Justice and Public Safety

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is seeking proposals from companies for a transit system that would feature all-electric autonomous mini buses that citizens can call for via an app or city kiosk.

The 10-year contract signed with Axon Enterprises Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz., will include more equipment than the city originally sought, while costing less money than was first anticipated.

The Madison City Council will again take up whether police officers should be equipped with body cams — a technology that's been contentious in Wisconsin's most liberal city but is increasingly standard in the country.

The San Francisco-based startup, Pano AI, is installing panoramic cameras on California mountaintops to help spot signs of wildfires. The system uses rotating cameras to snap photos of the landscape every 60 seconds.

The Tahlequah Police Department is training officers to use drones for assistance on certain emergency calls. So far, the department has received two drones to assist in day-to-day operations.

Virtual hearings and e-filing tools bring convenience — but not to everyone. Individuals representing themselves in civil cases can struggle with limited digital offerings and user experiences designed for lawyers.

A new technology platform launched by the Madison, Wis., Police Department on Wednesday will send automated text messages to people who call 911 or are victims of crimes, department officials said.

The New York police department is aiming to improve public safety and communications with an integrated technology ecosystem that includes a real-time crime center, cloud-based software and more.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento, Calif., rejected yet another civil lawsuit alleging that the California high-speed rail project is unconstitutional. The decision came yesterday.

Yesterday, the ACLU said it filed a lawsuit against the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training because the agency didn't respond appropriately to an ACLU records request about facial recognition.

The Federal Trade Commission reported that in the third quarter of this year, it received 134,366 reports of phone call fraud, with nearly $165 million in reported money lost.

From state errors that caused overpayments to limitations that have prevented some people from getting benefits, many citizens in Michigan are facing a bureaucratic nightmare with the state unemployment system.

Some broadband providers are exploiting the Emergency Broadband Benefit program, says the Federal Communications Commission. Such providers may be targeted for legal action as investigation continues.

The department is looking for an increase in its budget for 2022 to include more money for technology for its newly created real-time data center and to add three more officers to bring the department's total to 310.

The Ohio House of Representatives voted in favor of the Ohio Computer Crimes Act, which, among other things, will allow for faster prosecution of cyber criminals by removing the need to calculate damages to victims.

Thus far, Pacific Gas and Electric Company has installed 46 AI-equipped cameras in areas of California that are at high risk of wildfires. The technology is supposed to help the company detect smoke before fires spread.

The new team is the Anne Arundel County, Md., state attorney's office's new "Body Worn Camera Unit" tasked with processing video recorded by the police that will later be presented in court.

Yesterday, Mississippi announced two new types of digital identification. The first is an app that allows Mississippians to use a digital driver's license. The second is a digital certificate of COVID-19 vaccination.