By a Biometrica staffer At Biometrica, the safety of children has always been a priority. This year, amidst general chaos and anxiety, the safety of children took center stage like never before. Here are some of the relevant issues and news stories...
By a Biometrica staffer In 1993, a woman from Kentucky, Mary Byron, was raped, assaulted, and stalked by her ex-boyfriend, who was then arrested for those crimes. Unfortunately, he was released from jail when someone posted his bail. A short while after,...
By a Biometrica staffer In this piece, we look at the DHS Blue Campaign Enhancement Act, introduced in both chambers of Congress, which seeks to increase coordination between various components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and augment the Blue Campaign....
By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released data from a survey that showed a 22% decline in the total violent victimization rate between 2019 and 2020. In addition, the survey found that the incidence of...
By a Biometrica staffer Late last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Open Courts Act of 2021, sending it to the full Senate to consider. The Act seeks to “overhaul” the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system that is...
By a Biometrica staffer The last few days have brought a mixed bag of news for the casino industry, with extremely positive tidings on the gaming revenue front, and less positive reflections on the crime front. Even with two months still to...
By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this year, in April, eight people were killed by a 19-year-old at a FedEx facility in Indiana. The shooter’s mother had reported to police over a year earlier, in March 2020, that her son had confided to...
By a Biometrica staffer The trucking industry is currently in the midst of a well-publicized driver shortage crisis, which has combined with other factors to exacerbate a supply chain crisis in the U.S. This has prompted some to advocate for a radical...
By a Biometrica staffer Two reports released recently draw attention to a mental health crisis plaguing schools and students in the U.S. One is an advisory issued by the Surgeon General, which warns that “symptoms of anxiety, depression and other mental health...
By a Biometrica staffer Last week, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its Fall Semiannual Report to Congress, in which it was found that the efforts of the HHS in the 2021...
By Aara Ramesh Going off the sheer volume of content generated about it, if there’s one thing Americans can’t get enough of, it’s a story about a cult. Be that NXIVM, which made headlines a few years ago when it emerged that...
By Aara Ramesh Earlier this year, we wrote about a three-decade-old case in which two men dressed as Boston Police Department officers in the early hours of March 18, 1990, stole 13 art pieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and vanished...
By Aara Ramesh When it comes to gun rights, one demographic proponents of gun control are particularly concerned about is children that live in homes that also have firearms. While the presence of a firearm in the house can be dangerous to...
By Aara Ramesh The U.S. is currently in the grip of what experts are calling a historic crime wave, with violent crime — and homicide rates particularly — reaching levels previously seen in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, over the last...
By a Biometrica staffer U.S. prosecutors recently announced that they have filed sex trafficking charges against Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, the Philippine national who founded a church called Kingdom of Jesus Christ, as well as two U.S.-based administrators of that church. The superseding...
By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this month, Congress officially passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (colloquially known as the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal”), which allocated over $1 trillion to physical infrastructure, as well as aspects like access to clean drinking water and...
By a Biometrica staffer As the saying goes, where there’s a will there’s a way. A perverse version of this axiom is also applicable to fraudsters and criminals, who are always on the lookout for an opportunity to scam others. Whether that...
By a Biometrica staffer The death toll in the Wisconsin case of a man driving an SUV into a festive parade rose to six on Tuesday, Nov. 23, when an 8-year-old boy died of his injuries. The number of injuries resulting from...
By Aara Ramesh Among the many challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples in North America today, one that has gained particular attention is that of unmarked graves (usually associated with former Indian boarding schools) and of artifacts taken from various Tribes in the...
By a Biometrica staffer An SUV barrelled through barricades and drove through a Christmas parade in Waukesha (a suburban town just 20 miles from Milwaukee, Wisconsin) in the early evening of Sunday, Nov. 21, killing at least five and injuring over 40...
By Aara Ramesh A week ago, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning that the U.S. is facing a “heightened threat environment” from domestic terrorists this holiday season. Though there have been no “credible” or specific threats yet made, the...
By Aara Ramesh Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the child welfare system was rife with gaps that made children in foster care extra susceptible to abuse. Like with many other societal problems, however, the pandemic only worsened that situation on a number...
By a Biometrica staffer A drive-by shooting around 1 pm on Monday, Nov. 15, in Aurora, Colorado, has left six teenagers (four boys and two girls between the ages of 14 and 18) injured, according to police. The incident occurred at the...
By a Biometrica staffer Last month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released its 2021 report on data collection activities in the realm of human trafficking covering the number of offenses reported, as well as arrest, conviction, and release data from states....
By Aara Ramesh In an earlier story in this series on sports betting, we wrote about how just as there have been wagers (legal or otherwise) placed on sporting outcomes as long as there have been sports, match-fixing has existed just as...
By a Biometrica staffer A number of states are gaining ground on legalizing sports betting, while others that have already done so are seeing soaring revenues. Here is a round-up of recent news on the casino, gaming, and sports betting front: Iowa...
By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, the last year for which data is available, a total of 5,998 post-secondary institutions (across almost 11,000 campuses) reported 34,933 criminal offenses to the federal government, and 17,758 offenses related to violence against women, be that...
By a Biometrica staffer Yesterday, Nov. 3, the Biden Administration announced a set of three actions it will take to help prevent suicide by use of firearms, in an effort to curb one key aspect of the broader gun violence epidemic the...
By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this week, the MGM Springfield, one of Massachusetts’ only casinos, officially reopened its poker tables after an 18-month hiatus that was prompted by Covid-19 restrictions. In doing so, it became the only casino in the state to...
By a Biometrica staffer As part of their mandate to prevent substance abuse, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) periodically puts out a resource guide titled “Drugs of Abuse.” The latest version from 2020 is meant to serve as a “comprehensive guide” to...
By Aara Ramesh Just over a week after an accidental shooting on the set of the film “Rust” claimed the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, and injured director Joel Souza, 48, Hollywood is undergoing something of a reckoning in regards to...
By Aara Ramesh On Wednesday, Oct. 27, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a Virginia man, 26-year-old Zackary Ellis Sanders, had been convicted by a federal jury for producing, receiving, and possessing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The DOJ alleges that...
By a Biometrica staffer On Tuesday, Oct. 26, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the results of a massive ten-month, multinational, multi-agency operation (called “Dark HunTor”), which included over 150 arrests across the world and the seizure of 45 weapons, 234 kgs...
By a Biometrica staffer Due to a small technical issue that omitted part of the data submission from the state of Ohio, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has updated and re-released its statistics on hate crimes and bias-motivated incidents in 2020....
By a Biometrica staffer October 28 marks National First Responders Day in many parts of the country — a day that is meant to celebrate the many hundreds of thousands of people that make up the fabric of the emergency response system...
By Aara Ramesh On Wednesday, Oct. 20, Nikolas Cruz, 23, pled guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted first degree murder for his shooting spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018. Despite this,...
By Aara Ramesh It’s not uncommon these days, unfortunately, to see stories of children or toddlers coming upon an unsecured firearm at home and accidentally setting it off. Research from the Gun Violence Archive and the Associated Press found that gun violence...
By Biometrica staffer On Tuesday, Oct. 19, the Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted its annual Activities to Combat Elder Fraud and Abuse report to Congress, covering all efforts on this front between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. The summarizing report...
By Biometrica staffer On Monday, Oct. 18, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released the last of its Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) dataset for 2020, reporting that 60,105 law enforcement officers (LEOs) were assaulted while on the job last...
By Biometrica staffer The two most populous counties in the country — Los Angeles County, California, and Cook County, Illinois — are moving to tackle the problem of “ghost guns,” as law enforcement and the government continue to grapple with an ongoing...
By Biometrica staffer On Thursday, Oct. 14, officials with the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would be handing out 65 grants, totaling $7 million, to the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act (LEMHWA) program. The announcement was made at...
By Biometrica staffer Over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, Kristin Denise Smart, a freshman at California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night when she was walking back to her dormitory after a party....
By Biometrica staffer A 28th woman pled guilty for playing a part in a scam from 2017, in which a group of conspirators planned to stage an accident with a tractor-trailer in New Orleans, to milk insurance payouts. The investigation revealed that...
By Aara Ramesh Earlier this year, two of the most traditionally prestigious tournaments in the global tennis circuit (the French Open and Wimbledon) were dogged by accusations of match-fixing. This put authorities on the alert for something similar happening at the U.S....
By Aara Ramesh In August, police in Dallas, Texas, arrested former dentist David Thomas Hawkins, 75, for an aggravated sexual assault — that happened nearly four decades ago. In 1985, Hawkins had raped at gunpoint Carrie Krejci, and since then had successfully...
By a Biometrica staffer A few months ago, Reuters News analyzed data from the National Emergency Medical Services Information System, which represents almost 90% of all emergency responses in the U.S., and found that during the pandemic, “the rate of drug-related 911...
By a Biometrica staffer The federal government is systematically clamping down on lax cyberattack reporting by critical infrastructure companies in the private sector by tightening the standards that govern when they have to report to federal authorities that they have been the...
By a Biometrica staffer At the end of September, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released its 20th annual “Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor” report, which analyzed the state of child labor in 131 countries and territories between January and...
By a Biometrica staffer A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent was killed in Tucson, Arizona, on Monday, Oct. 4 when a passenger on an Amtrak train fatally shot him. The passenger also died in the course of the operation in which...
By a Biometrica staffer Early in 2015, Kevin Kimmel, a driver with Con-way Truckload, pulled into a truck stop in Virginia, hoping to catch some shut-eye. He happened to glance over at an RV and saw a “distraught-looking young girl” in the...