By Laura Barron-Lopez
Published: October 27, 2009

By Laura Barron-Lopez

For the Daily Titan

ShieldOps is the name of the company. GunOps and Gang Injunction are the names of the programs that could help improve the investigation and completion of gun and gang-related crimes. The inventors in the company’s programs are Jon Centanni, a Cal State Fullerton alumnus and detective sergeant, and Rocky Edwards, a firearms examiner. Both work for a large municipal law enforcement agency in Southern California.

It began with an idea; ShieldOps was created due to the demand.

As Edwards quoted from a well-known Aesop fable, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

The overwhelming amount of case data they go through daily needed some form of organization. By chance, Centanni and Edwards were attempting new ways of cataloging data around the same time.

Edwards came up with an idea of tracking gun-related crimes through firearm cartridge cases and bullets. Simultaneously, Centanni was beginning to experiment as well.

“I started working on creating a database to track all of the hits that (Edwards) kept stacking on my desk. I needed something to organize in my mind all of the ballistically linked cases because there are so many of them,” Centanni said.

Since then, it has been four and a half years and the program is still going through the patent process. Continual problems with programmers arose, causing setbacks in its development.

Currently, the pieces seem to be falling into place for these co-inventors, who have finally found the right programmers for ShieldOps. Steve Flores, one of ShieldOps’ programmers/developers, discussed his experience of working on this advanced program.

“It’s very exciting working on these programs. I am working on programs that will actually help (Edwards and Centanni) solve crimes. It’s completely different that anything I have done. It’s nothing like financial programming. This is a challenge. The Web stuff is completely new to me and working with the mapping is difficult. This was a big turn around for me,” Flores said.

Presently, GunOps is 70 percent complete, Centanni and Edwards said. Already many law enforcement agencies are interested in their software. Their proof of concept is verifying that the program works.

“Right now the strength of GunOps allows us to monitor every gun related incident, every firearm, every bullet, every cartridge case seized in the city through topographical charting and artificial intelligence, which helps us track the different shootings,” Edwards said.

Currently, their Gang Injunction program, which monitors gangs being served with civil suits for criminal acts by police, is a prototype. Local law enforcement departments in the Orange County area are already using this prototype.

In order to build upon the development of GunOps, the more powerful of the two programs, Centanni and Edwards work with universities to conduct studies that ensure the program’s capabilities.

GunOps, the central program of the ShieldOps Corporation, essentially merges existing information on local gun crimes and ballistic evidence in order to improve crime analysis, the processing of evidence and the art of conducting investigations.

GunOps didn’t begin the idea of linking evidence such as bullets and cartridge cases. Instead, the Integrated Ballistic Imaging System, a computerized system that captures evidence from crimes scenes, began the foundation GunOps has built upon. A part of IBIS is NIBIN, which is a database of ballistics images and has been used by law enforcement since 1997.

When IBIS and NIBIN work side by side and their pieces of evidence match, it helps in determining if the same gun was involved in multiple crimes. This is called a “hit.”

GunOps, Edwards and Centanni explained, uses virtual mapping and database components to: “harnesses the power of IBIS” in concluding if multiple gun crimes are linked and to improve investigations. GunOps will ensure interactive communication between everyone involved in crime investigation, monitor the status of ballistic assessments, prioritize cases that appear to be linked, and investigate in depth local firearm problems to notify enforcement operations.

“What I hope to see for the future of ShieldOps is very similar to what was shown on the TV show ‘CSI: Las Vegas.’ It basically showed a vision of where we are headed with this program. It not only showed us gun related instances but how it interacts with gang related crime as well,” Edwards said.

On Oct. 15, “CSI: Las Vegas” aired an episode titled “Coup De Grace,” which featured Centanni and Edwards’ program. The show depicted an improved version of their concept.

“Eventually Gang Injunction will merge with GunOps, which is in the works right now.” Centanni said.

In the case of Centanni and Edwards, it was apparent that the need to improve the method of monitoring ballistic evidence and gang violence was in such high demand that it gave way to an invention, an invention which has in a short amount of time made vast advancements in their field. Centanni and Edwards hope their creation will only continue to expand, eventually being made available to law enforcement departments nationally and possibly worldwide.