Public Safety
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The North Area Technical Rescue Team is a 30-year-old, 150-member group that performs specialized rescues in Denver’s northern suburbs, including rope, confined space, trench and collapse rescues.
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Officials in Grand Traverse County, Mich., are seeking county board approval for an artificial intelligence-powered “call taking system” that would help identify and reroute non-emergency calls to 911.
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The City Council in San Rafael voted unanimously this month to renew the San Rafael Police Department's military equipment use policy, which included introducing a new drone program.
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One training scenario involved a 28-year-old woman who went bicycle riding in the forest with some friends and then became sick and turned around. She had intended to return to her parked car, but she never made it.
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ShotSpotter software might help police get to shootings faster and collect more evidence, but a new study suggests that it doesn’t help reduce crime or shootings, although very few jurisdictions even try to measure its success.
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The Apex Officer Virtual Reality system at the police science program at Hawkeye Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was first used as a firearm training tool but evolved to be a key piece of training for local cadets.
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The law enforcement dispatchers used to sit in a row and now they’re arranged in a circle “so they’re able to communicate better with each other and not over the desks like they used to have to do.”
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The recent storms and flooding prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to issue a disaster declaration for 29 Texas counties, including Galveston, Montgomery and Harris counties, where officials issued a voluntary evacuation order late Tuesday.
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Most of the aftershocks since the 4.8 magnitude quake in April, including a 2.9 magnitude one Saturday morning, have registered below 2.0 magnitude, according to the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management.
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After the success of an AI-powered wildfire threat detection pilot, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources envisions how a real-time camera response center could safeguard millions of acres of forestlands.
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Firefighter staffing shortages come in contrast to the increased amount of work on their plates. Calls now range from wildland fires to motor vehicle accidents to medical problems that would never have prompted a call years ago.
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The plan is currently in draft form until it is approved by both the state and federal government. Then, it will go before the Kane County Board and the boards of cities and villages across the county for approval.
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First responders, law enforcement officers, tow truck drivers and construction workers are all vulnerable on the roadways for a variety of reasons and subject to being hit and killed by distracted drivers.
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First responders rely on their radios to save lives and to keep themselves safe. When those radios don’t work at optimum levels, it creates potentially dangerous situations that persist in some jurisdictions today.
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Population growth has strained emergency services in the county and, combined with the pandemic, created a "perfect storm" that exposed the difficulties EMS was having keeping up with the influx of residents.
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The new handheld radios have a GPS locator with an emergency button for an officer who needs help but can't speak, a recording system that records all radio traffic, and two additional channels.
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"I would roughly guess we typically see four or five hundred cars a day come up (Route) 201, multiply that by 10 times, and that’s a factor,” said Mike Smith, Somerset County, Ohio, Emergency Management director.
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Newer vehicles come with safety features including high-voltage batteries, advanced restraint systems and other onboard technologies that can cause difficulties for first responders trying to extricate a crash victim.
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The Bibb County Sheriff's Office is asking residents with home surveillance cameras to register their devices with law enforcement, a move which officials say will improve the ability to solve and deter crime.
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"We don't do any predictive policing or use artificial intelligence to predict where crime will occur. We don't use any predictive analytics," said Joe Leibold, chief of the Waterloo Police Department.
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The tool aims to take the load off of understaffed 911 call centers by handling less critical tasks, like routing 311 calls and answering routine queries.