By a Biometrica staffer Ten years ago today, on Dec. 14 2012, a then 20-year-old gunman fired 154 rounds in under five minutes using various types of firearms, and killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Gang activity in the United States is said to have declined in the mid-1990s to 2000. But between 2001 and 2005, it increased again and stayed constant until around 2012, per government estimates. From around 2002-2012 annual estimates...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 The latest report in the Cocaine Insights series, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Europol takes a hard look at the trade in the illegal drug around the world, highlighting some of...
By a Biometrica staffer In the course of the Labor Day weekend, five people were killed and dozens wounded in a spate of gun violence, CBS Chicago reported. This takes the total number of shootings in Chicago to more than 2,300 in 2021....
By Deepti Govind "We know that shooters don't just stop after one shooting," ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) Special Agent Fred Milanowski told ABC 13 News in May. The first shooting is hard, the second one is a...
By a Biometrica staffer This past weekend, Chicago police noted six shooting-related deaths and at least 39 injuries in the city over the four-day period beginning in the evening of Friday, Aug. 20, and ending early in the morning on Monday, Aug....
By Deepti Govind It was just last Tuesday, July 28, that the House select committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol convened its first hearing. At that hearing, the entire nation heard the emotional testimony of four...
By Aara Ramesh Among the many verdicts handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last month was the unanimous affirmation of the right of tribal law enforcement officers to detain non-Native people who they reasonably suspect to have been involved in a...
By Aara Ramesh On Tuesday, July 6, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a first-of-its-kind executive order declaring the escalating gun violence in New York a disaster emergency. The new edict is just the first step in a broader seven-step plan outlined by the...
By a Biometrica staffer There were over 400 shootings across the country during the Fourth of July weekend, which ended up claiming the lives of at least 150 people, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a CNN report said....
By a Biometrica staffer President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the United States is experiencing an epidemic of gun violence. On Wednesday, June 23, his administration unveiled an extremely detailed plan to combat this epidemic. The Biden-Harris Comprehensive Strategy to Prevent...
By a Biometrica staffer Source: Screengrab from the DOJ-OJP report showing total juvenile arrests since 1980 In 2019, the number of arrests involving juveniles — persons younger than 18 — was estimated to be less than 700,000. That's the lowest level since...
A 2018 ACEP survey of 3,500 respondents, all ER physicians, found that one-third had been punched and spit upon. In 97% of these cases, a patient committed the physical assault, while 28% reported that a patient’s family member or friend was also...
By a Biometrica Staffer Image Source: Screengrab from the FBI's latest quarterly Uniform Crime Report showing the percentage increase/decrease in all violent crimes reported, over four consecutive quarters. On March 15, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published its latest quarterly assessment...
By Anand Vasu Steven Gazlay, a former 311 Boyz gang member, and Dana Nee, his girlfriend, were arrested on Feb 14. in Madison County, Idaho, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The two were out on bail in Las Vegas when they left. ...