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 Deepti Govind The 15-year-old who opened fire on his fellow students at Oxford High School in Michigan on Tuesday, Nov. 30, has been charged as an adult with two dozen crimes, including murder, attempted murder and terrorism. He faces life in prison...
By a Biometrica staffer On Tuesday (Nov. 30) afternoon, a 15-year-old sophomore who hasn't been named yet by authorities opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan. His shooting spree ended up leaving three fellow students dead and eight others wounded. The...
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 Around 2.31 million passengers passed through airport screenings last Wednesday, Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA). That's over double when compared with the 1.07 million people who went through...
By a Biometrica staffer Millions are set to travel across the nation, and the world, on board commercial aircrafts this holiday season. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is concerned that it could also bring about a rise in criminal behavior occurring on...
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 a Biometrica staffer The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) has, once again, shown that disabled people are disproportionately targeted by criminals, and are particularly at risk of being victims of violent crimes. The rate at which disabled people are victimized, 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 a Biometrica staffer On Thursday, Nov. 18, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a statement that analysis of data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) was helping it uncover the characteristics surrounding homicides of American Indian and...
By a Biometrica staffer The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced more than $139 million in grant funding through the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) COPS Hiring Program (CHP). The awards provide direct funding to 183 law enforcement agencies...
By a Biometrica staffer On Tuesday, Nov. 16 the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced the creation of a new Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee (STAC), which formally establishes a mechanism for Tribal leaders to engage in routine and robust conversations directly with DOI Secretary...
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 a Biometrica staffer Terror actors are continuing to exploit online forums to influence and spread violent extremist narratives and promote violent activity, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a terror threat bulletin on Wednesday, Nov. 10. These threats are...
By a Biometrica staffer Nationwide commercial gaming revenue smashed all quarterly records for the second consecutive quarter and reached $13.89 billion in the third quarter of 2021 (Q3 2021), according to the American Gaming Association’s (AGA) Commercial Gaming Revenue Tracker. With $38.67 billion...
By Deepti Govind The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Monday, Nov. 8 recent actions taken against two foreign nationals charged with deploying Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware to attack businesses and government entities in the United States. On the same day, investing app Robinhood...
By a Biometrica staffer Casino news from the weekend includes reports of shootings and other crimes on properties, and a cyber crime warning. On Saturday, Nov. 6, a shooter fatally wounded two people before turning the gun on himself at Stateline Casino...
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 The Department of Justice (DOJ) is stepping up its firepower in the fight against the rapidly growing threat of ransomware attacks and cybercrime. This news comes as President Joe Biden's administration escalates its response to what it considers...
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 Deepti Govind The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with its law enforcement partners, said it removed nearly 745,000 lbs of unneeded prescriptions from medicine cabinets across the country under its National Prescription Drug Take Back Day program, which was held on...
By a Biometrica staffer Early estimates of traffic fatalities for the first half of 2021 show that an estimated 20,160 people died due to motor vehicle crashes, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Transport's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety...
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 a Biometrica staffer In 2018, there were around 1.6 million applications for firearm transfers and permits that were subject to background checks under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Act). About 230,000 (1.4%) of these applications were denied, the Bureau...
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 Nurses in the United States experience suicidal thoughts "in greater numbers" than other general workers, a study published in the American Journal of Nursing said. Among nurses, those who do have suicidal thoughts are also less likely to...
By a Biometrica staffer The inmate population at Indian country jails fell 30% at mid-year 2020 to a total of 2,020 inmates held in 82 jails, from 2,890 inmates held in 83 facilities at mid-year 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)...
By a Biometrica staffer The United States has repeatedly faced various kinds of cyberattacks in recent times, with targets ranging from infrastructure to education, and mostly due to criminals wielding ransomware. At the Justice Department Criminal Division’s fifth Cybersecurity Roundtable, Assistant Attorney...
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 a Biometrica staffer Cultural property crime continued unabated throughout the global Covid-19 pandemic, and in some cases even surged to new heights, according to INTERPOL’s 2020 Assessing Crimes Against Cultural Property survey findings. In the Americas, the number of offences reported...
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 a Biometrica staffer Just days after the Boston Marathon took place for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the death sentence should be reinstated for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. Tsarnaev...
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 a Biometrica staffer Gun violence has steadily been claiming the lives of, or injuring, an increasing number of American children and teenagers over the years, the Associated Press reported, citing data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). Shootings involving the young...
By a Biometrica staffer A shootout at a bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, early on Sunday, Oct. 10, left one woman dead and 14 other people wounded, AP News reported. Three men are said to be in custody after the shooting. The...
By a Biometrica staffer September became the deadliest month for employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since the Covid-19 pandemic began, even as coronavirus fatalities dropped across the state, a Dallas Morning News report said. Covid-19 led to the death...
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 October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is kicking that off by announcing more than $476 million in Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) grants, it said in a statement on Tuesday,...
By a Biometrica staffer With the Covid-19 virus and vaccines having underscored the importance and strategic role played by objective scientific research, many, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, are saying it’s time for us...
By a Biometrica staffer The Global Organized Crime Index paints a "worrying picture of the reach, scale and impact of organized crime in 2020." The data driven analytics tool evaluated 193 United Nations member states. The 2020 report, the first published by Global Initiative,...
By a Biometrica staffer The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its Unified Crime Report for 2020 on Sept. 27, and it showed that the number of homicides increased by 30% from the previous year. There were more than 21,500 homicides reported, a height...
By a Biometrica staffer The U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has awarded almost $187 million to support state, local, and tribal public safety and community justice activities through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), a component of the department’s Office of Justice Programs...
By a Biometrica staffer A gunman opened fire in an upscale Kroger grocery store in Collierville, a suburban community about 30 miles east of Memphis, Tennessee, on Thursday, Sept. 23, killing one person and wounding as many as 12 others, the Associated Press...
By a Biometrica staffer The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have observed the increased use of Conti ransomware in more than 400 attacks on U.S. and international organizations. In Conti attacks, malicious cyber actors...
By a Biometrica staffer Law enforcement officers, manufacturers, and sports shooters across the country are expressing worries over recent record gun sales leading to an ammunition shortage, with many saying that such a state of affairs could drag on for at least...
By a Biometrica staffer Evidence in the alleged murder of a federal security officer in Oakland was destroyed by four Northern California members affiliated with the far right boogaloo movement, authorities said on Sep. 20. Jessie Rush, Robert Blancas, Simon Ybarra and...
By a Biometrica staffer This year may have been the year of struggling to move past Covid-19, but it is also on track to the deadliest year for gun violence in the United States in decades. According to the Gun Violence Archive,...