Justice and Public Safety

A man suspected of strangling three women to death in Ventura County in 1977 is headed to court after new DNA technology shed light on the serial slayings that had stumped detectives for decades.

The San Francisco Police Department's high-tech means of catching criminals is facing a challenge in a federal court after a nonprofit filed suit against the maker of Flock Safety license plate reading cameras.

Many schools do them, but lawmakers, law enforcement officials, parents and others are considering whether Connecticut should mandate active shooter drills. Concerns include the impact practicing for these scenarios has on schoolchildren.

Blazes this season have set an acreage record with 1.9 million acres burned in Oregon at the end of September. Battling them has also stretched firefighters thin nationwide and, in Oregon, sapped state funding.

The company gets real-time data to officers so they can have a fuller understanding of emergency calls and the people involved. ForceMetrics last year became part of an Amazon gov tech innovation push.

The mistakes in the courts’ distribution system resulted in more than $26 million in fees going to the wrong sources over a five-year period, the Iowa Judicial Branch has said. The branch is examining its case management system.

Next-generation 911 with the resilience of a modern, digital, Internet protocol-based network was essential to North Carolina’s storm response. It enabled officials to answer nearly 90,000 emergency calls in three days.

The Montgomery County Attorney's Office has said it supports law enforcement in keeping parts of vehicle chase policies confidential, after a pursuit ended in a head-on collision. The incident occurred in early October.

The northern San Diego suburb has opened a new fire station more than a decade in the making, which will house the city’s first electric fire engine. The engine and infrastructure cost around $2.7 million.

The public safety tech firm, which sells license plate readers and other tools, has bought Aerodome, which specializes in making drones useful for law enforcement. Flock Safety has big drone plans for the upcoming year.

Puerto Rico faces earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. North Carolina was hard-hit by Hurricane Helene. Through it all, government needs to keep critical digital services running. Here’s how they do it.

A report from the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology suggests that schools should update their sexual harassment policies to better handle deepfakes, which have become a common problem in institutions across the U.S.

Data team members at precip.ai recently compared the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Model of the hurricane to information on the actual storm. Staffers discovered it had provided a realistic depiction of the event.

The public safety technology provider is teaming up with transportation firm Motive to offer more accident data for truck-driving accidents. The move comes as trucking faces several serious challenges.

The federal security agency rolled out updated security checkpoints with the recent reopening of a modernized terminal at Portland International Airport. The technology’s use is optional and photographs are not saved in the system.

One month after a fatal shooting at one of their high schools, Harford school officials toured Smith Detections, a company that serves airports and the U.S. Department of Defense, in search of security system options.

The Future Fire Academy equips participants with accredited training in numerous aspects of fighting wildfires, and then upon release, formerly incarcerated people also receive help applying for jobs.

After a passionate debate about the value of ShotSpotter, the Oakland City Council approved Tuesday a new contract for the network of sensors that alerts police to gunshots.