• Mexico's violence intensifies, becomes more gruesome

    The war among Mexico’s seven drug cartels — and between the cartels and the Mexican government — is intensifying and becoming more gruesome; as recently as a year or two ago, commandos fighting for the Mexican drug cartels often would rather flee than confront security forces, but an influx of combat weapons — purchased at U.S. gun shops and shows or stolen from Central American munitions stockpiles — and a vast supply of ammunition now enables them to fight, and sometimes outgun, army and federal police units; the war is also becoming more gruesome: the preferred form of cruelty by drug cartel henchmen is to capture enemies and behead them, a once-shocking act that has now become numbingly routine; decapitations emerged alongside another gruesome tactic — dumping the bodies of rivals in vats of acid; cartel goons have moved away from that method, however

  • New York half way to installing terror surveillance network

    New York City is almost halfway to its goal of installing 3,000 of the devices as part of its security network; the additions to the $201 million initiative will see the project completed by 2013; the system is based in part on the City of London’s “Ring of Steel,” a camera network in the square-mile financial district in the 1990s after Irish Republican Army bombings

  • Using Facebook to nab a Facebook killer

    Suffolk County police are using Facebook to solve a murder which appears to have been related to Facebook; a 31-year old woman was found dead; the police searched her Facebook page, and found two individuals with whom she had recently been in contact; one of them was using her credit cards after her death; the police has now created a page seeking information about the man, looking to arrest him

  • NYPD begins iris scanning of crime suspects

    The New York Police Department bought 21 iris scanning systems for $24,000 each; the scanners are used to take photographs of the irises of crime suspects along with their fingerprints and mug shots

  • Blood camera detects invisible stains at crime scenes

    At present, blood stains in a crime scene are detected using the chemical luminol; luminol is toxic, however, and can dilute blood samples to a level at which DNA is difficult to recover; it can also smear blood spatter patterns that forensic experts use to help determine how the victim died; luminol can also react with substances like bleach, rust, fizzy drink, and coffee, causing it to produce false positives; University of South Carolina rese3archers offer a better solution

  • DNA shows Texas man may have been wrongly executed

    A DNA performed on a single strand of hair from the scene of a deadly store robbery in Texas casts doubt on the guilt of the main suspect, Claude Jones, who was executed ten years ago, during George W. Bush’s last month as the governor of Texas; Jones was pressing the governor’s office for permission to do a DNA test on the hair, but as the execution drew near, the briefing Bush got from his staff did not include the request for the DNA test, and Bush denied a reprieve; Bush had previously shown a willingness to test DNA evidence that could prove guilt or innocence in death penalty cases

  • Law enforcement agencies dig deeper into applicants' digital past

    More and more police departments are digging deep into the social media accounts of applicants, requesting that candidates sign waivers allowing investigators access to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and other personal spaces; some agencies are demanding that applicants provide private passwords, Internet pseudonyms, text messages, and e-mail logs; of “particular concern” to law enforcement agencies is that defense lawyers could use officers’ posts to undercut their credibility in court

  • Securing the nation with fingerprinting materials

    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers may have found a way to improve Raman spectroscopy as a tool for identifying substances in extremely low concentrations; potential applications for Raman spectroscopy include medical diagnosis, drug/chemical development, forensics and highly portable detection systems for national security.

  • Not your father's police dept.: Tarrytown police adopts latest technology

    Tarrytown police cruisers are now rolling with the latest technology and software; two of the software systems at the fingertips of the police are the Mobile Plate Hunter 900 and the TraCS (Traffic and Criminal Software) system; used in conjunction with dual, rear-mounted license plate readers, an officer can catch an offending driver, check a driver’s background, and print up a ticket and a court summons in a matter of minutes

  • New Jersey towns warm up to electronic traffic ticketing

    Officers will be able electronically to issue summonses and tickets for moving and nonmoving violations in a fraction of the time it takes to write them by hand; the efficiency should free officers to do more police work — a benefit as departments deal with reduced manpower, said officers and advocates of the technology

  • ISC Solutions 2010, II: Highlighting practices, technologies that work

    In keeping with the mission of ISC Solutions, speakers on a variety of panels will demonstrate and discuss practical solutions to security problems and practices that have proven successful; practitioners from law enforcement and first response communities will share their experiences in the field

  • Ford shows stealth version of its custom Interceptor police car

    Ford is showing the stealth version of its new police Interceptor sedan; the black concept car with tinted windows and disguised lights — until they start blazing in a driver’s rearview mirror — has been lowered an inch and appears wider to give it a more sinister look

  • Accessing, sharing critical crime information across the county

    Yuma County, Arizona, deploys multi-agency, interoperable data-sharing solutions which allow first response, law enforcement, and public safety agencies in the county to access and share critical crime and safety information county wide

  • HTS has 50 percent of the cargo container monitoring system market

    In addition to monitoring cars on the road and in parking lots by reading these cars’ license plates, HTS’s systems are also in use at ports to track containers entering and exiting the facility by land and by sea; mounted on cranes and port gates, the system enables the identification of hundreds of thousands of cargo containers, and crosschecks them with their manifests to make sure they are being offloaded at the correct location and contain the right cargo

  • Canada introduces legislation to fight crime in today's high-tech world

    The Canadian government has reintroduced two bills that would provide law enforcement and national security agencies with up-to-date tools to fight crimes such as gang- and terrorism-related offences and child sexual exploitation; the proposed legislation would provide law enforcement agencies with new, specialized investigative powers to help them take action against Internet child sexual exploitation, disrupt on-line organized crime activity and prevent terrorism