Justice and Public Safety

The warrant authorized a search for evidence of threatening or intimidating electronic communications at the request of detectives in Connecticut after years of alleged hateful Internet messaging targeting judges.

The system, known as FUSUS, integrates a range of city-owned and civilian video sources into a central, cloud database. The feeds can be accessed by officers on their in-unit computers and via an app on their smartphones.

Kern County Fire Chief Aaron Duncan demonstrated the department's new technology during a press conference attended by representatives of various county agencies and local hospitals, which also provided safety tips.

Police in Lima, Ohio, are looking to custom-built technology to address a staffing shortage. The mobile device has cameras, sound detection, facial recognition software and license plate recognition capabilities.

Illinois law enforcement leaders fighting a surge in gun violence have launched a searchable database they say will allow departments to quickly access information on how illegal firearms are moving around the state.

In a recent quarterly briefing, representatives of the Cobb County Sheriff's Office touted a series of new technology purchases they said are aimed at improving safety for deputies and inmates.

A Texas school district this fall will implement the Raptor Alert System, which comes with a downloadable app that synchronizes responding entities with a website that manages the flow of K-12 district information.

A "virtual wall" could include motion sensors, infrared cameras, mobile towers and aerial drones, which is the type of surveillance technology already being used by the Border Patrol and other law enforcement.

The app, developed by Amazon subsidiary Ring, allows departments to view and share information with users. More than 2,700 departments are using the service around the country as of mid-June 2022.

Seattle has agreed to pay $1.5 million to a cannabis retailer to settle a lawsuit in which the company blasted the city for deleting text messages, a settlement among the largest lawsuit payouts by Seattle this year.

Utilities in the state are looking to new technology to fight an old problem: wildfires. Officials hope that by better predicting weather and risk patterns they can prevent and respond to the looming threat.

The information technology office in Cass County, Ind., is now working to permanently mount equipment in its courtrooms that will enable virtual court, rather than continuing to use a mobile cart for it.

Dallas-based AT&T says by the end of this month, all emergency calls made through the wireless carrier will be routed to emergency call centers based on phone GPS data rather than cell tower data.

The City Council has approved a more than $300,000 contract to replace the Fairfield Police Department's 15-year-old computer-aided dispatch and records management system. The city has selected CentralSquare for the work.

The cost for the police body cameras and software to operate them came in at $765,991.49, an expenditure that officials say would have been impossible to make without the American Rescue Plan funding.

The state budget allots no money directly for schools to improve safety, leaving local districts to find money in their own budgets for metal detectors, security cameras, radio systems, door locks and other measures.

According to one estimate, thousands of lives are lost each year due to misrouted 911 calls. Now a large dispatch technology provider has introduced new capabilities to avoid those errors using device GPS.

The new digital evidence management platform was launched in the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office and now contains more than 100,000 digitized pieces of evidence. The digital evidence is often used in criminal trials.