• Pinellas County, Florida simulates anthrax attack

    Last Wednesday a local health department in Florida staged an elaborate disaster exercise replete with angry mobs, fainting citizens, and shouting matches; the exercise, dubbed Operation MedStock, gave officials from the Pinellas County Health Department an opportunity to respond to a simulated anthrax attack

  • ShotSpotter raises $10.5 million

    On Thursday, ShotSpotter, Inc., the manufacturers of gunshot location and detection technology, announced that it had raised $7 million in equity and expanded its credit facility by $3.5 million; with the additional funds, ShotSpotter will expand its flagship product the ShotSpotter GunSpotter Location System in international markets

  • Hattiesburg, Mississippi receives $13,000 DHS grant

    Hattiesburg, Mississippi recently received a DHS grant for $13,789 to purchase search and rescue equipment; the grant was awarded by the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and comes as part of a $200 million DHS grant program designed to bolster emergency management and preparedness capabilities at the state, local, and community level

  • New smartphone app reduces information overload

    Researchers have developed a new smartphone application to avoid information overload by processing large quantities of data in real time and presenting it in user friendly clusters; the software is the first to allow a user to make real time adjustments to how information is displayed on a phone as it is acutely “aware” of how cluttered the screen is; the new application can be used in a wide array of instances including natural disasters, monitoring multiple hospital patient’s heart levels, and mapping the locations of first responders deployed during an emergency

  • N.Y. Dems push for gun microstamping legislation

    New York legislators are pushing for new gun technology that could help law enforcement officials fight crime; microstamping is a new technique that stamps a code on shell casings ejected when a gun is fired; the code can provide valuable information like the dealer who sold it and the buyer who purchased it; this week marks the end New York’s current legislative session and Democratic lawmakers are pushing to get the Republican controlled Senate to take up a bill that would require guns in New York to be microstamped

  • Technology helps law enforcement predict threats -- and prepare for them

    3i-MIND is the LEIM 2011 event to show its technology — a family of configurable solutions which help law enforcement agencies gather and analyze open-source and other intelligence in order to predict and prepare for threats; the technology uses deep-Web tools to access leads found only in social networks, chat rooms, and online forums

  • New powertrain improves fuel economy, adds hp Chevrolet Impala Police

    GM says that a new 3.6L V-6 engine and a 6-speed automatic transmission achieves 302 hp and an estimated fuel economy of 17 mpg city and 27 mpg highway — a 3 mpg advantage over previous Impala models and 28 percent better than the Ford Crown Victoria; the 2012 Impala can accelerate from 0-60 mph in 6.6 seconds, based on GM engineering tests

  • Apple cracks down on drunk driving evasion apps

    At the urging of several U.S. senators, Apple recently announced that it would no longer sell apps that were designed to inform users about police checkpoints for drunk drivers; the senators lauded the move, but said that the company should also remove existing apps from its stores rather than just preventing new ones from going on sale; the senators were targeting apps like PhantomALERT which taps into a phone’s GPS device and alerts the driver of any active law enforcement zone including checkpoints, speed cameras, and speed traps

  • Massachusetts firefighters purchase chemical fire equipment

    Local firefighters in Massachusetts recently received a new foam trailer capable of pumping out 500 gallons per minute; to control chemical fires and other difficult blazes, firefighters often use foam to coat the fuel to deprive the fire of oxygen; the new foam trailer is particularly useful as Ayer is home to several chemical and electrical facilities

  • Three arrested in PlayStation cyberattacks

    On Friday, Spanish law enforcement officials arrested three men suspected of hacking into Sony’s PlayStation Network in addition to other major government and corporate websites around the world; the three men are suspected of being the local leaders of a secretive group of international hackers that call themselves Anonymous; the group has claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks on major sites like YouTube, Amazon, the Australian Parliament’s House website, and PayPal

  • Firefighters struggling with Arizona's second largest wildfire in history

    Firefighters in eastern Arizona are struggling to contain the second largest wildfire in the state’s history; as the blaze burns toward New Mexico, Arizona officials have been forced to evacuate mountain resort communities and close national forests and parks; the wildfire has been burning steadily since 29 May; the conflagration now covers more than 311,000 acres in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, and is threatening to damage power lines carrying electricity to Tucson; the fire is growing at a rate of four to five miles a day and protracted drought and dry, high winds have hampered efforts to control the blaze

  • DHS reduces monitoring of non-Islamic domestic terrorism

    In May 2009, DHS issues a report saying that the recession and Obama’s election could lead to a “violent radicalization” of extremist groups in the United States; conservative politicians and commentators charged that the report was an attack on conservative ideology and groups opposing abortion and immigration; in response, DHS has eviscerated the analytical unit which issued the report, cut the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled state and local law enforcement briefings, held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups, and has blocked the dissemination of a digest of domestic terror incidents and the distribution of definitions for terms such as “white supremacist” and “Christian Identity”; state and local law enforcement and security experts are worried

  • Emergency responders could have jetpacks by year's end

    Emergency responders in New Zealand could soon be zipping around on personal jetpack; last month, Glenn Martin, an inventor based in New Zealand, successfully flew his jetpack up to a height of nearly 5,000 feet; Martin has been hard at work on the jetpack for the last thirty years and hopes to have his “jetski for the skies” commercially available within eighteen months; the jetpack is essentially two two-liter V4 engines strapped to a carbon fiber frame; the device is wingless and is controlled by two joysticks and can be flown with little pilot training; Martin says that the first people to use the device will be emergency responders conducting search and rescue missions

  • Sheriffs in Pasco County, Florida to stop crimes before they happen

    Local law enforcement officials in Florida are taking a new more proactive approach to fighting crime; last week Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco announced that the department would begin implementing what he calls “intelligence-led policing”; under his plan, officers will focus on gathering intelligence and sharing that information with local, state, and federal agencies to stop crimes before they occur; according to Sheriff Nocco 6 percent of offenders commit 60 percent of crimes, and so his department will begin more closely monitoring these individuals; Nocco has requested additional staff to help map crime patterns and share intelligence; critics of the approach are concerned about the notion that police officers are closely monitoring people who have not committed any crimes