SAINT PAUL, MN – Starting this summer, all police agencies throughout the state of Minnesota will be required to trace all guns recovered from crime scenes.
Following a WCCO investigation inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) National Tracing Center, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the change into law, the CBS News affiliate reported. The law goes into effect on July 1st. The investigation gave a look into the ATF’s National Tracing Center, showing how the commonly used eTrace system can lead to the origin of a gun.
Using the tool can give investigators a lead, and while some of the state’s largest agencies, Minneapolis and St. Paul, use the tool and send information on all crime guns to the ATF, close to 40 percent of agencies throughout the state don’t trace the recovered guns. The Eagan Police Department (EPD) is one of the agencies in Minnesota already tracing all crime guns through the ATF.
“It is part of our standard procedure. It does not always give us the exact information that we’re looking for, but it gives us a starting point,” Property and Evidence Technician Anne Marie Scheutski said.
DFL Senator Ron Latz said that he saw the story on the issue and thought it was a simple problem to solve and so he introduced the bill that became law as part of his legislative agenda. “You guys did a story on it that I saw and talked about how not all of the firearms that are confiscated at crime scenes here in Minnesota end up in the national eTrace system. And the only way really to trace the provenance of a firearm that may have been used in a crime is to figure out where it’s been,” Latz said.
“The act of registering the firearm in the eTrace system should be best practice and standard protocol when a firearm’s recovered at the scene of a crime,” Latz added.
One example of successfully using the eTrace system in the state was when St. Paul police sent information on a gun used in the fatal Truck Park shooting in 2021. That step in the investigation process led detectives to a straw purchaser, the person who bought the gun for someone who is not allowed to have one.
The same thing happened when the guns used to ambush and kill three first responders in Burnsville were traced and in that case, the shooter’s girlfriend was charged with buying the guns.
“We want to have a complete picture of what firearms are used in crimes, and that will help us catch the people who did it,” Latz said. The new law will also require agencies to check an often overlooked box in the eTrace system that will share the trace information state-wide.
“It just gives everyone a holistic picture. Just because there’s a crime gun that’s recovered someplace out of the metro doesn’t mean that it’s not tied back to the metro and vice versa. Ultimately, what that’s going to do is going to make the community safer by either identifying the trafficking or the straws or solving the crime and arresting the individuals that are actually driving the violence in their communities,” Travis Riddle, ATF Special Agent in Charge of the St. Paul Field Division, said.
“It does produce such actionable results that we can move forward and close cases on. So I think that it’s great,” Scheutski said. She said that tracing guns recovered from crime scenes is one of the most satisfying parts of her job.
“We believe submitting data to and utilizing eTrace provides police with a valuable resource to enhance their investigative capabilities, solve gun-related crimes more efficiently, and develop effective strategies for reducing firearms violence,” the Minnesota Police Association said.
“The Minnesota Sheriff’s Association is actively engaged in the legislative process for matters affecting public safety. As new laws roll out, we provide updates to the elected sheriffs and their affected staff through our newsletter and through training components, if necessary. Since we are holding our sheriff and chief deputy conferences this week, we have sessions dedicated to legislative and legal updates. Since many sheriff’s offices already use eTrace for all recovered or confiscated weapons, this is merely a matter of defining consistency,” the Minnesota Sheriff’s Associated said.
