Feature Stories

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 a Biometrica staffer Out of the total federal caseload, child sex abuse material (CSAM) production cases account for only a small percentage. Even so, the expansion of digital and mobile technology has led to a 422% spike in the number of...

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 Deepti Govind One in 10 people aged 18–25 and one in 30 people aged 13–17 experience homelessness each year. To put it another way, in a classroom of 30 students, at least one will experience homelessness this year, which means they...

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 a Biometrica staffer A majority of contacts between law enforcement officers (LEO) and the public only happens during emergencies, or situations that are highly charged and emotional. But these are not the most ideal circumstances for LEOs and the community they...

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 Well over 700 years ago, Song Ci, a Chinese judge, is said to have personally examined the crime scenes of physical assaults or difficult murders. His book, The Washing Away of Wrongs, was written around the year 1247...

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 In what bodes well for the industry, two-thirds of American adults view gaming as a positive economic contributor that provides high-quality jobs and 73% support legalized sports betting in their state, new research by the American Gaming Association...

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...

By a Biometrica staffer In July, we wrote about how millions of elderly Americans become the victims of some kind of financial fraud or internet scam each year. And those numbers are not inclusive of the kind of abuse and neglect senior citizens...

By Aara Ramesh Lately, it seems like violent crime, missing persons cases, and murder have been dominating the news cycle. For instance, the disappearance and homicide of Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, and the subsequent hunt for her missing fiancé has captured the internet’s...

By Aara Ramesh In the face of the real and present danger posed by Covid-19, the opioid crisis, America’s long-standing other epidemic has fallen under the public radar, though it continues to ravage large swathes of society. Experts say that, as with...

By Deepti Govind At Biometrica, one of our key areas of focus is missing persons. We've repeatedly published pieces on this tragic epidemic — from the intersection of internet vigilantism and missing persons of color, to federal government measures, to how the...

By Aara Ramesh The exploitation of children is a real and present problem, one that has only worsened — like many others — as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Children are roped into forced labor; they are trafficked for sex; they...

By a Biometrica staffer As of June 30, 2021, 155 federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement officers (LEOs) died in the line of duty, according to preliminary data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF). That's roughly a...

By Aara Ramesh Over the last few weeks, the case of Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito has commanded the lion’s share of the internet and news media’s attention. Petito, a 22-year-old lifestyle vlogger (video blogger) from Long Island, was reported missing by her family...

By a Biometrica staffer In late 2020, much before anyone ever imagined that a deadlier variant of the Covid-19 virus would sweep across the world and wreak renewed havoc on healthcare and governance systems, organizations like the United Nations Office on Drugs...

By Deepti Govind On Sept. 17, 2020, in recognition of National Physician Suicide Awareness Day, the Physicians Foundation published the alarming results of a new survey that found that nearly one in four physicians (22%) know another physician who has committed suicide,...

By Deepti Govind It's the first week of the National Football League (NFL) and the season is already smashing some non-football records. The games have generated a record volume of legally placed sports bets since the season began on Thursday night, i.e.,...

By Deepti Govind You don't need to be a poker player to have come across the phrase "Dead Man's Hand." References to it are scattered across popular culture says Casino.org. From books, like James Patterson's Along Came a Spider; to movies and...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2018, there were 1.2 million emergency department visits for assault in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website. Over 19,000 people died due to homicides, more than 14,000 of...

By Deepti Govind When one talks of a terror attack, people are most likely to conjure up images of a group of masked assailants, with some kind of weaponry, hijacking a plane. That’s the lasting effect that images and videos of the...

By Aara Ramesh Earlier this week, on Sept. 7, erstwhile FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe cautioned D.C. law enforcement to be on the alert ahead of the Sept. 18 "Justice for J6" rally planned in support of the rioters charged for the...

By Deepti Govind In the last two decades since 9/11, terror groups, mostly acting through either lone actors or small groups of around 2-3 people, have staged attacks just about anywhere and everywhere in the United States. Aviation, of course, is the...

By Aara Ramesh In and among the 2,996 people who died at the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, were 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers. They were just a...

By a Biometrica staffer In March, Biometrica did a round-up of some of the key crime, prison, and law enforcement bills with most support in the House in 2021 up to that point. Today, we pick a few crime-related bills in the...

By a Biometrica staffer Slot machines are considered to be among the most lucrative games on the casino floor for both players and the house. It was just on Friday, Aug. 27 that we wrote about casinos in Nevada raking in a...

By a Biometrica staffer The number of hate crime incidents reported in 2020 were the highest it's been in more than a decade, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) 2020 Hate Crime Statistics data, published on Monday, Aug. 30, showed, CBS News...

By Deepti Govind In July, the U.S. government reported that drug overdose deaths last year, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, soared nearly 30% to a record number of around 93,000. That's a massive spike from 2019's 72,000 drug overdose deaths,...

By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers, 4.9 million people misused prescription stimulants, and 5.9 million people misused prescription tranquilizers or sedatives. A majority of those misused prescription drugs were obtained from family and friends, often...

By a Biometrica staffer Two weeks ago, Europol published its third annual report on Online Jihadist Propaganda. One of the key findings of that report was that 2020 was a critical moment in the evolution of Islamic State and Al Qaeda and...

By Deepti Govind In the late 1960s, a New York-based attorney named Bertram Hirsch was sent to North Dakota to assist with a custody dispute case on behalf of the Spirit Lake Tribe. At that point, Hirsch was employed by the Association...

By a Biometrica staffer Earlier this year, the Measures for Justice (MFJ) project released a comprehensive report that looked at data collection — or lack thereof — in the criminal justice system in 20 states across the country. What the organization found...

By a Biometrica staffer In 1998, Hawai'i became the first U.S. state to pass a “Ban the Box” law. The law prohibited both public and private organizations from enquiring about a person’s criminal record in the early stages of the hiring process....

By Deepti Govind Historically, animal cruelty was considered an isolated issue — one that didn't really harm the human population. As a result, perhaps, the process of recognizing animal cruelty as a serious violent offense in and of itself developed only slowly...

By Aara Ramesh For a few months now, it seems like there has been fresh news about the western United States burning almost every day, with record heat-waves and fires sweeping through the region. Per the National Fire Information Center (NFIC), the...

By Deepti Govind Jesse James and his band of outlaws are probably not immediately associated with train heists, given banks were more their area of, er, expertise. Yet one of that outlaw's most infamous burglaries was of a moving train that he...

By Aara Ramesh On Wednesday, Aug. 11, a federal jury of seven men and five women was impanelled in New York in the trial of disgraced R&B superstar Robert Kelly (known professionally as R. Kelly) on racketeering and sex trafficking charges. This...

By a Biometrica staffer Nationwide commercial gaming revenue from traditional casino games, sports betting, and iGaming came in at $13.64 billion in the second quarter of 2021 (Q2 2021), smashing the industry's previous best-ever record from Q3 2021 by a whopping 22.5%....

By a Biometrica staffer Last Wednesday, Aug. 4, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Interior (DOI) together announced that they are seeking nominations for the non-federal seats on a Joint Commission on reducing violent crimes like murder, rape, and kidnapping against American...

By Deepti Govind At the end of last month, a drug dealer called Chukwuemeka Okparaeke, whose online darknet avatar is "Fentmaster," was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He imported and trafficked fentanyl analogues and other synthetic opioids through the dark web,...

By Deepti Govind Just three weeks ago, the Department of Justice said a 53-year old Maryland resident, Jeffrey John White, was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison for possessing thousands of files of child pornography. When the case was...

By a Biometrica staffer Towards the end of June, as part of an investigative series, FreightWaves asked many transportation professionals whether "double brokering" is legal. The most common answer? It's complicated. Double brokering, which we will explain further through this piece, has been...

By Aara Ramesh Less than 60 days from now, on Sept. 30, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) will make its return to the Rio in Las Vegas after a hiatus of over two years. Operators and spectators alike are hoping for...

By a Biometrica staffer It would not come as any surprise to say that the Covid-19 pandemic pushed most of the world online, particularly children, as schools went virtual under lockdowns and restrictions. This increased children's use of the internet, and has...

By Charlotte Spencer There have been nearly 100 bills introduced so far this year that address the opioid epidemic. It seems everyone can agree this is an issue that needs to be addressed, but very few have managed to get any support...

By Aara Ramesh Next month marks 20 years since the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) conducted a series of raids and arrested eight individuals for a racketeering plot in which they defrauded McDonald’s Corp of $24 million dollars over a 12-year period. ...