• Cash-sniffing dog comes through at Philadelphia airport

    The U.S. Customs and Border Protection employs a small number of currency-sniffing dogs; Nina, the currency-sniffing canine working at the Philadelphia International Airport, last Friday sniffed out a woman heading to Jamaica with $41,500 in her checked luggage

  • Accused 14-year old Mexico hit boy an American

    The 14-year old hit-man, who confessed to beheading four people on behalf of the Cartel of the South Pacific, a branch of the splintered Beltran Leyva gang, is an American citizen; the boy was born in San Diego but grew up in the city of Cuernavaca; a Mexican federal judge said the boy would be tried as a juvenile, meaning that, if convicted, he cannot be sentenced for more than three years in prison; the U.S. State Department says the United States has not yet decided what do in the matter

  • Feds attribute surging seizure stats to more manpower, technology

    Increased monitoring and interdiction efforts along the U.S.-Mexico border have resulted in what the administration describes as “unprecedented” seizures of illegal drugs, currency, and firearms; CBP intercepted $282 million in illegal currency, a 35 percent increase over the prior two years; authorities seized in excess of 7 million pounds of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs, up 16.5 percent; agents confiscated 6,800 weapons heading for Mexico, a 22 percent increase over the previous two-year period

  • Car immobilizers no longer a problem for car thieves

    For sixteen years, car immobilizers have kept car thieves at bay — but that may now be changing; most cars still use either a 40 or 48-bit key, even though the 128-bit AES — which would take too long to crack for car thieves to bother trying — is now considered by security professionals to be a minimum standard

  • Florida follows Arizona in cracking down on illegal immigrants

    Florida has joined Arizona on the front lines of battling illegal immigration with a new bill released last week that seeks to crack down on the estimated 800,000 undocumented workers in the state; a new bill allows law enforcement officers to check the residency status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant and would punish some legal immigrants who are not carrying proper documentation; immigrants who are caught not carrying their documents face a fine of up to $100 and up to twenty days in jail; state Attorney General-elect Pam Bondi said she is still reviewing the details of the bill but expressed support for such a law

  • Mexican army nabs a teen sibling cartel assassination team

    The war among Mexico’s seven drug cartels — and between the cartels and the Mexican government — is intensifying and becoming more gruesome; the preferred form of cruelty by drug cartel assassins is to capture enemies and behead them; decapitations emerged alongside another gruesome tactic — dumping the bodies of rivals in vats of acid; cartel goons have moved away from that method, however; the latest move by the cartels is to employ kids as young as 14-year old as assassins; Mexico police last night has captured one such youngster and his 16-year old sister; the two are implicated in four assassinations

  • Container heist unrelated to Port of Los Angeles

    Investigators in Los Angeles described the heist of three containers as “terminal robbery” — but the heist had nothing to do with the Port of Los Angeles / Long Beach; the facility where the robbery occurred is located miles inland from the port, is not part of a federally regulated port area, and is not governed by the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) protocol; since stricter port regulations came into effect following the 9/11 attacks, zero containers have been stolen from the Port of Los Angeles

  • Exploding garbage truck in Florida not act of terrorism

    An explosion on an Orlando, Florida garbage truck raise fears that the garbage-truck crew had stumbled on an underground bomb factory which had foolishly thrown some of its products in the rubbish — or that the explosion presaged a fearful terror wave campaign of exploding bins or municipal vehicles; police investigation finds that the explosion was caused by a local resident foolishly disposing of a pressurized container in their garbage

  • Fingerprinting on the go -- and on the street

    Police in North Carolina are deploying more than 100 portable fingerprinting devices to a handful of law enforcement agencies throughout the Chapel Hill region; the devices use Rapid Identification COPS Technology — software for handheld wireless devices that lets a law officer scan an individual’s fingerprints and then search the agency’s database for possible identification — all at the arrest scene

  • Aussie students develop new fingerprint technology

    Current methods for visualizing fingerprints on paper are labor-intensive and time-consuming, using toxic dyes and chemicals to stain the fingerprints or make them fluorescent; two students at the University of Technology-Sydney developed a new technology — Thermal Fingerprint Developer — which, as the name suggests, uses heat to develop the fingerprint in a matter of seconds

  • Legislator proposes volunteer-based Arizona border force

    An Arizona legislator is set to introduce a bill to create a new state volunteer force that could be used help patrol the U.S.-Mexico border; the bill would establish a new homeland security force of volunteers who could be called to duty during civil disasters and for border security; the border security role could kick in if the federal government withdraws National Guard soldiers now assisting in border security

  • Blood at crime scene identifies age of perpetrator

    New DNA tests of minute amounts of blood left by the perpetrator at a crime scene can now allow police to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, the age of the perpetrator; to be more precise: the test accurately predicts what 20-year age bracket (1-20, 20-40, etc.), from birth to eighty years, the donor of the blood sample belongs to

  • Suprema to provides palm-print scanners to Poland, Lithuania

    Korean company Suprema win contracts to equip the Polish and Lithuanian police forces with palm-print live scanners; the contracts are part of EU-funded effort to upgrade the two countries’ criminal identification methods so these methods could be integrated with the European Union’s Schengen Visa Information System (VIS) project

  • GOP: DREAM act would allow criminal illegals to gain residency

    One version of the DREAM Act — an immigration reform measure pushed by President Obama and Democratic legislators — would allow qualified illegal immigrants up to the age of 35 to gain resident status, prevent DHS from removing any illegal who has a pending application — regardless of age or criminal record — and offers amnesty to qualified illegals with misdemeanor convictions, even DUIs

  • Non-lethal device deters hostile divers

    Hostile divers may be deterred from approaching U.S. Navy ships, sea ports, off-shore oil rigs, and other infrastructure facilities with an acoustic device that overwhelms them with the amplified sound of their own breath; the device generates low frequency underwater sound that interferes with breathing, induces disorientation, panic, uncontrolled ascent to surface, and decompression sickness