Justice & Public Safety
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The local police department recently unveiled a new rooftop drone port at headquarters. The agency fielded approximately 10,000 drone flights in 2025 and expects about twice as many this year.
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While the city has used drones before, Chief Roderick Porter said the two new aerial vehicles the department is getting under a contract with security tech company Flock Safety are more advanced.
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More than 200 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies use license plate reading technology. The state’s capital city, however, has so far not installed such cameras even as its neighbors have done so.
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State, federal and local law enforcement has essentially sidestepped restraints by buying data from brokers that they’d need a warrant to obtain directly, panelists say. Passing the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act could close these loopholes.
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A lawsuit has been filed against California Attorney General Rob Bonta as a result of the June exposure of a trove of personal data housed in the Department of Justice’s Firearms Dashboard Portal.
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The company has made a cellphone alternative to police body cameras.
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Portland leaders should approve more than a dozen conditions before the city starts using ShotSpotter gunfire detection technology to address privacy, surveillance and other concerns, a community oversight group says.
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Orting Police Department's drone is equipped with a Forward Looking InfraRed (FLIR) system, which can detect temperature variations. The tool is useful for both police and rescue operations, officials say.
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Long a holdout from a wave of agencies that outfitted officers with body-worn cameras amid calls for more transparency, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office is poised to equip all deputies with the devices by 2023.
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A report came out last week that criticizes gunshot detection technology that is used by cities across the country as ineffective, wasting police officers’ time and targeting overpoliced communities.
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Can a police officer who finds a cellphone during an investigation start scrolling through the device — and access a trove of information about your life — without first getting a search warrant?
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Ring, an electronic doorbell company owned by Amazon, admitted to providing video to law enforcement without consent of the device owner 11 times this year, according to Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey.
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Michigan City, Ind., Police Chief Dion Campbell hopes to get a series of license plate readers and gunshot detectors in the city to help fill a big gap in Northwest Indiana, where most other communities have them.
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An East Texas company on Thursday was ordered to pay $275,000, and serve three years probation, for supplying potentially tainted rocket fuel to NASA, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
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A lawsuit brought by a protester who sued San Diego police after officers seized her phone and refused for months to return it was settled this week with a deal that narrows when police can take phones and for how long.
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A contract to track down illegal fireworks by drone in Kern County, Calif., was justified, according to fire officials. Initial estimates show the drone flagged 100 potential violations with citations of $1,500 each.
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The vehicle-mounted cameras are designed to interact automatically with all nearby body-worn cameras. The move follows the $1.89 million purchase of 225 body-worn cameras in September 2020.
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Researchers created an algorithm that predicts risks of biased, overly punitive sentencing. The tool performs with similar accuracy — and similar limits — to risk assessment algorithms already used to influence pretrial and parole decisions, authors say.
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The city of Paterson, N.J., has partnered with Quickbase to expand a technology solution that will help those suffering with opioid addiction get access to medication-assisted treatment when and where they need it.
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Police in Denver, Colo., used what some call a “digital dragnet” when they asked Google for search history related to a stalled arson investigation. The tactic netted suspects, but also kicked up privacy concerns.
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The Petaluma Fire Department and the Sonoma Valley Fire District are turning to a new software application and iPads to better manage life-saving resources and personnel in chaos created by a fire.