By Alexandra Valencia
QUITO (Reuters) – A gun – a 9-millimeter pistol – rattled the rough streets even by the standards of one of Ecuador’s most dangerous neighborhoods, the Nueva Prosperina area of Guayaquil.
Shell (LON:) casings of bullets fired by weapons, recovered at the scene of 27 separate violent incidents, were linked to 34 deaths, according to the police forensic unit. And a police forensics official told Reuters that authorities believe the gun remains on the streets.
The accident caused by a single firearm is an example of the challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s tough action on the explosion of violent crimes and murders since 2020, supported by the increase of weapons smuggled during the same period, many from the United States. Ecuador recorded 7,994 murders last year, an increase of almost six times since 2020.
Reuters is the first media organization to provide access to police bullet tracing efforts, a key component in Ecuador’s fight against crime. Tracing the origin of bullets and guns can help authorities eliminate trafficking routes and also build a forensic history of illegal weapons for future prosecutions, police said.
But it is slow work.
Of the more than 40,000 guns seized since 2019, only 900 have been traced, Major Efrain Arguello, who heads the national forensic investigation unit, told Reuters.
The weapons used in Nueva Prosperina may belong to, or have been leased to, among five rival drug gangs fighting for control of the area, Arguello said.
Police are investigating murders, robberies and other violent incidents linked to the same gun.
“A gun linked to 30 crimes means there is not only an increase in human trafficking, but in the circulation or internal sales of illegal guns,” said Renato Rivera, director of the Ecuadorean Organized Crime Observatory research group.
The Pacific port city of Guayaquil is the center of drug trafficking and the scene of a turf war between Mexican, Albanian and other foreign cartels that has led to an increase in murders.
Noboa in January designated 22 gangs – including five operating in Nueva Prosperina – as terrorist organizations.
Since taking office last November, after he was elected to complete his previous term, Noboa increased funding for the security forces by 6.6% to $3.52 billion.
SHORTAGE OF EQUIPMENT
But two senior police officials told Reuters that Ecuador was struggling to crack down on arms trafficking routes from the United States, Peru and other countries in the region because of a lack of funding, forensic equipment and trained personnel.
Ecuador has only eight microscopes in a country of 17 million to track bullets, police said, and 247 trained technicians.
“We keep track of what we have,” Arguello said.
In a small room in the forensics building of the Quito police, technician Jhony Tapia peered through the only ballistic microscope in the city at the casing of shells and bullets from the five guns used to kill four people in a bar in Amazon (NASDAQ:).
The distinctive marks of the firing pins of individual firearms, visible under a high power microscope, allow technicians to match the bullet to the gun or to other bullets fired from the same weapon.
“Firing pins leave a more effective mark (to trace) than fingerprints,” said Lt. Col. Benjamin Molina, head of the national police’s arms and explosives trafficking unit.
Tapia will spend the next few hours studying 126 shell casings of different sizes, he told Reuters.
The findings will be checked against the national police database of bullets and shells.
Finding a match is easier if the police also recover the gun, allowing technicians like Tapia to compare the marks on the barrel, called rifling, with the marks on the bullet.
Seized weapons are checked against an international database maintained by the United States and Interpol.
Forensic staff have not said whether the gun in the Amazon case has been recovered.
Unlike neighboring Colombia, which has been battling drug trafficking networks for decades, Ecuador is still considered one of the safest countries in Latin America – a popular destination for foreign tourists and retirees.
But after increased drug interdiction on Colombia’s Pacific coast, traffickers moved to Ecuador and violent crime increased.
Ecuadorian police have identified seven arms trafficking routes, Noboa’s office said.
Three fled through Peru while a fourth route entered northern Ecuador near the border with Colombia, although police have not determined whether the weapons came from there.
RUN-TRAFFICKING GUNS FROM THE USA
Three other gun trafficking routes originate in the United States: one through the air from Miami to the coast of Manta, another through Lima and then by land, and the third by sea through the storied Galapagos (NASDAQ:) Islands, the police and the office of Noboa said.
Police said they also found gun parts that were sent by a courier service from Miami or manufactured using 3-D printing.
In April police seized a 3-D printer off the coast of Manabi province which they said was used to make up to 20 gun parts.
Police would not share an estimate of the price of illegal guns but Ecuador’s Organized Crime Observatory said Glocks and other handguns cost up to $4,000 new and $500 used.
Rifles can cost between $8,000 and $15,000, the research group said, while guns made with a 3-D printer cost $3,000. There is also a market for homemade guns, he said.
Police confiscated nearly 10,000 guns in Ecuador last year, according to police data, more than half of them revolvers or pistols, nearly double the number of seizures in 2019.
At least a quarter of the guns tracked were purchased legally in the United States, but most had no record of legal entry into Ecuador, police said.
Authorities also tracked down at least 36 guns that were legally exported from the United States to Peru and smuggled north to Ecuador, said Molina, head of the arms trafficking unit.
Peruvian authorities told Reuters they raided three companies moving guns on the black market in March and criminally charged 18 people.
Molina said police are also looking into the possibility that Ecuadorian gangs may be trading cocaine for weapons from Mexican cartels.
Starting in 2022, Ecuador will increase cooperation with the United States to fight gun-running, gaining access to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) eTrace internet database.
Last year, ATF traced more than 500 firearms seized in Ecuador, the State Department and ATF said in a joint statement, compared to less than 100 in 2021.
But some analysts say that without a specific plan to tackle the arms trade, the seizure of guns and ammunition will remain a sideshow to drug busts.
“There is no intelligence monitoring process to find suppliers and systems and to prevent arms trafficking,” said former head of military intelligence and security analyst Mario Pazmino.
Noboa’s office said security forces have had success against gun dealers, including the seizure of 2,291 guns since the declaration of war on gangs in January.