Justice and Public Safety

The police department in Worcester, Mass., has now been awarded a $250,000 grant from the state that will go toward equipping officers with body cameras, joining 64 other jurisdictions that received similar money.

Franklin County, Maine, commissioners voted Tuesday to have high-resolution aerial photos taken of the county, buy five hybrid cruisers and upgrade jail security with federal stimulus funds.

The Supreme Court has determined that police need a warrant to search that information when it’s on a mobile phone, but that protection doesn’t extend to the information when stored on a car’s systems, experts say.

AT&T and Verizon have denied a request from the federal government to delay the launch of a new 5G mobile service that could disrupt air travel, but the two companies would pause 5G deployment near specified airports.

A legislative commission studying widespread use of police body cameras meets Tuesday — months after it missed a deadline to file a report called for in the one-year-old reform law that created the study group.

The latest of several security upgrades since the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, the South Florida school district will randomly screen bookbags and purses with metal-detection wands starting this spring.

More than half of all law enforcement agencies utilize body cameras to improve public trust and safety. Research shows that body cameras have positive behavioral impacts on both officers and citizens.

The Erie, Colo., Police Department will soon be using one of the new technologies intended for officers to train and learn from mistakes via exclusive virtual reality training software, according to Erie officials.

A quarter-century after JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in one of Colorado’s most infamous unsolved crimes, police are “actively reviewing genetic DNA testing processes” to see if new tech can finally identify her killer.

California’s community college systems has seen a rise in the enrollment of malicious bots — likely on a mission to facilitate financial aid fraud. The exact scope of the problem is unclear, however.

The city of West Carrollton, Ohio, purchased two drones for $13,000 to aid its fire and police departments. The city thinks the machines can also help with services department inspections that involve dangerous heights.

To make freeways safer for road workers, Connecticut is installing work zone cameras as part of a pilot program next year. Critics have raised privacy concerns, and others have claimed the program is a money scheme.

Multiple federal entities are scouring the country for governments that have fallen prey to the global Log4j software vulnerability, which is considered the worst weak point in recent years by security experts.

Cary's first two EV patrol cars debuted during the town's Christmas parade, the first in a long effort to gradually convert the town's fleet of vehicles, including the roughly 130 cars and SUVs used by the police.

School districts across the state alerted families on Thursday that a viral video on TikTok is encouraging students nationwide to make gun threats, bomb threats or otherwise terrorize their schools.

A September report details data governance and management issues behind the accidental deletion of terabytes of evidence and proposes fixes. November saw the leak of aerial surveillance footage from a police vendor’s system.

City Hall in New York City claimed that NYPD would no longer employ a controversial company that creates “virtual mugshots” for investigations, but the law enforcement agency has done so in recent months.

Seven months ago, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that court records may not be hidden unless an explanation is given. The new regulation hasn't stopped some judges from keeping records out of public view.