• BART police pull Tasers, will retrain officers in Taser use

    A day after a sergeant fired the electric darts of his stun gun at a 13-year-old boy fleeing from police on his bicycle, the BART police instructed its police officers to surrender their Taser guns and report for retraining; the decision also comes after a recent federal court ruling that narrowed the circumstances under which police can use Tasers

  • Documentary offers new insights into McVeigh's path to terrorism

    MSNBC is airing ‘The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist,’ tonight at 9:99pm EST; the film draws on forty-five hours of never-before-released interview audiotapes recorded during McVeigh’s prison stay; the film reveals the bomber’s descriptions of the planning and execution of the horrific attack and offers insight into how a decorated American soldier became a dangerous, anti-government terrorist

  • English Premier League soccer players advised to hire bodyguards

    Players in the English Premier League should consider hiring private security guards to ensure the safety of themselves and their families, according to the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA); advise came after police received reports of players forced to pay protection money to gang members — often people the players knew when they were growing up

  • Private security community find lucrative opportunities in Haiti

    Debate intensifies over the deployment of private security companies to earthquake-ravaged Haiti; some see these companies as a welcome alternative to the traditionally brutal, corrupt, and ineffective local security forces; others argue that aid money should not be spent on hiring outside contractors but on building a better local security force

  • Questions and answers on drug-related violence in Mexico

    The security situation in Mexico is spiraling out of control; the drug cartels, heretofore content to kill members of rival cartels and the occasional local politician, have now dropped all restraint in their assault on the Mexican state; the cartels are now attacking the Mexican army directly, while no longer bothering to limit collateral damage to the civilian population; the Mexican government, in desperation, has deployed the army so extensively in its anti-drug campaign because it feels the police cannot be trusted; drug cartels with massive resources at their disposal have repeatedly managed to infiltrate the underpaid police, from the grassroots level to the very top; efforts are under way to rebuild the entire structure of the Mexican police force, but the process is expected to take years

  • The FBI discusses the Sovereign Citizen Movement

    The FBI is educating the American public about the threat of domestic terrorism; it has already provided information on its Web side about eco-terrorists and lone offenders, and in the latest installment it discusses the Sovereign Citizen Movement

  • International companies in Mexico now target for cartel attacks

    Until recently, few criminals dared to touch the factories and offices of the hundreds of multinational corporations — or maquilas — in Reynosa, Maxico; amid a violent three-way war among two cartels and the military, the maquilas are no longer untouched; none of the 140 maquiladoras in Reynosa’s eleven industrial parks have pulled out of the area, but many have developed exit strategies in case the violence does not abate

  • Violence in Mexico increases sharply as a drug cartel coalition is trying to destroy Los Zetas

    Drug-fueled triangle of death engulfs Rio Grande region; Mexico’s Gulf, La Familia, and Sinaloa drug cartels have formed an alliance in order to destroy Los Zetas — a group of mostly former and AWOL Mexican soldiers who began as a security and hit squad for the Gulf cartel, but last year broke from its employer

  • Five full-body scanners to be used in Chile to catch drug traffickers

    Chile is deploying full-body scanner at border crossing along its border with Peru to prevent drug smuggling; during a 1-year test period, two million people were scanned, and 51 kilograms of cocaine, carried by 42 different border-crossers, seized

  • U.S. federal authorities fear surge of homegrown extremism

    DHS officials and lawmakers have been warning for months that law enforcement agencies are unprepared to deal with what they say is a mounting threat. Experts note that Michigan, in particular, is vulnerable because of its growing number of anti-government militia groups and the attractiveness of its large Arab-American population to radical Muslim groups

  • How do you quickly evacuate 70,000 sports fans from a stadium attacked by terrorists?

    Sports fan do not like to stand in a slow moving, snaking line to get into a stadium for a big game; they do not like inching forward in a long, snaking line to get out of the stadium at the end of the game; imagine what would happen if a bomb were to explode, or a chemical agent released, in stadium packed with 70,000 spectators; DHS Science & Technology Directorate is working in a solution

  • NYC takes extra measures to protect subway from terror

    The New York City’s subway system is a porous, 24-hour-a-day system with 468 stations and an average of 5 million riders a day; NYC security officials insist the city remains the nation’s No. 1 terror target, and they devote extra resources to protecting Wall Street, the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge. and other high-profile potential targets; their biggest worry — spurred by the recent bombing in Moscow and a foiled plot in New York — is the subway

  • Mexican smugglers clone Border Patrol vehicles to evade detection

    There is a new twist in the on going war along the U.S.-Mexico border: Mexican smugglers now use “cloned” Border Patrol vehicles to smuggle drugs into the United States; there is an added danger here, as Mexican drug cartels have launched an assassination campaign against U.S. law enforcement personnel along the border; driving a Border Patrol look-alike vehicle allows the assailants to get closer to their targets without arousing suspicion

  • Mexico to disconnect millions of cellphones to fight crime

    In a desperate effort to curb crime, the Mexican government moves to disconnect 30 million unregistered cell phones; the government wants to be able to track cell phone calls and messages, so it passed a law requiring that cell phone users register their phones by sending in their personal information; most of Mexico’s 84 million mobile phones are prepaid handsets with a limited number of minutes of use; these units can be easily bought in stores and either discarded or have call minutes added to them; many have registered their phones, but as of last Thursday, 30 million had not

  • Former FBI, Secret Service agents protect Tiger Woods at Augusta National

    Tiger Woods has hired 90 former FBI and Secret Service agents to protect him from his former sex partners as prepares for his first tournament since his sex scandal broke; photos of the women were distributed to the bodyguards to ensure they are on the lookout; “None of these girls are allowed anywhere near him,” one bodyguard said