Meet Tennessee’s No. 1 ATF agent
Guns expert using tech to take shooters off streets
Mickey French has spent much of his career studying guns. He worked for years in a forensic laboratory as a gun examiner, wrote articles for a specialty journal on gun forensics, then later served as the journal’s editor. He says when he wasn’t working with firearms, he was often reading about guns or going out hunting or target shooting.
That interest in guns led him to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Since November, he has served as special agent in charge for the federal agency’s Nashville field division. The field office covers a massive area that includes all of Alabama and all of Tennessee including Memphis — and its reach even extends into West Memphis.
Today, French and others in the ATF are working to grow a national
computer system that helps police examine spent shell casings from shooting scenes. It’s called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBN.
In one case last year in Memphis, spent shell casings from one shooting were matched to nine other car jackings and similar assaults, French said.
“We’re taking these shooters off the streets using technology,” French said.
French’s career with the ATF helps tell the story of this relatively small federal agency, how it works side-by-side with other law enforcement agencies today, and how it might solve more crimes going forward.
“I like to tell everybody the ATF’S an inch wide and a mile deep,” French said. “We have a narrow focus on violent crime, but we’re super experienced.”
Learning more and more about guns
Now 55, French grew up in Miamisburg, Ohio, which is near Dayton.
He earned a degree in chemistry from Eastern Kentucky University. Upon graduation, he applied for pharmacy school, but was wait-listed twice.
His former chemistry advisor suggested he try forensic science. So he enrolled in a program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he said. He later landed a job with the crime lab in Indianapolis-marion County, focusing on guns.
His expertise in guns deepened as he testified many times as an expert witness on behalf of the crime lab.
The gun-focused work put French in touch with ATF agents, and he joined the federal agency in 2001.
Whiskey, cigar, pistol, grenade
The ATF’S official history says the agency evolved from several predecessor agencies that taxed and regulated booze, tobacco and guns. The federal government created the modern ATF in 1972.
In addition to gun crime investigations, the ATF still investigates illegal trafficking of alcohol and tobacco. It also investigates arsons and bombings, and famously played a role in the the investigation of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
About 250 ATF agents
work in the Tennessee / Alabama region, French said, including about 30 in Memphis, led by an assistant special agent in charge, Chris Rogers.
The ATF has a satellite office in Jackson, Tennessee, two law enforcement offices and a crime gun intelligence group in Nashville, an office in Chattanooga, an office in Knoxville, and another satellite office outside Knoxville in Greenville, Tennessee.
In Alabama, the ATF has two offices in Birmingham, a satellite office in Huntsville, plus offices in Montgomery and Mobile, French said.
French has held various roles in the agency, including as resident agent in charge in Knoxville and as a leader within the ATF’S internal affairs bureau in Washington, and as assistant special agent in charge in Houston.
French arrived in Nashville in November last year. On Christmas day, a massive bomb went off — investigators later concluded a man had stuffed a recreational vehicle with explosives and blown himself up.
ATF agents helped investigate the scene in cooperation with the FBI, Metro Nashville Police and other agencies. French said it was the sort of cross-agency collaboration the ATF does all the time. “We get along with everybody,” French said.
Using spent cartridges to solve crimes
At crime scenes, it’s common to see police investigators putting numbered plastic markers next to spent shell casings.
Those shell casings can lead investigators to the person who pulled the trigger. As a gun fires, the firing pin and other moving parts scratch and dent the brass cartridge
case, leaving a pattern that’s distinct to the particular gun, French said.
Those patterns could show links between apparently separate shootings. In the late 1990s, the ATF created a computerized system to look for those links.
It was called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBN. But results could take months, too slow to prove useful for detectives, French said.
In the past few years, ATF has sped up the system. It has been bringing on more analysis machines, which it calls BRASSTRAX machines. These small machines create a three-dimensional image of the cartridge.
The ATF has placed the machines in police department property rooms and has trained local law enforcement officials on how to place cartridges into the system.
The information then goes to an analysis center in Huntsville, Alabama. Today, the system spits out matches far faster than before — within 24 hours, French said.
Detectives can follow leads and talk to people while memories are fresh and surveillance images still exist, French said.
There are seven BRASSTRAX machines in Tennessee, French said: one in the Memphis Police Department property room, one at the Multiagency Gang Unit in Memphis, one in Jackson, one each in Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga, and one at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
ATF, Memphis gang unit talk every day
The Multi-agency Gang Unit in Memphis consists of officers from the Memphis Police Department, Shelby County Sheriff’s office, and various other agencies.
The gang unit got its
own BRASSTRAX machine in November 2019, said Lt. Andre Pruitt, one of the unit’s leaders.
Today, more than 30 agencies from around the area are authorized to come use the machine, he said.
Among those other agencies are Southaven, Olive Branch, Hernando, West Memphis, Millington, Collierville and Germantown.
Once the cartridges are scanned, the NIBN system sends backs tips about potential matches between guns and cartridge casings.
ATF agents are embedded with the gang unit. Every day, the agents lead a group discussion of those tips, Pruitt said, and the leads are assigned to ATF agents and local detectives.
“It’s a great collaboration between both groups. And we work several cases weekly together,” he said.
He said the NIBN system has led to multiple arrests recently, but declined to talk about specific cases, citing ongoing court action.
French, the ATF special agent in charge, described a Memphis case from last year.
“They entered the the casings from the crime scene in. And it actually linked to nine other armed car jackings, armed robberies and shootings. When you have nine different detectives that can now pull in all their information and start comparing and contrasting, it helps develop a suspect.”
The ATF didn’t provide more details on that case in time for publication.
So what’s next for the agency?
French said the agency just placed a new BRASSTRAX machine in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and is trying to place more of them around the country.
“ATF as a whole is focusing on crime gun intelligence, utilizing it to start our investigations,” French said.
“ATF as a whole is focusing on crime gun intelligence, utilizing it to start our investigations.” Mickey French ATF special agent in charge from the Nashville field division