By a Biometrica staffer There were 93 school shootings with casualties at public and private elementary and secondary schools in 2020–21— the highest number since 2000–01, according to a new joint report published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the...
By a Biometrica staffer By now, most of us have probably read that on Tuesday, June 21, Senate bargainers reached agreement on an incremental yet necessary bipartisan gun violence bill. The bill is in response to recent deadly mass shootings in Texas...
By a Biometrica staffer Is Organized Retail Crime (ORC) really a cause for concern? Isn't it a victimless crime, as many perceive? The answer to the first question is an emphatic yes, while the answer to the second is an equally clear...
By a Biometrica staffer Late last November, about 80 people barged into a Nordstrom department store in the East Bay Area city of Walnut Creek in California, stealing merchandise until police arrived and arrested three of them. That was but one of...
By a Biometrica staffer On May 31, Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program published the National Use-of-Force Data Collection's report for 2021 and some data for the first quarter of this year. Per the report, 50.7% of...
By a Biometrica staffer Wednesday, May 25, was International Missing Children's Day. It's a day that's dedicated to encouraging parents, guardians, caregivers, and others concerned with the well-being of children to make child safety a priority. The commemoration of this day, per...
By a Biometrica staffer One-and-a half centuries. Over 400 Indigenous boarding schools run by the federal government, with support from religious institutions. The use of systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in an attempt to 'assimilate Indigenous persons.' Corporal punishment to enforce rules...
By a Biometrica staffer In a previous piece, we gave you a quick look at contractor fraud. We examined what it is, looked at common signs, and gave you a few tips to protect yourself from falling prey to such scams. In...
By a Biometrica staffer The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) published what it called the first complete enumeration of tribal court systems operating in the United States. Termed the National Survey of Tribal Court Systems (NSTCS), it consists of three surveys specific...
Pilot Program to kick off in Phoenix/Appleton in August-September 2022, with a focus on fundamentals, including understanding data and data privacy, creating case-use guidelines for facial recognition, ensuring accountability, and preventing bias. PHOENIX/APPLETON, March 21, 2022: On Monday, the National Criminal Justice...
By a Biometrica staffer An estimated 3.4 million U.S. residents aged 16 or older were victims of stalking in 2019, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said in its Stalking Victimization report published this month. That estimated number amounts to around 1.3%...
By a Biometrica staffer On Friday, Feb. 4, the Justice Department announced that Aaron Crawford of Maryland had been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, followed by 20 years of supervised release. Why? For engaging in what Attorney General Merrick B....
By a Biometrica staffer Workplace related harassment, assault and other acts of violence is not new to healthcare workers. Even around a decade ago, research by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had found that healthcare workers were at increased risk for...
By a Biometrica staffer An overwhelming majority (over 90%) of all money mule transactions identified through the European Money Mule Actions are linked to cybercrime, the Europol says. What does that mean? It means a large number of law-abiding citizens in the...
By a Biometrica staffer At Biometrica, child safety and protection has always been at the heart of what we do. We ended 2021 with a look-back special at various issues surrounding this all-important public safety subject that took centerstage through last year....
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 On Wednesday, Dec. 15 the U.S. and Australia signed a landmark agreement that will facilitate access to electronic data for investigations of serious crime, including terrorism and child sexual abuse. The agreement is authorized by the Clarifying Lawful...
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 Last month, we kicked off our mini series on the history of Las Vegas, a city that was originally built as a desert railroad town but evolved into the casino capital of the world. The city, its residents,...
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 In the first part of our mini series on youth gangs and violence, we established that there have been repeated reports suggesting spikes in violent crime even among the youth. Just over two weeks after we published that...
By a Biometrica staffer A two-day global online virtual assets conference — co-organized by INTERPOL, Europol, and the Basel Institute on Governance — concluded with a call to action on better protecting the world’s financial systems by increasing multi-sector cooperation to strengthen...
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 On Wednesday, Dec. 8, the Justice Department's Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) announced awards to 11 Indian Tribal governments to support them in exercising special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction (SDVCJ). The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013...
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 On average, a woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes across the world, according to a report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) this month. In...
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 a Biometrica staffer On Monday, Dec. 6, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published data on nearly 8.9 million criminal offenses reported via the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2020. Of the total 8,879,728 offenses reported in 7,560,867 incidents, 60.5%...
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 a Biometrica staffer In July, Biometrica wrote about how human traffickers adapted to the "new normal" after Covid-19 and appeared to be increasingly targeting children online, even as the pool of vulnerable persons who could be recruited by these criminals grew,...
By a Biometrica staffer Only yesterday, Dec. 2, Europol announced the results of a massive international law enforcement operation that targeted money mules. The operation, codenamed EMMA 7 (i.e. the European Money Mule Action), involved 26 countries including the U.S., and led...
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 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 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 The multi-billion dollar casino industry, possibly much like several other sectors, has sometimes been a target of unscrupulous characters who try and use the cover of a legitimate business to surreptitiously carry out criminal activities. When it comes...
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 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 Deepti Govind April 3, 2021 marked 25 years since the capture of the notorious domestic terror actor, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was active for nearly two decades, but managed to evade arrest because he was meticulous...
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 In Portsmouth, Virginia, the local police department and the Up Center are reaching out to the public as they seek mentors to help steer youth in the right direction. The two organizations have come together due to an...
By Aara Ramesh Last month, we wrote about some gaps in the child welfare system that can lead to children in foster care being abused. Unfortunately, the reality is that it’s not just those children who can fall prey to abuse. Almost...
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...