rafters by chain and hinge links the width of a man’s arm.
“They need to be strong to disseminate the force of the weapons fired into this tank,” Meintjes says.
The tank is about four metres long and filled with water. Its sides are reinforced steel a few centimetres thick and knocking a fist against it produces a dull thud - an indication of just how solid it is.”This tank stops that force. The bullet doesn’t even reach the end of the tank before the water slows it down and the bullet drops to the bottom. And the energy is distributed through these supports and into the roof structure.
“Remember, you are still in South Africa. And we developed this piece of equipment, built to our requirements and specifications.”
Banda then leads the team into the “mic room”, a darkened lab filled with millions of rands worth of electron microscopes which match casings, cartridges and bullets with the weapons they have been fired from.
“The inside of a gun has these score-marks that aren’t man made. It’s a result of the manufacturing process, you can’t get around it. The casing comes into contact with the inside of the weapon five times, and each of those times, the weapon leaves its mark on the casing.
“There is no way you can replicate these marks. So, the gun leaves five unique fingerprints on the casing, and here we match that up.”
All cartridge signatures are stored in a central database.
Banda then shows the team the etch room.
“Yes, you think you’re smart and you file off the serial number of the firearm and think it can’t be traced. But when that serial number is punched into the metal at the manufacturing stage, it compresses the metal beneath. Compressed metal carries greater magnetism than normal metal. So, we magnetise it and we put special magnetic dyes on it, et voila, I can read the serial number as clearly as the first day it was punched in.
“What if you have an aluminium barrel which can’t be magnetised? Easy, punched aluminium carries more charge than if the metal wasn’t compressed by punching. So, we run an electric charge through it, and we then use special materials to be able to see the serial number.
“Criminals are clever. We are cleverer.”
Banda takes the team to the final stop on the Ballistics unit tour - an ultra-high tech underground shooting range where a warrant officer is testing a P38, an old standard police issue weapon from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
The range is fitted with radar speedguns, infrared tracking, a sound and bullet proof viewing room and is soundproof once the two heavy blast doors are closed.The warrant officer explains that the high-speed camera he’s using to photograph every movement of the P38 is “incredibly expensive”.
“Right now, I’m only capturing 30 000 frames per second. Remember, the P38 fires the bullet and that bullet hits 50m later travelling at 350m per second. So the camera must be fast.”
The camera is capable of capturing up to 150 000 frames per second. To put that in perspective, the “ultra slow motion” cameras used in sport capture up to 18 500 frames per second.
“And remember,” Captain Banda says with a smirk, “you’re still in South Africa.”
Cape Argus