Category Archives: Law Enforcement

New Technology Could Help Predict When And Where Crimes Will Happen

Posted on February 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

Police_Line

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)– Slashings. Rapes. Murders. Imagine what life would be like if the criminals could be stopped before they ever get started.

In the aftermath of a crime, investigators rush to connect the dots that can help crack the case.

But now, thanks to new technology, those dots are being connected before a crime is even committed.

“This is the next level,” George Spadoro, former mayor of Edison, New Jersey, told CBS2’s Maurice DuBois.

Spadoro says the technology is the future of law enforcement and that it could prevent anything from a subway slashing to a terror attack.

“When you have tight budgets, you need to be able to provide an increased level of protection for your citizens with less manpower,” Spadoro said.

Here’s how it works: Hitachi’s new visualization system gathers massive amounts of information from a wide range of unconnected sources. These sources include social media, transit maps, weather reports, crime statistics, camera feeds and more. It then interfaces all of those sources on one pane of glass.

Authorities can then activate the crime prediction software to look for patterns. Patterns that can not only help identify criminals’ intent, but also when and where they’ll likely strike again within a two-block radius.

Mark Jules is the brainchild behind the system.

“If you go back and look at hey, it’s a Saturday, it’s a certain time of day, it’s a certain temperature, this is where that’s happened… then you combine that with social media that can all start to predict when and where it’s going to happen,” Jules told CBS2.

New York Waterway is the first organization in the area to incorporate parts of the Hitachi system, allowing both the ferry company and law enforcement to monitor its boats in real time.

“If there was a hostage situation on a boat, they can see the lay out of the vessel, the placement of the cameras and how many people we have on board,” Jules said.

The software is currently being used in Washington, D.C. and is expected to roll out in six more cities soon, New York City not being one of them. The NYPD would not specifically comment on Hitachi, but did tell CBS2 it began field-testing a similar application just last month.

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Posted in Forensic, Law Enforcement, Security, Technology

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FBI and Local Retired Law Enforcement Offer Security Training for Houses of Worship

Posted on February 13, 2016 | 1 comment

Church
On February 9, about 165 faith leaders attended a new U.S. government program at Dallas FBI Headquarters to provide security training for houses of worship. Dallas U.S. Attorney John Parker said churches, synagogues, and mosques want to have a welcoming environment, but “they have to be very careful about who they let in.” An active shooter drill was part of the training for religious leaders. Parker said he plans to repeat the program to expand the training to more religious leaders. “They’ll go back to their places of worship and they’ll develop security committees and protocols to, not fortify their places of worship necessarily, but make them more secure,” he said

PLACERVILLE (CBS13) — A Placerville gun range owner is offering training for church leaders to help keep their congregations safe.
Geof Peabody says he’s trained more than 500 ministers and church security teams and has seen a dramatic increase in calls over the last few months.

At the Green Valley Community Church, about half of the security team is now packing heat.  Dan Moore is a gun-toting, God-fearing man who is part of a growing trend of faithful with firearms at the church.
“How many of the mass shootings lately have occurred in gun-free zones? All of them. Okay? They know it’s a target rich environment,” he said

Peabody aims to make the environment less target rich with concealed carry weapons courses for ministers and church security teams.“The last class that we just did which was introductory handgun training for church security members, we had nine different churches that were represented with about 25 students who came,” he said.

But he’s quick to point out that being armed does not mean you necessarily have to shoot. He walked through the interference technique.“As long as it can keep turning I can keep firing. But as soon as you can grab it all the way around and stop the cylinder from turning, all of a sudden the machinery becomes inoperable and you can put a stop to the execution. You don’t need to have a gun,” he said.

While nearly half of the church security team armed, Moore admits not everyone in the congregation is on board with it. His hope is that over time, they’ll see value in the education where he says parish safety is his only goal.

“The more of us there are, the better the chance of success is,” he said.

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Posted in Law Enforcement, Security, Technology

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