• Open-source searches help solve cold cases

    Two detectives receive the LexisNexis One Step Closer award for effectively using searches of open or third-party information sources to solve cold cases

  • Record high police fatalities, second year in a row

    For the second year in a row, a record number of law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty; the chairman of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund blamed the recent spate of law enforcement deaths on budget cuts

  • LA sheriff department upgrading its 1980-era terminals

    The Los Angeles Sheriff Department is upgrading its 1980s-era terminals, for which it had become difficult for the largest sheriff’s agency in the United States to find parts; the upgrade – Raytheon’s Mobile Digital Computer System (MDCS); the MDCS project and major technology upgrade represents the largest-ever deployment of mobile digital computers to a sheriff’s department in the country

  • Chicago's new bio-attack response facility

    Chicago is preparing itself for a biological attack with the recent unveiling of a new 40,000 square-foot, fourteen story state-of the-art medical decontamination facility; the new facility is fully equipped to handle a sudden influx of patients from a biological attack or other mass casualty incident

  • Protests spur sonic blaster sales boom

    With the spate of protests from the Occupy Wall Street movement sweeping across the country, there has been a surge of interest in non-lethal crowd control systems; in particular U.S. police and first responders have taken a keen interest in Long-Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD)

  • Half of U.S. jails not in national vaccination campaign

    A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that more than half of U.S. jails are not included in the national flu vaccine campaign, despite the fact that jail and prison inmates are at increased risk of catching infectious diseases

  • On-demand emergency responder training

    New service allows fire, police, EMS, and military to provide their training video library through an on-demand delivery to any television; the service allows responders to select a video through a graphical menu on the television screen and then play, pause, restart, rewind or fast forward the video

  • Web-based interactive solution for first responders

    DGI is adding a Web-based, interactive map drawing feature to its CoBRA WEB Mapping; the solution will initially target fire departments, EMS organizations, bomb squads, HAZMAT teams, and police departments as a situational awareness tool to assist in the collaboration of first responders and emergency operation centers

  • New cloud computing based disaster management system

    Natural and man-made disasters require an effective and efficient management of massive amounts of data and coordination of wide varieties of people and organizations; researchers develop an elaborate cloud computing-based disaster management system

  • Smartphones to save lives in natural disasters

    Smartphones could help save hundreds of thousands of lives in the aftermath of a disaster or humanitarian crisis; software developed by computer scientists could help quickly and accurately to locate missing people, rapidly identify those suffering from malnutrition and effectively point people towards safe zones simply by checking their phones

  • LAPD abandons plans to move to Google cloud server

    The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) recently announced that it had scrapped its plans to move its email servers to a Google-based cloud system citing the technology’s inability to meet certain FBI security requirements

  • Simulations help firefighters in risky operations

    Firefighters often put their lives at risk during operations, so it would be very helpful if they had reliable tools to help them do their job safely and effectively; now, a modular simulation kit is set to help develop new information and communication technologies — and ensure they are tailored to firefighters’ needs from the outset.

  • The reasons for NYC’s dramatic crime decline

    New York City saw more than 80 percent drop in crime from 1990 to 2009; a new says that changes in police tactics, rather than imprisoning more people are trying to win the war on drugs, explain why NYC has become a much safer city

  • Mentalix wins contract to convert Texas fingerprint archive

    Mentalix Inc. was recently awarded a contract by Texas’ Department of Public Safety’s Crime Records Service to scan more than 1.4 million fingerprint cards from its oldest archive

  • Law enforcement fatalities rise sharply for second year in a row

    For the second straight year, law enforcement fatalities in the United States rose with 173 federal, state, and local officers killed in the line of duty during 2011; this represents a 13 percent increase over the 153 officers killed in 2010 and a 42 percent spike when compared to the 122 officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2009