• Smugglers use portable ramp to jump border fence

    Drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border are relying on increasingly more innovative ways to bypass additional security measures deployed along the southern border; law enforcement officials recently discovered a mobile folding ramp that allowed vehicles to drive over the border fence; the portable ramp was found in the Barry M. Goldwater Range east of Yuma, Arizona as Border Patrol agents chased a vehicle that had just used the ramp to leap over the fence with 1,000 pounds of marijuana

  • An electronic trail for every crime

    Police across the country are increasingly turning to electronic devices like cell phones and computer files to identify, prosecute, or exonerate criminals; the ubiquity of this technology has often provided investigators with an electronic trail that gives prosecutors concrete analytical evidence for nearly every crime; officials in Dubuque County, Iowa have established a digital forensic lab to analyze data on computers, cell phones, and video recorders to discover any encrypted files or other valuable information; in February law enforcement officials in Dubuque used text messages and surveillance camera footage to convict Teodoro Borrego of first degree murder

  • Technology helping police stop child pornography

    The advent of the Internet, file sharing technology, and social networking has allowed the market for child pornography to thrive, but now those very same technologies are helping police to crack down on individuals distributing child pornography; local police departments across the United States are using sophisticated software to track, identify, and convict individuals trading child porn; in Shawano County, Wisconsin investigators recently received new tools that have led to the arrest of five people on child porn charges in the last six months; investigators have been trained to spot individuals on file sharing sites; detectives have also been trained in computer forensics to recover data from confiscated hard drives

  • N.J. receives $5.7 million for seventeen police departments

    Earlier this month the Department of Justice awarded New Jersey $5.7 million in grants to help seventeen local police departments; the grants are specifically aimed at purchasing surveillance equipment like closed-circuit cameras, gunshot detection systems, and mobile data centers; each city will receive either $250,000 or $500,000 based on the city’s size and violent crime; surveillance technology has already proven effective in helping New Jersey police departments track down and convict criminals; New Jersey’s attorney general is encouraging police departments to consider regionalizing and consolidating functions as the grants can be used to purchase equipment to create regional dispatch systems

  • FBI's Next Generation Identification launched

    The FBI has launched its futuristic database — the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system); NGI will gradually replace the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS); this phase of the NGI project involves the core biometric processing and matching capability using ten fingerprints

  • Mexico violence boon to security garment industry

    The deteriorating security situation in Mexico is a boon to the security industry; the Ninth Expo-Seguridad in Mexico City saw many companies offering bullet-proof garments — vests, scarves, shirts, and underwear — that protect against attacks with sharp objects; also on display was the more traditional personal protection gear such as helmets, gloves, goggles, and bullet-proof vests able to stop rounds from AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles; one star of the show was Colombian businessman Miguel Caballero who is known for the bullet-proof jackets and vests he has produced for politicians, businessmen, and former presidents from across Latin America

  • New method for lifting latent fingerprints

    A team of researchers at Nanjing University of Technology has developed a new process for especially rapid and simple detection of fingerprints; all it takes is a special nanofiber mat that is pressed onto the suspect surface and briefly treated with hot air — the fingerprints appear as red ridge patterns

  • Anti-counterfeiting solution maker expands scientific teams

    According to a 2011 report published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), global counterfeiting losses are forecasted to grow to as high as $1.7 trillion by 2017; the economic impact of this on the U.S. economy alone is estimated to be $775 billion per year; there is thus a growing demand for anti-counterfeiting solutions, including SigNature® DNA from Applied DNA Sciences; the company is expanding its forensic scientific group

  • Local police wear vests at all times to receive Justice funds

    The Justice Department has said that it will withhold federal funding for local police departments to purchase body armor unless they make it a requirement that all uniformed officers wear the armor; last year, the Justice Department distributed $37 million to reimburse more than 4,000 local agencies across the country for the purchase of nearly 200,000 vests; the new requirement comes after a sharp increase in the fatal shootings of police officers while on duty; there was a 44 percent increase in the number of fatal police shootings last year and a recent study showed that 41 percent of police departments do not require officers to wear body armor

  • Spate of dry-ice bombs explosions in Long Beach, Calif.

    A Long Beach officer is injured after an investigation of a dry-ice bomb left in an alley; a dry ice bomb is a homemade device that uses water, a bottle and dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide; it can take anywhere from thirty seconds to an hour for a dry-ice bomb to rupture, depending on temperatures outside of the bottle

  • New FBI database improves accuracy, speed

    Police across the United States can now compare prints to the much larger FBI database of seventy million prints in about ten minutes for a high-priority case, a half-hour for routine cases; civil fingerprint checks, such as those done for employment background screening, used to take twenty-four hours but can now be done in as little as fifteen minutes

  • Man smuggles 600 snakes, reptiles on bus

    Acting on tip-off, police in Argentina searched the luggage of a bus passenger traveling from Santiago del Estero to Buenos Aires; the luggage contained 444 boas, vipers, and other snakes; 186 endangered tortoises; 40 lizards, and an armadillo

  • New Zealand company to offer personal jet packs

    A New Zealand company has successfully tested a jet pack, and will soon make it commercially available for about £50,000; in tests, the pack, which weighs less than 254 pounds, traveled 30 miles in 30 minutes on a full tank of fuel; it reached heights of up to 2,400 meters and top speeds of 60 mph; the company said the pack could be perfect for the emergency services, private users, and even the military

  • Wastewater employee charged with terrorism after idling plant

    A 43-year old waste water facility employee was the sole employee during the night shift at the massive Greenfield Water Reclamation Plant in Gilbert, Arizona; last Friday night, armed with a hand gun, the employee walked through the facility alone, methodically turning off major operating systems at the plant; left untreated, the sewage in the system would cause a buildup of methane gas, which could cause a huge explosion; after a 2-hour stand-off, the police arrested the man, allowing other employees to turn on the treatment systems; the employee is being held on a $250,000 bond, charged with terrorism

  • Austin police officers equipped with wearable cameras

    For years, law enforcement has relied on dash cams to record what happens when officers step out of their vehicles; now, that technology is being upgraded to the next level in the form of body cams police officers can wear