"News of the Week"   Daily Local & Regional NewsWatch November 2018 - Week 4

Terri Lanahan ~~~~~~~~~~ Many thanks to NAASCA's Terri Lanahan, Butte, Montana, for her research into the news that appears on the LACP & NAASCA web sites.

https://www.policeone.com/concealed-carry/articles/482233006-What-cops-need-to-consider-about-armed-citizens/

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South Africa

South Africans Are Taking the Law Into Their Own Hands

In a country where no one trusts the police, vigilante groups promising to stop gang violence were initially welcomed. Now, with extra legal justice on the rise, some citizens have had enough.

by CHRISTOPHER CLARK

CAPE TOWN, South Africa—On a sunny afternoon in late September, a solemn crowd of about 40 people gathered outside a small brick house in the suburban Cape Town neighborhood of Valhalla Park. They'd come for the Salat al-Janazah—an Islamic funeral ritual—of Tashrieq Johnson, a soft-spoken 25-year-old who had been burned to death in a brutal gasoline attack a few days earlier.

In the living room, an imam began to wrap three pieces of white cloth around Johnson's body, which remained zipped inside a white mortuary bag so those assembled wouldn't have to witness the extent of his injuries. “He was burnt beyond recognition from the waist up,” Johnson's father, Adil Masoet, said solemnly.

Once the imam had finished shrouding the body, the men filed into the room, formed a circle, and began to pray. Johnson's mother, Titi Lama, waited outside with the other women. She preferred not to see the body; she wanted to remember her son the way he was when she last saw him alive, before he was taken from his home by a roving group of vigilantes who claimed he was gang-affiliated and subjected him to a brutal form of mob justice.

Johnson had lived nearby with his girlfriend in a cramped shack in the sand-swept and destitute corrugated zinc settlement of Symphony Way Temporary Relocation Area, which locals refer to by the more appropriate moniker of Blikkiesdorp, meaning “Tin Can Town” in Afrikaans.

Blikkiesdorp lies at the heart of the Cape Flats, a sprawling expanse of working-class suburbs and townships southeast of Cape Town's scenic city center—which is home to South Africa's Parliament and, with its views of mountains and the sea, a magnet for tourists. The Cape Flats has often been called “apartheid's dumping ground” for people designated nonwhite and pushed out of the city during the forced removals of the 1960s and 1970s. This included a substantial Muslim population whose mixed racial heritage traces back to slaves brought to the Cape from the Dutch East Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries.

On the edge of Blikkiesdorp, which is largely comprised of more recent evictees from a rapidly gentrifying city, a ramshackle mosque issues daily calls to prayer through a distorting loudspeaker. About five people have been killed here in mob justice attacks since the beginning of September. “Initially, these guys were only going after criminals and gangsters,” Masoet told Foreign Policy, “But now they're killing just for fun. Tashrieq didn't do anything wrong. He wouldn't harm a fly. Things can't go on like this.”

In recent years, with violent crime spiraling across South Africa, mob justice attacks have become increasingly commonplace in neglected communities like Blikkiesdorp, as ragtag vigilante groups fill the void left by a chronically under-resourced police force. (In September, National Police Commissioner Lt. Gen. Khehla Sitole told South African members of Parliament that there is a deficit of 62,000 police officers across the country.)

Like Johnson, many of the victims are burned to death, a grisly throwback to the political violence that engulfed South African townships in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when suspected apartheid collaborators and police informants regularly met the same fate. In a process known as “necklacing,” angry crowds would force a tire doused in petrol over a victim's chest and arms and set it alight.

According to the latest national crime statistics released in mid-September, 849 people were killed in cases the police classify as mob justice in the 12-month period from April 2017 to March 2018. In the densely populated province of Gauteng surrounding Johannesburg, mob justice killings have more than doubled from the previous year. Since 2012, similar increases have been seen in the Western Cape province, which encompasses Cape Town.

This is a stark reflection of the steady erosion of public faith in police departments that have been ravaged by corruption and mismanagement, particularly during the disastrous tenure of former President Jacob Zuma, who was ousted in February. Unsurprisingly, the fallout has been most pronounced and most dangerous in the impoverished townships surrounding South Africa's large cities to which blacks were confined under apartheid and where many still live today.

According to Chumile Sali, a project officer with the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on issues of police accountability and governance in Africa, “Vigilantism has become normal in poor black communities where people feel they are not being serviced appropriately by the police. The rate of violence will continue to rise unless we change how we police these communities.”

Sali added that in the Cape Town township of Nyanga, which has the undesirable title of South Africa's murder capital and where a single police station services as many as 200,000 residents, more than 50 percent of recorded murders are connected to vigilante groups. Like the Cape Flats, Nyanga, formerly a black labor camp, is the product of South Africa's history of racial segregation and a clear illustration of how the country has failed many poor black citizens in the post-apartheid era. While Nyanga has approximately 161 police officers per 100,000 residents, less than a 20-minute drive away, the predominantly white suburb of Rondebosch has 556, despite not registering a single murder in the 12-month period covered by the latest crime statistics.

“I think that it's clear that [poor] communities, not just in Cape Town but across the country, are getting to boiling point with regards to crime,” said J.P. Smith, the Democratic Alliance's Mayoral Committee member for safety and security in Cape Town. “The consequence is that eventually the most horrific happens and they take the law into their own hands.”

Many Blikkiesdorp residents said they initially supported the vigilantes. Their first targets were all leading figures in a ruthless local gang called the Young Gifted Bastards (YGB). The gang had terrorized the community with impunity for years, carrying out daily and sometimes deadly muggings, burglaries, and drug deals—predominantly just to fund their own drug habits. Thanks to the vigilantes, many of the YGB's leaders were either killed, hospitalized, or went into hiding.

But several residents now claim that the same dearth of police resources that so often serves as the catalyst for vigilantism had allowed the vigilante group to supplant the YGB and begin conducting its own reign of terror, allegedly extorting, robbing, and threatening residents, burning down shacks of gang members' families, and violently enforcing a 7 p.m. curfew.

“When they got rid of the gangsters that was a good thing,” said Russell Donavan, who works as a security guard outside a local evangelical church in Blikkiesdorp. “But then things got out of hand. It's indiscriminate now. We'd rather have the gangsters back.”

According to Mary Nel, a Stellenbosch University Faculty of Law lecturer who wrote her thesis on South African vigilantism: “Vigilante groups by their very nature are sort of in that gray area between the law and crime and so it's very easy to overstep that mark. These groups often start with good intentions, then they get a bit of power and that power corrupts or is co-opted.”

Ultimately, they can become full-blown criminal enterprises. Such was the case with People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a Muslim vigilante organization that rose to prominence in the Cape Flats in 1996 after killing an infamous local gang boss named Rashaad Staggie. By the early 2000s, more than 40 PAGAD members had been charged with crimes including murder, terrorism, extortion, robbery, and illegal possession of firearms.

But contrary to the ambivalence in Blikkiesdorp, many vigilante groups are lionized within the communities where they originate. In certain cases, their services are even sought much further afield. Mapogo A Mathamaga—a notoriously violent vigilante group that emerged in the poor, rural province of Limpopo, near the Zimbabwean border, around the same time as PAGAD—is a particularly unsettling example. The group's name derives from a Sotho proverb translating loosely as “the leopard changes its colors when provoked.” Despite its members facing more than 300 criminal charges between 1996 and 2001, more than two dozen of which for murder or attempted murder, the group boasted tens of thousands of members and scores of branches nationwide within a few years of its founding.

There were repeated failed attempts by both local and national government to integrate Mapogo A Mathamaga into South Africa's so-called Community Policing Forum framework, an often toothless and ill-defined collaboration between the police, local government, and community organizations, including neighborhood watch groups. “But the stumbling block was always their insistence on the use of force,” said Nel.

In 2001, Mapogo A Mathamaga instead made an unlikely move into the private sector, becoming a registered private security company with branches across South Africa operating as independent franchises but all profiting from the fear factor associated with the brand name. Fueled by the extent of violent crime and the lack of faith in police, South Africa's private security industry is today worth more than $3.5 billion, but is largely the preserve of wealthy and predominantly white sections of society. Mapogo A Mathamaga gradually migrated in the same direction, leaving behind the poor black communities it had initially claimed to serve.

At the grassroots level, a young and highly organized group called Operation Wanya Tsotsi has recently taken up Mapogo A Mathamaga's former mantle. The group, whose name means, roughly, “criminals will run for the toilet” in township slang, was formed in March 2015 in response to a spate of gang violence that claimed 17 lives in a matter of weeks in a township called Galeshewe in the diamond-producing city of Kimberley in the Northern Cape province.

With an approach primarily premised on caning suspected criminals and publicly shaming them by posting their mugshots on social media, Operation Wanya Tsotsi is markedly more moderate than its predecessor, but has experienced a similarly meteoric rise. The group already has five branches across the Northern Cape, all run by volunteers, and, following a flurry of local media articles and radio interviews in 2017, its Facebook page has amassed almost 15,000 followers. There are growing calls for the group to go national.

For Nel, the group's obvious popularity is founded on its ability to deliver swift and visible justice in a way that the formal criminal justice system cannot. “Vigilantes often have the edge over formal justice because they can respond instantly. There's no long, drawn-out court process, and people can often see someone being punished then and there, and not just in some abstract sense, but physically punished,” she told FP.

A cursory glance at Galeshewe's crime statistics suggests Operation Wanya Tsotsi's controversial methods are working. In its first year of operations, robbery with aggravating circumstances dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade and was reduced by about 40 percent from the previous year; there were similarly significant reductions in murder rates. This makes Galeshewe a compelling anomaly when viewed alongside national crime trends.

According to the local journalist Murray Swart, who has written articles about Operation Wanya Tsotsi for the Diamond Fields Advertiser, a Kimberley daily newspaper, the group has “undoubtedly had a significant impact” on crime in Galeshewe.

The response from Kimberley police officials has been ambivalent. A number of Operation Wanya Tsotsi's leaders have been arrested on multiple occasions on charges of assault and kidnapping, though all have so far escaped criminal conviction. A local constable who spoke to FP on condition of anonymity said that while he “understood the frustrations” that drove vigilantism and supported Operation Wanya Tsotsi's crime fighting efforts in principle, the police “cannot promote assault.”

So far, Operation Wanya Tsotsi has avoided descending into the sort of mob justice killings seen elsewhere. Instead, the group has actively opposed such brutality. In 2015, it prevented an angry mob from burning down the house of a traditional healer who had allegedly abducted a young girl for a ritual killing.

“Vigilantism in the context of South Africa is something that is lawless and very brutal in its nature, and I don't believe Operation Wanya Tsotsi is any of those things,” the group's charismatic leader Pantsi Obusitse told me on a busy Saturday night in Galeshewe as he and other members carried out routine patrols and stop-and-frisk searches armed with Tasers and stiff cattle whips called sjamboks. “We don't just go around and assault people. We don't want to do things in a vigilante way. Our understanding is not to beat you up, but to extract information from you and give you a lesson that you can pass onto others.”

Obusitse preferred to refer to the movement he leads as a “community crime-fighting initiative” and said he hoped to bridge the gap between formal and informal justice networks in the Northern Cape. He added that he'd tried a number of avenues in a bid to attract support for his group both from the state and the private sector, but to no avail. Without such support, the group is increasingly struggling to sustain its activities.

Representatives from the South African Police Services and the Northern Cape Department of Transport, Safety and Liaison told FP they were open to forging a working relationship with Operation Wanya Tsotsi and encouraged dialogue toward that end. But as with Mapogo A Mathamaga before, the group's insistence on the use of violence, albeit more tempered, has created an impasse with government institutions that believe they should have a monopoly on the use of force.

Obusitse remains defiant: “We've had lots of people who do not agree with our methods and who do not support us. Up until they become victims and we help them, and then they start agreeing with us,” he said as he watched some of his colleagues confiscate knives and matchboxes filled with marijuana from a group of teenagers who'd been sitting drinking on the side of the road. The boys were then told to lie down on the sidewalk where they were struck across the buttocks with sjamboks, then ordered to go home.

Experts such as Nel and Sali say there's a disjuncture between a standardized government line that strongly condemns all forms of vigilantism and the reality in places like Galeshewe, where overstretched police officers and even local government officials will tacitly condone vigilantes and turn a blind eye to their transgressions.

This ambivalent state response is somewhat duplicitous given that groups like Operation Wanya Tsotsi are clearly a symptom of the state's own failures to combat crime and root out rampant corruption and political interference within its own police structures.

Under former President Jacob Zuma, five different officials occupied the position of national police commissioner. All were personally appointed not for their aptitude but for their willingness to look past large-scale corruption within the upper echelons of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The rot of the Zuma years has had an equally devastating impact on policing at provincial and local level, particularly in underserved townships like Galeshewe, where petty police corruption is an everyday occurrence.

In the major urban hubs of Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town, which account for the vast majority of mob justice incidents, the issue has been compounded by power struggles between the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which rules all three of those metropolitan areas, and the national ANC government. Among other things, this means that a cohesive relationship between local and national police structures is sorely lacking and the allocation of national police resources is often skewed toward ANC strongholds. The Western Cape has borne the brunt of the fallout. As murder rates soar, an estimated 85 percent of police stations in the province are understaffed and there's little sign that either the DA or the ANC has the requisite political will to fill this vacuum.

Instead, Nel said a culture of passing the buck has taken hold: “You are encouraged to look after yourself. You're told that you are responsible for your own safety and that of your community. You can understand how that might be interpreted as ‘Do whatever you need to do to make your community safe,' which could go beyond what the law might sanction,” Nel said.

Given South Africa's cruel history of racial segregation and its current position as the most unequal society in the world, it is unsurprising that Nel's point is most consistently illustrated in poor black communities that, contrary to the clamor of white right-wingers, are disproportionately affected by South Africa's violent crime yet least likely to benefit from its state services. Residents of such communities generally cannot afford to enlist the help of the well-equipped private security companies protecting wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods that already receive the lion's share of police resources.

“You call the police to a white suburb and they react very fast. You call them to a black suburb and it takes forever. Our police services and even our government value some lives more than others,” the Operation Wanya Tsotsi leader Obusitse said. Bridging this gap would require a dramatic change by a floundering and factionalized government that in a quarter-century has largely failed to reverse the injustices of apartheid; the country's new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has pledged to fight corruption and redistribute land but has had little to say about rising vigilantism.

Back in Blikkiesdorp, residents eventually took it upon themselves to push back against the vigilantes who had begun to wreak new havoc on the already traumatized community. On a cold, wet Tuesday evening just a few days after Tashrieq Johnson's death, a local imam gathered together scores of men who proceeded to patrol the area in a show of force. A solitary police vehicle disinterestedly monitored their movements from a distance. Some of the men covered their faces and carried illegal firearms hidden beneath their coats; others wielded field hockey sticks, sjamboks, and clubs openly.

“In seven years living here, this is the worst things have been,” said Alec Geldebloem, one member of the nameless group. “People are fed up. We are trying to operate within the law, but if we have to, we will meet these guys with violence. No one here among us is perfect.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/29/south-africans-are-taking-the-law-into-their-own-hands-vigilantism-extralegal-justice-police-apartheid-anc-private-security/amp/

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United Kingdom

UK Intelligence and Security Committee admits Manchester bomb attack should have been prevented

Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has stated that the MI5 intelligence agency made a series of mistakes in its handling of the case of Salman Abedi, failing to prevent him from carrying out a horrific terrorist attack.

Abedi detonated a bomb at the end of a packed Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena on May 22, 2017, killing 22 people and injuring over a hundred.
The ISC's report stated that, “there were a number of failures in the handling of Salman Abedi's case and, while it is impossible to say whether these would have prevented the devastating attack on 22 May, we have concluded that, as a result of the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it were missed.”

MI5 accepted that they “moved too slowly.”

In reality, the report and all such admissions are tailored to hide a host of damning facts about Abedi's relationship with the British state that explain why such supposed “mistakes” were made.

The ISC is composed of tried and trusted MPs and Lords selected by the prime minister and sworn into the Queen's Privy Council. Its “investigation” is meant to complete a whitewash begun in December 2017 with a report on UK terror attacks by David Anderson QC—building on the cover-up launched in the hours after the attack.

Immediately after the bombing, Prime Minister Theresa May claimed Abedi was a “lone wolf”, only known to the security services “to a degree.” Two D-Notices (a request to the press not to report on a particular issue) were issued over the attack and were for the most part slavishly obeyed by the mainstream media. Information soon emerged, mostly via the US, that tore the government's claims to shreds.

It was revealed that the FBI had warned MI5 in January 2017 that Abedi belonged to a North African terrorist group looking for a political target in Britain. Then it was reported that Abebi was in contact with a Libyan Islamic State battalion and that he had twice visited in prison the convicted terrorist and fighter in Libya and Syria, Abdal Raouf Abdallah, which would have triggered extensive security checks as a matter of course.

Abedi regularly travelled from his home in Manchester to Libya to visit his parents, who were members of the anti-Gaddafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—which is closely tied to the British state. He is reported to have fought with Islamist forces himself. Actively investigated by MI5 in January 2014, Abedi soon had his case closed, to be reopened in 2015 and closed again within one day. At the time he detonated his bomb, four days after returning from a trip to Libya, he was supposedly not considered a threat.

Anderson's December report was designed to cover for the security services in the face of these incriminating disclosures. He previously defended GCHQ's mass surveillance of the entire population in a BBC documentary and paved the way for the Snoopers' Charter with the report, “A Question of Trust.” He wrote, “It is not the purpose of the internal reviews, or of this report, to cast or apportion blame.” The case of Abedi outlined was cast in terms of “tragic” mistakes only noticeable “in retrospect.”

Anderson made no mention of the fact that came to light in August this year—that Abedi and his brother had actually been evacuated from Libya aboard a Royal Navy ship in 2014, with the personal knowledge of then Prime Minister David Cameron. He refused to comment on whether he had known about the evacuation when compiling his report and, if so, why he had chosen to omit it.

The only conclusion to be drawn from the available evidence is that Abedi was viewed as an intelligence asset, allowed free rein to participate in jihadist formations aligned with British imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa. Only this explanation makes sense of the incredible “lapses in security” revealed by the ISC, whatever combination of fact and fiction they may be.

According to the committee, Abedi's two visits to Abdal Raouf Abdallah in Altcourse prison brought “no follow-up action” and were “not passed to MI5.” He was never referred to the government's “Prevent” strategy—meant to prevent people being radicalized by “extremism”—and did not have his travel monitored or restricted.

Another security “failing” caused “serious concern” due to its “highly sensitive security aspects” and will only be revealed only to the prime minister in a classified report. Concealing this information strongly suggests that it is highly incriminating and possibly relates to Abedi's role as an asset in the operation to topple Gaddafi. Theresa May was home secretary at the time when the security services allowed LIFG members to travel to Libya, providing them with passports after they had been previously confiscated and giving them security clearance as part of the military operations to overthrow Gaddafi.

Abedi was never referred to Prevent, yet in 2015-2016 over a thousand schoolchildren were referred to its “deradicalization” programmes. The UK is a world leader in mass surveillance and had direct links with multiple Libyan Islamist militias. These “errors of judgement” were part of a deliberate policy.

The ISC's members know this is precisely how MI5 and MI6 operate: maintaining and protecting networks of jihadist fighters, who can be deployed against Middle Eastern and African governments. If some go rogue and kill British citizens, then that is considered collateral damage.

This pattern was confirmed in October, when head of counter-terrorism policing Neil Basu said that fighters returning from Syria were no longer considered the biggest terror threat to the UK. According to the UK's own counter-terrorism strategy documents, around 900 British nationals of “national security concern” are thought to have travelled to Syria, and 40 percent of them are thought to have returned.

Basu's comments prefigured a statement from Chief of the British General Staff General Mark Carleton-Smith last weekend. Smith declared that the threat from terrorism paled in comparison to the threat posed by Russia. Having served as a bogeyman to justify endless wars of intervention and attacks on democratic rights, “the terrorists” are now far more helpful as allies in proxy wars against rival powers—above all Russia.

The only ISC recommendations likely to be enacted are those which use state-created atrocities as an excuse for yet greater state surveillance and censorship in connection with rapidly escalating militarism. The report states that communication companies were failing to fulfil their duty to detect terror planning online and suggested government pressure be brought to bear.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid jumped at the opportunity, saying “We have updated our counter-terrorism strategy, introduced new legislation to allow threats to be disrupted earlier and have increased information sharing with local authorities. We are also ensuring technology companies play their part by stopping terrorists from exploiting their platforms.”

The media passed over the ISC report with nothing more than a “so what”, with no further reporting on it after 24 hours. The BBC and the Guardian said nothing of Abedi's extensive connections with Britain's Libya campaign in their coverage. BBC home affairs and security correspondent, Dominic Casciani, provided an apologia for MI5, writing, “The big problem is that intelligence on suspects is fragmentary. A British-Libyan young man travelling to Libya is not the stuff of red alerts.”

The Labour Party maintains its silence over Britain's deadly imperialist intrigues. Instead of questioning the government about its relationship with Abedi, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott used the ISC report to call for more police and security: “This raises serious questions for the entire policing and security system, not simply MI5 alone. These questions include the proper identification, prioritisation and prevention of terrorists, which is an increasingly integrated process, involving multiple agencies, or at least it should be. But this government has undermined policing with cuts of 21,000 officers. And community policing, the frontline ears and eyes on the ground in the fight against terror, has been hardest hit.”

Survivors and those bereaved by the Manchester attack criticised the government and intelligence agencies. Survivor Robby Porter is considering taking legal action against MI5. “This could have been stopped,” he said, “and we're finding out now that it should have been stopped.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/30/abed-n30.html

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Border Agents Face Split-Second Decisions on Use of Force

The use of tear gas this past weekend on a crowd of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border has triggered widespread outrage and rekindled complaints that officers are too quick to use force.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — U.S. Border Patrol agents near Tijuana, Mexico, faced a choice as they looked out over the chaos at a crowd of migrants that included rock-throwing men as well as barefoot children: Do they respond with force — and, if so, what kind?

The circumstances at the San Ysidro border crossing Sunday were exceptional, but the question facing the agents was not. It's a split-second choice more often made in the remote desert, far from cameras, where agents are likely working alone and encountering groups of people crossing illegally.

The agents' response — firing tear gas into the crowd — triggered widespread outrage and rekindled complaints that the Border Patrol, bolstered by President Donald Trump's tough talk, is too quick to use force, particularly when responding to people throwing rocks.

But use of force by Customs and Border Protection officers and agents is declining from a high during the 2013 budget year, government statistics show. There are high-profile exceptions, like the shooting death by agents of a 19-year-old Guatemalan woman who crossed the border near Laredo in May.

Still, experts say policies have improved following a major audit five years ago.

"There has been progress made — especially in getting officers better training and better equipment," said Josiah Heyman, a professor with University of Texas at El Paso and director of the Center for Inter-American and Border Studies. "When I first started studying this, most agents had a gun and a baton. They didn't have the choice to use anything else."

Firearms were used 45 times in budget year 2013 compared with 17 in 2017, according to data from Customs and Border Protection. For the first 11 months of the 2018 budget year, firearms were used 14 times. The data includes Border Patrol agents that patrol between the ports of entry, and officers who police border crossings.

Over those 11 months, there were 743 cases of agents and officers using less-lethal force, like batons, stun guns, tear gas and pepper spray. These included 29 cases in which tear gas was used and 43 incidents of pepper spray.

Though the final numbers are unavailable, those figures represent a drop from 2013, during the Obama administration, when there were 1,168 incidents of less-lethal force, including 27 instances of tear gas and 151 of pepper spray, according to the data. Less-lethal force has increased over the past two years but is still lower than 2013.

Complaints about excessive force prompted Customs and Border Protection to commission an investigation by the Police Executive Research Forum, a policing research and policy group. The 2013 audit highlighted problems that included foot-patrol agents without access to less-lethal options. It recommended law enforcement not be allowed to use deadly force when people throw rocks — a suggestion that was rejected.

Following those reviews, Customs and Border Protection revised policies and made major changes to training. Agents now undergo scenario-based drills at the academy and learn how to de-escalate tense situations. They get 64 hours of on-the-job training on use of force.

Some sectors, like El Paso, have a virtual reality simulator. The octagonal giant screens mounted on a platform mimic a desert encounter where agents must decide whether to fire their weapons. The scenario is designed to cause stress, and agents are forced to think quickly or face being shot, run over or hit with rocks. After the simulation, they discuss reactions with training officers and work on how to better respond in the future.

"The desert is a very difficult, dangerous unstructured environment," said Aaron Hull, Border Patrol chief for the El Paso Sector. "We're trying to keep our agents safe. We're trying to protect the safety of our communities, and all the people involved."

Chuck Wexler, head of the police research forum, credited the agency with taking the recommendations seriously. "Also when they do have an incident, they have a better review process," he said.

Trump defended the use of tear gas on children — claiming it was "very safe," a "very minor form" of irritant. But Customs and Border Protection officials still plan to conduct a review to determine whether it was justified and what — if anything — could be done better, according to Commissioner Kevin McAleenan.

Agents are authorized to use deadly force when there is reasonable belief that there is an imminent danger of serious physical injury or death to the officer or another person.

They have discretion on how to deploy less-than-lethal force: It must be both "objectively reasonable and necessary in order to carry out law enforcement duties" — and used when other "empty hand" techniques are not sufficient to control disorderly or violent subjects.

Officials say they deploy the lowest form of force necessary to take control of a situation — but critics of the Sunday clash say gas never should've been used near small children.

The chaos began after a peaceful protest by some of the thousands of migrants marooned in Mexico. It was unusual in part because of the large number trying to cross illegally — officials said it was between 500 and 1,000. U.S. authorities shut down the nation's busiest border crossing for several hours.

San Diego Border Patrol Sector chief Rodney Scott said 42 people were arrested and some children inhaled the tear gas, but they were not intended targets.

But images of crying children in diapers and bare feet running from plumes of gas struck a nerve again — not unlike the images of weeping, frightened children who had been separated from their parents over the summer.

"Any border security and immigration policy that results in mothers and children being gassed is not only cruel and morally reprehensible, but also an abject failure," said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security. "The administration should be preparing itself to finally face real oversight of its failed border and immigration policies."

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2018-11-29/border-agents-face-split-second-decisions-on-use-of-force

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Cyber Security

Swamped by cyberthreats, citizens need government protection

by Karen Renaud, Abertay University, Merrill Warkentin, Mississippi State University

Most people can't keep up with the latest in technology, which puts them at risk as cyber criminals exploit human and technical weaknesses.

For example, William and Nancy Skog hoped to retire to a beautiful new home. Then a fraudster fooled them into transferring US$307,000 to his bank account. Their entire life savings disappeared in the blink of an eye.

This is not an isolated incident – it happens all the time across the globe, and attacks are increasing. Older computer users are particularly vulnerable.

Public officials around the world – and in the U.S. – are beginning to understand that their cybersecurity efforts need to do more than defend businesses and government agencies. Citizens' personal cybersecurity is a key element of national security.

Governments have long addressed physical security through public safety services, like police and fire departments, as well as public health programs for water purification, sewage treatment and inoculation against infectious diseases. Similar efforts could – and, in our view, should – help citizens cope with cyberthreats.

We are cybersecurity behavioral researchers working with Craig Orgeron, who heads the state of Mississippi's Department of Information Technology Services, contemplating how government could support its citizens when it comes to cybercrime. A new endeavor demonstrates what is possible. New York City's government has launched a campaign to help residents to defend themselves against hacking, online fraud and other cybersecurity threats.

Improving cyber immunity

New York City offers its citizens a free smartphone app called “NYC Secure.” Any U.S. resident can download it, no matter where they live. It scans the person's smartphone for a range of threats, and offers advice on how to fix any problems it finds. The app has some key strengths.

Most importantly, it targets citizens individually, delivering advice from a trustworthy authority directly to their pockets. This does not require people to search for information online and then figure out which web source to trust.

A new app gives a warning about smartphone security threats. Screenshot of 'NYC Secure' app by The Conversation, CC BY-ND
The app essentially empowers citizens. Many hackers succeed because they exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities. Operating system providers and anti-malware software vendors make updates available to remove these, but the average citizen might not be aware of the need to install it. The app could bridge this gap, ensuring that far fewer devices can be successfully attacked.

As the app gains popularity, it could easily be extended to warn users as and when a new attack emerges. For instance, the widespread WannaCry attack of May 2017 compromised only computers that did not have a particular update installed. The app could easily warn people to install updates, tell them exactly how to check their devices for infection and even give directions for cleanup.

Attracting attention

The city's campaign to protect its residents' cybersecurity will bolster New Yorkers' awareness of a wide range of online dangers. That could encourage them to take other protective actions. For example, many people use public Wi-Fi, which can easily allow attackers to eavesdrop on communications. An app that warned users about the dangers of Wi-Fi networks could help people choose whether to connect or not, and know that some activities – like bank transactions – should be conducted only on secure Wi-Fi networks.

In terms of privacy, too, people need help. Health care apps, mostly provided by private companies, are not particularly respectful of their users' extremely sensitive data. The “NYC Secure” app, by contrast, diligently preserves its users' privacy. The app embodies government's goal to serve the citizenry without need for profit, which builds trust with users, making people more likely to use it.

It is impossible to wipe out all cyber threats – just as it is to eradicate all infectious diseases. Of course, even apps designed specifically to support and empower citizens may be targeted by hackers. The New York model is one other cities and states could emulate and extend: Give advice and provide tools to help citizens to repel cyber attacks. Governments could promote the “NYC Secure” app itself or provide something similar for their own citizens, especially if it provides regularly updated advice tailored specifically to address current and emerging threats. We believe governments have the responsibility to help their citizens protect themselves – both in the physical world and online.

https://theconversation.com/swamped-by-cyberthreats-citizens-need-government-protection-104827

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Alaska

Fighting Crime in Alaska's Remote Villages

by Casey Leins

Dan Harrelson, 66, is the only first responder to all crimes, and he can also be called on for medical emergencies and fires in White Mountain, his Alaskan village of around 200 people.

Harrelson, a Minnesota native and a former U.S. Marine Corps aviation electrician, is trained as a village public safety officer, a position the state created in the late '70s to help address its unique safety issues.

Alaska has the highest violent crime rate in the nation, with one murder every six days, one rape every eight hours and one assault every two hours, according to a report released by the state's Department of Public Safety. But law enforcement is unable to respond quickly to many of these crimes.

There aren't enough state troopers to respond quickly to all parts of the state, which is one-fifth the size of the lower 48 states combined and has more than 200 native villages, many of which are remote. The state is still recovering from the nation's Great Recession, forcing a cap on the number of troopers it can fund. It can take a trooper multiple days to respond to crimes in rural areas, not only because each trooper is responsible for multiple villages but because of delayed notification and extreme weather conditions.

"When we say we're the last frontier, we're actually serious about that," says Commissioner Walt Monegan, who oversees the state's Department of Public Safety.

In response, the department created a Village Public Safety Officer Program, in which one village member is hired to serve as a first responder in his or her community until a trooper arrives. Funds for these positions, called village public safety officers, or VPSOs, are awarded to the Native nonprofit corporations that oversee the villages.

The position comes with some challenges: VPSOs must respond to crimes alone, unless they recruit other village members to assist, and VPSOs currently do not carry firearms. Legislation in 2014 made it legal for VPSOs to carry firearms if their employers grant them permission, but the Department of Public Safety and the Native nonprofit corporations are still working to implement the new policy.

As an unarmed man responding to dangerous situations alone, Harrelson admits the job can be intimidating and laughs when asked if he's ever feared for his life while on the job.

"Ohhh, yes."

"There's times when you feel like you need backup sooner," he says, before describing a situation in which he was nearly killed: A few years ago, he chased down a man on his snow machine five miles outside of White Mountain. The man had been trying to smuggle alcohol into a nearby dry village (most villages prohibit the import and sale of alcohol). The two men had what Harrelson calls a "battle" on the ice.

"I'm a short guy, I'm 5-foot-3, and this guy was like 6-foot-4. He had his hands around my neck, strangling me, and I was seeing dots and stars."

Harrelson managed to escape the man's grasp and to disable his snow machine, leaving the man stranded. Harrelson rode back to his village for backup and later charged the perpetrator with attempted murder.

"I was pretty close (to being killed), you know, so that was a scary thing," he says.

Many of the crimes in Alaskan villages are alcohol related, according to Harrelson. Additionally, he says the majority of crimes he responds to are sexual assault, burglaries and domestic violence cases, some of which have been murders.

Monegan predicts the crime rate is actually higher than studies show because, he says, many assaults probably go unreported.

In domestic violence cases, Harrelson says he knows when to back away to protect his safety.

"If there's a case, say, as an example, if a guy is drunk and has a gun and he's holding his wife in the house, we back away from that situation and make a call on the phone or talk to him at a distance," Harrelson says. "Oftentimes you call and they sober up and they come out of the house willingly, apologetic and sorry for what they've done," he adds. Other times, he has to back away and wait until the next day or until a state trooper arrives.

In some situations, Harrelson calls on family or friends for help detaining people.

"I've had help from folks in the community, especially if I've had more than one prisoner at a time." Harrelson has a small holding cell, connected to his office, where he keeps people he's arrested until troopers arrive.

Harrelson says some VPSOs are now being asked if they want to carry firearms. He was recently asked, but declined the offer. He says he thinks walking into a scene with a weapon could induce more "instantaneous violent acts by people."

With 26 years of experience under his belt as a VPSO, Harrelson travels to other villages to help officers new to the job or to assist in search-and-rescue operations.

Harrelson is the only first responder to crime in White Mountain, but some villages also have law enforcement positions known as village police officers and tribal police officers. A village might only have one of the three positions, or it might have all of them. Most villages also have volunteer firefighters, who are trained their village's VPSO, and health aides who often respond first to medical emergencies.

One advantage VPSO officers hold over state troopers is the fact that they know everyone in their community and aren't dealing with strangers, he says.

"A law enforcement officer in D.C., they knock on the door and they don't know what's on the other side," he says. "At least here we have a relationship with community members and you get to know their ups and downs and how to handle them a little bit," he adds.

However, these tightly knit communities deter many people from becoming VPSOs.

"If we're hiring a VPSO that's lived in that community his entire life, he grew up there, he's related to the entire village pretty much. … he's going to be arresting his cousins, his uncles, his brothers," says Captain Andrew Merrill, who manages the VPSO program.

For Harrelson, this isn't so much of an issue. He says he tries to be a fair law enforcer, no matter his relationship with the person he's arresting, and he didn't grow up in White Mountain; he married into the village. Still, Harrelson says he gets his share of criticism.

"Say if I arrest somebody, for example, with a DUI or domestic violence charge, oftentimes I'll hear, 'You didn't arrest your brother-in-law and he was drunk driving a week ago,'" he says. "People will have comments like that, but you have to deal with it."

This idea of arresting family or friends is one reason why the state has had trouble recruiting VPSOs. Alaska currently has only 48 out of 78 funded positions filled, leaving many villages (there are 229 federally recognized tribal communities) without a trained first responder, according to Merrill.

He says people are also deterred from being a VPSO (or a state trooper) because there has been a growing negative view of law enforcement during the past five years.

"People are like, 'Why would I want to be a cop when we've seen an increase in murders of cops, when we've seen cops ambushed and murdered outside their home or at shopping malls or just going to have lunch,'" Merrill says.

Alaska has also had difficulty recruiting state troopers, according to Monegan. A couple years ago, there were only four people training at Alaska's academy for state troopers, but last year there were 24, Monegan says.

The original idea was to hire VPSOs who already lived in the villages where they would be working, but Merrill says that isn't the case for half of those who currently hold the position.

He says this is somewhat surprising because these people have to uproot their lives to move to the village, and most of the communities don't have running water or a hospital. But a VPSO's pay is enticing since the starting salary is only a couple dollars per hour lower than that of a state trooper, "so we're trying to keep it competitive," Merrill says.

In order to better protect Alaska's many communities, especially those without a VPSO, the state is floating the idea of community watch programs to the villages.

A state trooper trained through Alaska's Department of Public Safety would travel to a village and meet with community members to teach them how to best assist law enforcement and reduce crime.

These community watch members could then set curfews and teach others how to better protect their homes, among other safety measures.

Harrelson recently received information about the resources available to form a community watch group, but says he doesn't think it would be of much help since he already has plenty of eyes and ears in the village.

"If there are issues, community members are more than willing to share what those issues are," Harrelson says.

Monegan says the state is working on a number of other safety initiatives, such as trying to change the law around VPSOs. The current guidelines state that VPSOs can only be placed in villages with fewer than 1,000 people, but Monegan says the goal is to change that requirement to 2,000 people so that more communities are included.

Alaska is also trying to build a statewide 911 communication operations center. Right now, 911 calls are directed to a state trooper's cell phone or to one of their posts, and law enforcement has no way of tracking a caller's location.

"We're working to try to bring us into the 20th, if not the 21st century, and it's a challenge," Monegan says. "The recession the whole country went through … Alaska's still not out of it. The oil prices are starting come back and things are looking a little brighter, but we're not out of the woods yet.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-11-15/village-public-safety-officers-in-alaska-help-fight-crime-in-remote-areas?context=amp

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Disaster Prep

How social media can save communities when disaster strikes Innovative use of social media platforms can help responders overcome communication challenges during disaster

2017 was a historic year for natural disasters in the U.S. The nation was impacted by 16 separate billion-dollar disaster events including three tropical cyclones, eight severe storms, two inland floods and wildfires.

While each disaster brought specific challenges, first responders faced the constant battle to maintain emergency communications and keep their citizens informed. Communication and information issues were encountered during multiple disasters in a short period of time. While public communication infrastructures failed due to overwhelming need, innovative use of new applications and social media served to help responders overcome these challenges.

At APCO's 84th Annual Conference, held August 5-8 in Las Vegas, social media consultants Rebecca Williams and Carol Spencer outlined how to ensure your disaster communications response plan incorporates new technologies.

HOW TO CONNECT WHEN CONNECTIONS ARE DOWN

There are many ways social media can disseminate information to citizens, which helps to decrease the call load communications centers face during a natural disaster.

Nextdoor was heavily utilized during Hurricane Harvey, with an 800 percent increase in posts, replies and alerts during the response to the storm.

If landlines are down, people may still be able to get alerts and notifications via WiFi on social media channels.

“The Zello app, which is a push-to-talk app for mobile devices and PCs, was utilized during Harvey,” Rebecca Williams told APCO attendees.

There are also other options for people to get alerts on their cell phones even when cell service is down, noted Carol Spencer. For example, if you send a text to 40404 with a message to say you want to follow a particular Twitter handle, every tweet put out by that Twitter account will be delivered as a text message, so even people with clamshell phones can get an agency's tweets as text messages.

“Twitter does not actively promote this, so agencies need to include this information on their websites head of time so that bandwidth can be preserved during an emergency,” said Spencer.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMACY

During natural disasters there is an explosion of information posted on social media from many different sources. While many of these posts are well meaning, they often lack accurate and current information.

“There needs to be a single, reliable, official source of information that is set up in advance,” said Spencer. “People will look for sources of information and, if it looks official, they might believe it. A lot of jurisdictions do not have people who understand these technologies. You need to train your people to understand both the business and emergency uses of your social media channels.”

Spencer also recommends a social media representative is in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and that individual is authorized to post comments and information on your social media networks without getting approval from the chain of command.

“Have prewritten messaging for various disasters that have all the preparedness information your citizens would need. Publish stuff in time for people to react,” said Spencer.

MAINTAINING ENGAGEMENT ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

For many departments only a small fraction of their community members follow agency pages on social media, so how do you ensure you get information out to the masses?

“Facebook changes have reduced the number of people who see your posts, so it means you must be proactive with your strategy. Humor is a great way of connecting and building followers, so put our memes and be funny to pull people in before emergencies hit,” said Spencer.

It is also important to match the social medium you use not only to your community demographics but also to the type of disaster. With Twitter, information can be disseminated much faster than Facebook, advises Spencer.

STEPS AGENCIES CAN TAKE TO INCORPORATE SOCIAL MEDIA INTO DISASTER COMMUNICATIONS

Williams and Spencer shared several steps agencies can take to incorporate social media into their disaster communications plan:

Do not reinvent the wheel. Find someone has already been involved using social media to connect with communities during a natural disaster and ask them what did and didn't work.

Read after-action reports and other official documents that outline lessons learned.

Document who is available to help outside of your area if your local infrastructure is demolished. People posting to your social media sites could even be located in a different state if you arrange this ahead of time.

Become familiar with nationwide charities in your area that can assist with communication efforts.

Form local Community Organizations Active in Disasters (COAD).

ttps://www.policeone.com/social-media-for-cops/articles/481995006-How-social-media-can-save-communities-when-disaster-strikes/

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National & World

Trashing of rape kits failed victims, jeopardized public safety

At least 400 cases affected across US

by ASHLEY FANTZ, SERGIO HERNANDEZ AND SONAM VASHI

Hours after you are raped, you sit in a hospital room, under fluorescent lights, and consent to a forensic exam.

Your body is the crime scene.

When did it happen, a nurse asks. Where did it happen? Can you tell me who did this to you?

The nurse is trained to interview you and search your body for evidence left behind by your attacker. Knowing the details of your assault guides the examination.

Did he ejaculate inside of you, on you? Where did he touch you? Did he use any objects? Did he kiss you, lick you? Have you had anything to drink? Did you shower?

You're asked to undress slowly while you stand on a special sheet meant to collect any trace evidence that shakes loose.

For three to five hours, the nurse swabs your mouth, your breasts, a bite mark on your neck. She scrapes under your fingernails, combs your pubic hair. She inserts a speculum inside you and drops blue dye on the tissue there to illuminate any places that are torn.

The nurse cuts a hair from your head. She takes photographs of your face and shoulders to pair with your chart, of you in the clothes you wore when you were attacked. Every injury is photographed, too — far away, close-up, with a ruler to show size.

When the exam is over, the nurse puts hair, fibers, swabs, vials of blood and urine in a container smaller than a shoebox. She seals it — your rape kit — and entrusts it to a police officer.

This is the way DNA evidence is collected. This is what you endure so police can identify your assailant, make him pay for what he did.

No one tells you that the exam may be pointless — that police might treat your kit like trash.

A CNN investigation into the destruction of rape kits in dozens of agencies across the country found that police trashed evidence in 400 cases before the statutes of limitations expired or when there was no time limit to prosecute.

The number is likely higher and was arrived at through an analysis of the departments' own records.

The destruction occurred since 2010 and followed flawed and incomplete investigations that relegated rape kits to shelves in police evidence rooms until they were destroyed. Dozens were trashed mere weeks or months after police took custody of the evidence, records showed.

Almost 80% were never tested for DNA evidence, a process that can identify a suspect or link that person to other crimes.

For the past several years, public attention has focused on the hundreds of thousands of kits that have languished untested. The Justice Department has awarded more than $150 million to test that backlog.

But destruction of rape kits is a lesser-known and more fundamental problem: The evidence is gone. It can never be used to lock up a rapist or set free the wrongfully convicted.

"All the attention toward untested kits isn't enough if we have agencies destroying kits," said Wayne County, Michigan, Prosecutor Kym Worthy, whose testing of some 10,000 backlogged rape kits has identified at least 833 suspects linked to more than one sex crime.

"Each one of these kits represents a victim," said the Detroit-based prosecutor. "What you are doing when you destroy a rape kit is destroying the chance that they are ever going to see justice."

A woman who reported being gang-raped in 2007 said it was "absolutely devastating" to recently learn that police destroyed her untested kit.

She remembered the nurse at a hospital in Fayetteville, North Carolina, asking her to describe what the four men did so that her body could be positioned in a way that allowed for more precise examination.

"It was very invasive," she recalled. "It was very degrading. The level of exposure ... was a second violation."

But she steeled herself because the nurse was collecting evidence, and she believed police would test it and use it in their investigation

Instead, CNN found, the detective assigned to her case did nothing more than interview her. The officer never tried to talk to the men she named as her attackers, misinterpreted the law and concluded that no rape occurred. About a month after speaking with the woman, the detective authorized destruction of the untested rape kit — in a state where there was no time limit to prosecute rape.

"I counted on the police to do what they were supposed to do — to investigate what happened to me and to test that evidence," she said. "Instead, they treated it like trash. They treated me like trash."

Veteran sex crimes investigators, along with experts in the law, trauma and forensic science, reviewed case files for CNN. They said investigations indicated that police lacked training in how to interact with victims of sexual violence; in the importance of testing kits, not only to solve the reported assaults but potentially other crimes; and in the need to preserve kits for the length of time the law allows for a prosecution.

"What CNN discovered is a systemic problem," said Joanne Archambault, a retired sergeant who ran the San Diego Police sex crimes unit for a decade. She examined 56 case files from more than a dozen departments.

"It's simple — but it's not the norm — that law enforcement should keep evidence at least for the statute of limitations," she said. "There are mistakes in these cases, but the worst mistake in each is the destruction of evidence."

Twenty-five agencies in 14 states destroyed kits tied to cases while they could still be prosecuted.

Department leaders at some agencies defended the destruction by saying officers approved disposal of kits in closed cases they believed had no chance of moving forward. This was a routine process, they said, done to make space in evidence rooms.

At least five departments acknowledged that the decision to destroy kits was made without considering the statutes of limitations. Three stopped trashing kits because of CNN's inquiries.

Experts said the destruction shows that rape is treated differently than other violent crimes.

"Would we test all the evidence" in a murder? "You bet," said police trainer Tom Tremblay.

The former Vermont police chief, who has reviewed rape investigations for the US Department of Justice, examined cases from nine agencies.

The language police sometimes used, he and other experts said, suggested bias — describing victims' accounts of their rapes as "having sex," asking whether victims experienced orgasms and focusing on a victim's behavior rather than the suspect's.

All of it, Tremblay said, communicates one thing to a victim: You are not believed.

Worthy understands personally what's at stake. She isn't just a prosecutor; she's a survivor. She was raped in law school, she said, and — like an estimated 68% of rape and sexual assault victims nationally — chose not to report her attack.

It is a triumph, Worthy said, when a victim musters the courage to go to police and consent to a rape exam. And destroying a rape kit is a betrayal.

One department's revelations prompt CNN's nationwide probe

Police Chief Harold Medlock was nervous. City attorneys had urged him to keep quiet, he said. But the Fayetteville, North Carolina, chief resisted. He was going public.

It was September 21, 2015, and Medlock was moments away from revealing that his department had destroyed 333 rape kits.

The evidence wasn't trashed in some unfortunate mishap. For more than a decade, detectives had the sole power to greenlight destruction of rape kits in their cases, and they did so sometimes just months after victims reported their assaults. The objective was, in part, to make space in the evidence room. Most of the destroyed kits had never been tested.

In a recent interview, Medlock reflected on his decision to hold a news conference announcing the department's failure to preserve kits. He said he had been warned that revealing the destruction could trigger lawsuits. But as he stepped to the podium, his mind was heavy with other fears.

Would the community ever trust the police again? Did the destruction of even one kit mean a rapist got away and went on to attack another victim?

As cameras snapped and reporters shouted questions, the chief owned up to the mistakes. He also asked his detectives to notify all of the victims about what had happened and, if possible, reinvestigate their assaults.

Fayetteville police said they stopped destroying kits in the fall of 2009, before North Carolina enacted a law prohibiting the disposal of biological evidence in unsolved rape and homicide cases. The chief's revelation prompted CNN to examine whether the practice was widespread and ongoing.

Comparing the work of police agencies proved difficult because of incomplete information and a lack of uniformity in how police classify cases. Departments said many kits were destroyed after the statutes of limitations expired, after cases reached resolutions in court or when an investigation demonstrated that a crime had not occurred. Those are circumstances in which it could be permissible to dispose of the evidence, some experts said. CNN excluded kits destroyed in those scenarios from its analysis.

Reporters also excluded tested rape kits destroyed by agencies that kept items from those kits (or whose crime labs did) because that evidence could help prosecutors bring charges. Forensics experts and defense attorneys, however, said the entire kit needs to be maintained to preserve a defendant's right to re-test the evidence and challenge the original analysis.

CNN identified agencies that reported destroying kits in less than two years. Requests for case files yielded more than 1,400 investigations from mostly small and medium-sized cities.

To determine whether kits were destroyed while there was still time to prosecute, reporters applied the shortest possible statutes of limitations for the sex crimes listed in case files. CNN's tally is likely an undercount; some cases could have carried longer statutes of limitations than reporters could determine or no statutes of limitations at all.

Reporters focused on cases in which rape kits were destroyed after investigators were unable to identify or apprehend a suspect, prosecutors declined to file a charge or an investigation stopped because leads ran dry or a victim showed a reluctance to continue.

Destroying kits in those circumstances is misguided, experts said; police are failing to recognize that the passage of time can work on behalf of an investigation. A victim can decide to engage with police after a few years, and new evidence can emerge, making a prosecution possible.

"Even if a victim doesn't want to be involved now doesn't mean they won't change their mind," said David LaBahn, president of the national Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and a career California prosecutor. "If you have a statute of limitations that is still open, and a victim does change their mind but you've destroyed the kit — that's a problem."

Destruction puts victims and the wrongfully convicted at risk

Some experts said police should test and keep kits beyond the statutes of limitations because they have the potential to help solve other cases.

DNA recovered from a rape kit can be compared to the more than 17 million profiles taken from crime scenes, convicted offenders, detainees and arrestees contained in the national law enforcement database system known as CODIS. That process can not only identify assailants but link them to other crimes.

In California, police used decades-old kits — kept well beyond the statute of limitations for rape at the time — to help solve a serial killer cold case. Improved technology allowed police to match DNA in those kits to murders committed by the notorious Golden State Killer in the 1970s and 1980s. That profile, in turn, matched Joseph James DeAngelo, authorities said. He was arrested in April and has so far been charged with 13 counts of murder, some involving other offenses related to rape, robbery and burglary

In addition to cold cases, preserving and testing rape kits has the potential to help solve future crimes. Detectives investigating a rape, for example, may be able to link a suspect's DNA to an earlier sexual assault in which DNA was uploaded to CODIS and establish a pattern of criminal behavior — something not uncommon among rapists and child molesters.

Last year, the federal government released guidelines on preserving kits. The National Institute of Justice recommends maintaining rape kits in "uncharged or unsolved reported cases" for at least 50 years or the length of the statute of limitations. But police are only obligated to follow their states' evidence retention laws, which vary widely. Some require evidence be kept only after an arrest or conviction, and even those differ in whether that happens automatically or only after a convict files a petition. Others mandate retention when a case is still being investigated. Local jurisdictions can also enact their own rules governing when evidence must be kept.

The accused may have just as much at stake in the preservation of evidence as victims.

"[A defendant] has a right to have his own experts review that material," said New Hampshire defense attorney Michael Iacopino, who has served on the board of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "The analysis that was done...was [it] done correctly? Was it potentially contaminated?"

The ability to test or re-test the items in a rape kit played a role in overturning at least 195 convictions for rape, murder and other crimes since 1992, according to CNN's analysis of data supplied by The National Registry of Exonerations.

Keith Harward spent 33 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape and murder. He walked out of a Virginia prison in 2016 because a rape kit and other evidence was maintained and could be tested. That analysis not only showed he was innocent but also identified the man who committed the crime.

"If it hadn't been for the rape kit, I'd probably still be in prison," said Harward, who was serving a life sentence. "So I say [to police], 'What are you afraid of... by holding all the rape kits?'... Would you rather somebody [who's innocent] get executed?"

Pressuring victims, misunderstanding trauma

During a life-threatening trauma like rape, the defense circuitry of the brain drives the victim's sole objective: to survive.

Reflexes govern reaction — running away, punching the attacker, lying there paralyzed. Stress hormones can impair a victim's memory and the ability to make complex, rational decisions.

Investigators trained in the effects of trauma know that a victim's first account of an assault may not be complete, experts said, and it may not be the best time to ask some questions.

Yet documents CNN examined showed officers sometimes asked questions that threatened to overwhelm victims or put them on the defensive.

"Did you say no? Did you fight back? Why didn't you call police right away?"

A traumatized person's instinct is often to avoid the pain that can come from retelling or reliving the experience. Avoidance and withdrawal are common symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. But when victims pulled away from investigations soon after they reported being assaulted, when the trauma was fresh, some police officers were quick to label them uncooperative and close their cases.

"We're trained to sniff out the liar," said Justin Boardman, a former Utah police detective who teaches cops how to understand trauma. "So when you don't give us this training that says — 'Oh, she's pulling away because she's traumatized, or she can't tell me this detail because she legit can't remember' — we think she's lying or she's hiding something."

Experts who reviewed cases said detectives appeared to rush victims into making consequential decisions, effectively ending some cases. They noted that investigators violated longstanding best practices by asking victims if they wanted to prosecute their attackers soon after reporting the assaults to police — sometimes the same day. That question, they said, can intimidate victims and cause them to withdraw.

Prosecution should be discussed only after a thorough investigation is complete, experts said, when a prosecutor — not a victim — has determined that charges can be filed.

Some victims who expressed reluctance to proceed with a prosecution were asked to sign forms attesting to that. But victims should not be given waivers declining prosecution, according to guidelines by the International Association of Chiefs of Police as far back as 2005. Only the statute of limitations should constrain a victim's right to change her or his mind about moving forward with a prosecution, the association says.

The group's guidelines also stress that an investigator should try to spend time building rapport with a victim. Unless the public is in imminent danger, law enforcement should work at a pace comfortable for the victim.

Some case files showed detectives closed cases and called victims uncooperative if they didn't meet arbitrary deadlines.

In North Charleston, South Carolina, a woman reported being raped at knifepoint by a man who had once been a sexual partner. Police noted she'd been arrested for prostitution two years earlier and quizzed her about whether he was a client. She told them no. Though she did not know her assailant's name, she called police twice after her initial interview with information she thought might help identify him, according to the case file.

But when she failed to return a detective's call in a week's time, he wrote that she was uncooperative and ended the investigation 17 days after she reported being raped. Her kit — never tested — was destroyed less than a year later, even though testing might have identified the man. There was no statute of limitations on the crime, meaning the woman should have had as much time as she needed to help police pursue her assailant.

North Charleston's detective bureau commander, Major Scott Perry, declined to specify why the kit was destroyed. "Each case is evaluated on its own facts," he said, adding that the investigation could be reopened at any time if the victim re-approached police. He conceded, however, that not having the rape kit would make the case "more difficult to prosecute."

In Springfield, Missouri, police labeled victims uncooperative when they didn't respond to letters mailed to their homes warning that they had 10 business days to contact a detective or their assaults would not be further investigated. In at least six cases, records show, a detective sent the letter the day the officer was assigned to investigate.

The victims had undergone rape exams and given initial accounts to patrol officers, actions that demonstrated a desire for the crimes to be investigated. But when victims didn't meet that 10-day deadline, Springfield police sometimes sent another letter, telling victims their "failure" to respond led to the closing of their cases. The kits were later destroyed, even though the crimes remained within the statutes of limitations.

Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams said the 10-day letter is a tool used in all kinds of cases to spur a victim to work with police. He said investigators should use it only as a last resort — after a detective has exhausted every other means to reach a victim. He did not explain why some letters were sent immediately after victims reported being raped.

The letter is "a way to justify not doing your job," said Archambault, the retired San Diego sex crimes investigator who reviewed cases. It should never be sent to rape victims, she said.

"It's horrendous. This type of response will guarantee that the majority of victims will not participate in the investigation."

Victims sometimes leave their homes because they are afraid an attacker will find them again. It's "absurd," she said, to expect victims to check the mail and respond to a demand.

"It isn't that [victims] are being uncooperative. They're just dealing with survival. They're trying to get out of bed, get their clothes on, get to work, get the kids to school," Archambault said.

Police should instead give victims time — and access to counseling and services that help them feel safe, experts said. After that, they are far more likely to work with law enforcement.

A woman in West Valley, Utah, said she told police she was terrified that her rapist would hunt her down again, but she received neither time nor support.

According to her case file, the woman told a patrol officer that a man she'd broken up with came to her home and raped her. He ordered her to "shut her mouth," or he would "hurt her," she told the officer. He forced her into his car. She said she eventually managed to jump out and run into a Kmart, where someone called 911.

The woman gave police an initial statement about the assault and underwent a rape exam. Ten days later, on January 27, 2009, Detective Ryan Humphrey noted that she called him. She said she was "scared to pursue charges," he wrote in the case file.

He shut down the investigation.

CNN reached the woman, who was upset to learn that her rape kit was destroyed and never tested. She called the failure to analyze it "pathetic."

Police did not offer to take steps to protect her, she said. If they had, she might have gained confidence and worked with police. She said she wishes they'd told her, "'Well, we can still help you through this.'" (She asked that her name be withheld, and CNN does not typically identify sexual assault victims.)

Humphrey, who no longer works for the department, said that in the 10 days between the woman's report and her phone call, he did not try to locate and interview the suspect or do any other work on the case.

Like investigators at other agencies, Humphrey said resources were tight, and he struggled under the weight of a heavy caseload.

He closed the investigation, he said, because he assumed that the district attorney wouldn't file charges in a case without a victim's cooperation.

As he reflected on the case, he acknowledged he could have given the woman more time by leaving the case open and trying to build trust and rapport with her. He could have done what experts said is protocol: offer her a safety plan to allay her fears, such as patrolling near her home or helping her file a restraining order.

He agreed that the woman could have changed her mind and re-engaged when she was ready — her right in a state that had no statute of limitations to prosecute rape at the time she reported the crime.

"Obviously, she wanted to pursue it," he said, "because she went to the hospital and had a rape exam done."

Humphrey said he did not authorize destruction of the woman's rape kit but understood that once he closed a case, the evidence would be disposed.

Her kit should have been preserved, he said. Not keeping the investigation open was "a mistake. I look back at this case and can see that...."

Destroying rape kits in open investigations

There are many obstacles to a successful rape investigation. A victim is too scared to continue working with police. A suspect claims sex was consensual. Testing a kit doesn't crack a case.

But those circumstances shouldn't necessarily end an investigation. Officers can press pause and set cases aside, then reopen them if there's a break — a victim changes his or her mind, new leads emerge, technology improves and evidence can be retested.

Yet CNN identified 17 departments that destroyed a combined 92 kits in sex crimes investigations that police described as open or in other terms that mean the same thing, such as inactive or suspended.

In Idaho, Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White acknowledged that his department discarded rape kits in cases marked inactive.

"Sometimes," he said, "it appears we were too quick at the trigger to dispose."

In Farmington, New Mexico, police reported destroying kits in at least eight cases labeled inactive. Chief Steve Hebbe reviewed those cases and said the kits should not have been trashed. He then ordered a major change.

"We will not destroy sexual assault kits," he said. "We're not going to destroy them until after the statute of limitations is out." The chief also said he made sure his officers received fresh training in sex crimes investigations.

Proper training includes an understanding of what DNA testing can do — even when suspects claim sex was consensual. In several departments, CNN found officers failed to test kits in so-called consent cases because they believed testing would only demonstrate that sex occurred, not whether a crime occurred.

That's short-sighted, experts said. A DNA profile of the suspect in a consent case could match a DNA profile of an unidentified attacker in another rape, connecting those crimes and helping to solve them both. The testing of the backlog in Wayne County, Michigan, has linked kits in "consent" cases to suspects in other sexual assaults, said prosecutor Worthy.

CNN also discovered cases in which police listed "insufficient evidence" as a reason to destroy kits that were never analyzed. Testing might have produced evidence, advancing investigations while there was still time to prosecute.

Even a tested kit that fails to yield DNA evidence during an initial analysis should be preserved, forensic experts said, because testing technology is constantly improving. DNA that couldn't be detected just a few years ago can sometimes be recovered today.

Blake Nakamura, the chief deputy prosecutor in Utah's Salt Lake County, said he came to understand the importance of preserving evidence in sex crimes cases years ago.

Nakamura has been on both sides in the courtroom. As a private defense attorney, he successfully defended a man accused of sexually abusing a child by blocking the admission of evidence. When he became a prosecutor, he wanted to be able to admit all evidence and knew he had to protect rape kits from destruction.

So in 2011, he sent a memo to police departments in his county, notifying them to keep all evidence in sex offense cases. At least two failed to follow his directive: Salt Lake City and West Valley. They provided records to CNN showing they continued to destroy kits for at least a couple more years.

They also provided documentation showing why: Prosecutors in Nakamura's office approved the destruction.

When CNN showed those records to Nakamura, he was irate. He later spoke with his staff in colorful language he said he couldn't share. But the prosecutor feels certain they got his message.

Rape kits from children, teens destroyed

It is particularly egregious, experts said, to destroy rape kits belonging to children, the most vulnerable victims.

Young victims often can't express what happened to them, so their rape kits can speak for them. The evidence can prove abuse because suspects, unlike in adult cases, can't argue that sexual contact was consensual.

Statutes of limitations for teenagers and children typically do not start until victims reach adulthood.

"It takes years to comprehend the trauma of child sex abuse, well into adulthood, to decide whether to move forward," said Marci Hamilton, a professor and attorney who analyzed juvenile cases for CNN to determine whether they had been destroyed before the statutes of limitations.

"What police do when they destroy rape kits, and other evidence of crimes against children before the statute of limitations has passed, is rob them of their full chance at justice."

Hamilton and CNN identified 47 children's and teenagers' rape kits that were destroyed before the statutes of limitations expired or where there was no time limit to prosecute. At least 39 were untested.

CNN's analysis did not include "unfounded" cases, those in which police determined that no crime was attempted or occurred. But Hamilton, whose non-profit CHILD USA advocates for sexual abuse victims, argued that given the complexity of child sex abuse, juvenile reports should rarely be labeled unfounded.

In Fallon, Nevada, a detective dismissed a 7-year-old's case as unfounded, partly because the child looked away from him as he questioned her in 2013. The girl described how a man had assaulted her anally, orally and vaginally the previous night, and then methodically cleansed her body.

Even though the child was consistent in describing the incident to others, the detective said her body language — looking away — indicated she was being deceptive.

The detective suggested to her parents that they get her psychological help.

Police destroyed the girl's untested rape kit seven months after the allegations of abuse were made.

Experts said the 7-year-old's account should have raised a red flag; until children reach puberty and start to have sexual urges, they are generally incapable of imagining rape scenarios. The detective, they added, seemed to judge the child's body language as he would an adult's.

The police chief in Fallon, Kevin Gehman, said the girl's account was fully investigated but acknowledged "some weaknesses in the investigative process." He would not elaborate.

CNN's questions about the case prompted a review of all sexual assault investigations by the police and the city attorney. As a result, the attorney instructed police to stop destroying rape kits.

Hamilton and other experts said it is rare for minors to disclose abuse soon after it occurs. Out of fear or confusion — or because predators manipulate them — young victims may delay talking about what happened for years, if not decades. That's all the more reason to maintain their rape kits.

When children report what happened immediately, "it's extraordinary," Hamilton said. "When they have a rape kit, that's a gift."

'We thought we were doing things the right way

As head of the Fayetteville Police Department cold case unit, Lieutenant John Somerindyke discovered the massive rape kit destruction that prompted Chief Medlock to hold a news conference. Both men felt compelled to right the department's wrong.

Somerindyke has spent the last two years looking at old rape cases, figuring out whether sex crimes cases involving more than 300 victims could be reinvestigated — without their rape kits.

In the beginning, he could barely get through the reports. "I was angry," he said. "It got to the point where I had to stop reading...It was getting so disheartening."

Many cases looked as though they could have been solved, but the investigations were deeply flawed. The problems were the result of a lack of training, he said, but also a department culture that failed to take sex crimes as seriously as other violent felonies.

"The priority was homicides. After that, it was business robberies and aggravated assaults," he said. "The emphasis wasn't placed on rapes."

He said detectives were working rape cases "probably like we work a crackhead that got robbed in the projects at 2 in the morning."

The lieutenant was disgusted by the way police treated evidence differently.

"I don't think we were just getting rid of the guns like we were with the rape kits."

The evidence audit Somerindyke was asked to perform has helped the department identify its weaknesses in sex crimes investigations and learn from its mistakes.

Auditing sex crimes investigations, experts said, should be routine in law enforcement. It's not.

One law enforcement agency — the Philadelphia Police Department — holds itself accountable every year for how sex crimes are investigated by reviewing its cases side by side with attorneys from the Philadelphia Women's Law Project.

That effort began after a 1999 Philadelphia Inquirer investigation revealed that police had mishandled sex crimes cases for two decades.

The collaboration "overnight had the effect of demonstrating that there could be credibility in terms of the investigative process," said Chuck Wexler, head of the Police Executive Research Forum, an industry leader in advocating best practices. "There's definitely a need for that kind of quality control."

He's long encouraged agencies to replicate "The Philadelphia Model," but Wexler had trouble thinking of departments that have done so.

In May, the forum issued guidelines saying police should not only do internal reviews of investigations but bring in outside experts to examine cases, too.

"It's the essence of community policing," said Carol Tracy, an attorney and director of the Women's Law Project. She reviewed rape investigations from five agencies for CNN and has consulted with departments across the country grappling with their backlog of untested rape kits.

"Kits being destroyed — that is something I didn't realize was happening," she said.

She said she doubts the public knows that poorly conducted investigations play a role in improper rape kit destruction. "They don't know so they aren't applying pressure to departments to make them audit their work."

Fayetteville's effort to be transparent about the past meant trying to contact the victims whose kits were destroyed. Somerindyke and his officers reached 260 victims; three agreed to work with police again. One of the reopened cases ended with a successful prosecution.

Somerindyke remains hopeful and still talks about getting justice for rape victims. His drive is partly tied to his own feelings of guilt. He worked sex crimes years ago and was among the detectives who signed off on the destruction of rape kits.

"We really want to do the right thing now," the lieutenant said. "The right thing wasn't done a long time ago."

He said the bad police work wasn't malicious. It was the result of poor training or no training at all on sexual violence and its impact. It was old-fashioned bias that ruined cases. It was a failure to hire enough investigators and treat rape like a serious crime.

Had Somerindyke been asked before the audit whether his police department had improperly destroyed kits or mishandled rape investigations, he would not have known the answer.

"We thought we were doing things the right way."

He hopes the turmoil in Fayetteville sends a message to other law enforcement agencies that are destroying rape kits.

"Stop," he said. "Get training. Look at what you're doing. Reassess."

With recent natural disasters such as wildfires in California and hurricanes hitting the Southeastern U.S., the public continues to be exposed to aerial drones being used by public safety agencies to help with search and rescue operations, security monitoring, and other applications.

A recent survey sponsored by Cape, which develops a cloud-based platform for drone telepresence, found that more Americans are supporting the use of drones by law enforcement to improve community safety.

For example, in the event of an emergency, 89% of those surveyed said they expect law enforcement and first responders to be able to reach them quickly, with 85% expecting agencies to be able to access and gain total control of any area, regardless of terrain.

The study, entitled “Superheroes in the Sky,” also indicated that a majority of the public knows little about drones, with 84% saying that better education around the impact of drones would make them feel more comfortable about their use for public-safety purposes.

“Safety concerns are on the rise and consumers expect their local law enforcement and public safety agencies to leverage the very best tools and technology to keep them safe,” said Chris Rittler, CEO of Cape. “Today, drones are among the most powerful tools for providing law enforcement and first response agencies with access to the aerial visibility and intelligence needed to ensure the safety of first responders, local residents, and visitors. The agencies that fully leverage these critical tools will be leading the way when it comes to keeping our country safe.”

Robotics Business Review recently spoke with Rittler about the survey and the growing usage of commercial drones by public safety agencies, as well as their impact on public acceptance.

Public safety drones for security, rescue, first response

Q: Within the public safety sector, are groups more interested in using drones for security or for search-and-rescue operations?

Rittler: Today, we see public safety agencies leveraging drones across several use cases, from event and personnel security to disaster recovery and search and rescue – even using drones as first responders for real-time situational awareness.

The data from our national study on consumer drone perception indicates that the use of drones for event security is an area where we will likely see increased adoption. In fact, 69% of Americans say that recent terrorist attacks have increased their concern about safety when attending large events, and 66% consider the level of security that will be present before deciding to attend.

In light of those increasing concerns, 87% of Americans say they would feel safer if drones were used for improving security at large events. We are working with several agencies to provide Cape-enabled drones for enhanced security at upcoming holiday events. We expect to see them relied upon for upcoming New Year's Eve celebrations across the country as well.

More public safety agencies are integrating drones into daily emergency response operations. For example, in Mexico, one police department used Cape-enabled drones to reduce the city's crime rate by more than 10% and improve emergency call response times by 90%.

As part of the UAS Integration Pilot Program in Chula Vista, Calif., we are pioneering a new “Drone as a First Responder” approach to drone integration in partnership with the Chula Vista Police Department.

Drones are dispatched to high-priority calls that come in within a certain radius of the headquarters, where it is launched and acts as a first responder to the scene. This approach is not only helping the department to better allocate resources where they're most needed, but it's also giving responding officers critical visibility before entering potentially dangerous situations.

We are also increasingly seeing agencies turn to drones to help in search and rescue and disaster recovery efforts.

For example, following a natural disaster like the wildfires in California, drones can be used to gain better visibility when searching for victims, or those stranded and in need of help, or to survey damage and better understand containment or current threat levels.

They can also be used by insurance companies to expedite the claims process for those affected, or by telecom providers to inspect impacted cell towers to restore communications.

Regardless of a specific application, public safety agencies are seeing the benefits of drone integration to drive operational efficiencies and improve the safety of both their responding teams and of the communities they serve.

Need for education, transparency

Q: The survey also indicated a need for education and transparency around drones. Where do you think this education will happen – will it be performed by drone makers, service providers like Cape, or the companies/agencies using the drones?

Rittler: Ultimately, driving widespread adoption and support of drones for public safety will require cooperation and education by all participants – drone makers, technology and service providers, the companies and organizations that use drones, and also the FAA and governing bodies that create and oversee the regulations.

Our study shows that support already exists, but there is work to be done to address a major consumer education gap with regards to drones. Today, only 42% of Americans consider themselves to be familiar with drones and their uses, and 76% see them as toys.

But after being educated on the impact of drones, consumer support skyrocketed, with 94% of Americans saying they believe drones have the potential to improve public safety.

Consumers are ready to embrace drones as a key tool for ensuring their safety, and they're very clear on what's required to earn and keep that support – 84% say better education is key for making them more comfortable, and 88% want transparent communication about how they're being used.

We've seen firsthand the positive impact that drones can have in communities around the world. Cities like Chula Vista are great models for how to gain community support for drone programs through consistent, transparent communication and engagement.

Q: Beyond public safety, where are you seeing most interest in drones from current or prospective clients?

Rittler: We continue to see strong usage of drones and growth for Cape in public safety. That said, in 2018, we have also seen growth in both oil & gas and telecom, where drones are really revolutionizing the way companies think about asset inspection and other critical, but highly manual and time-consuming repetitive tasks. Moving into 2019, we expect this to be a major area of growth.

Q: What are the advantages of remote telepresence for drones, offered by your platform?

Rittler: The Cape Aerial Telepresence platform offers full drone telepresence and data management, and easily integrates with existing off-the-shelf drone hardware. Onside drone operators launch Cape-enabled drones. Then, once in flight, up to 50 credentialed users can log in to the Cape platform via any Internet-connected device — desktop/laptop, or via the Cape Spectator app on IOS or Android device — to simultaneously view the live stream in real time.

What makes the platform even more impactful is that it allows for fast, easy, and safe remote operations – or tele-operation – of the drone. So the right person or expert can take control and manipulate the drone from anywhere in the world to get the exact visibility needed.

For example, in the telecommunications or oil & gas sectors, companies can more quickly and safely conduct tower or well inspections. Today, these highly manual tasks require major time, money, and resource investments, and often take team members away from much more meaningful tasks.

With drones, expert technicians can more efficiently perform routine or emergency inspections remotely and access real-time data from anywhere in the world.

We've also seen this capability help expedite things like new facility builds, or inspections during merger and acquisitions for oil & gas operators. Where those traditionally required a ton of individuals traveling to sites to check progress and inspect assets, with Cape, all required team members can remotely monitor the project to speed approval timelines and drastically reduce travel spend.

Q: We're nearing the end of 2018 and looking forward to 2019. What big trends do you see happening next year in the area of commercial drones?

Rittler: In 2019 and beyond, usability, safety, security, and ease of integration will ultimately define the winners in the commercial drone space. As more IPP [FAA Integration Pilot Program] deployments roll out in the coming months, and we get additional data on adoption and impact, I think we'll see a lot of discussion in 2019 around how the regulatory environment must change to support innovation.

Today, the regulations aren't keeping pace with the available technology, and that has to change. We believe we're at an inflection point today. Just like smartphones changed the way we do business, offering access to new data and untethering teams, drones are doing the same.

About 10 years ago, we were talking about the explosion of the Mobile Enterprise. Now we're seeing the rise of the Aerial Enterprise. It's not just about buying and using a drone – how do you connect drones and the data they can collect to other existing systems and business applications? We're proud to be on the forefront of helping companies leverage all of the benefits that aerial visibility and intelligence offer.

https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/unmanned/people-comfortable-drones-public-safety/

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Trending

Imagine this: a world where crimes can be stopped before they occur, and where police officers can crack cases in record time. This may have been an unrealistic dream 20 years ago, but now, it is no longer a distant impossibility.

Across the world, the police are using artificial intelligence and data analytics to develop new tools and methods of working, so they can catch criminals more quickly and efficiently.

DXC Technology has identified three big trends for the future of public safety. Here are case studies from across Asia and the world of how public safety agencies are going through digital transformation; using artificial intelligence; and enabling cyber analytics.

1. Digital transformation

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) has set up a digital unit to research and develop tech-enabled tools that help officers work more efficiently. “It's useful internally to have a part of the police force that sees themselves maybe first as a technological organisation, rather than a police organisation,” said Assistant Commissioner Alvin Moh, Director of Planning and Organisation Department of the Singapore Police Force, at the Innovation Labs World summit.

His agency is building a police smartphone with custom apps that will transmit real-time information on the ground 24/7 to officers. Police officers “will be able to make better and faster decisions, [and have] more effective response”, K. Shanmugam, Minister of Law and Home Affairs, announced at the SPF's annual workplan seminar in May. From next March onwards, 8000 front-line police officers will be able to use their smartphones to respond to incidents.

According to Moh, it is essential for the police to reinvent their investigation methods to keep up with new modes of crime. “The old mode of working is, I seize the laptop, I want to get it analysed, I send it to my tech experts. Moving forward, that cannot be the case anymore, it's too many devices,” Moh remarked. Police robots will soon patrol and engage with residents to complement the patrol work of real officers, he said.

These patrol robots are equipped with cameras that transmit a 360-degree view of their environments to their command posts in real-time. During its patrol, the cameras can detect and flag suspicious activities, so police officers can be swiftly deployed to the scene.

The Home Team Academy has begun using virtual and augmented reality to create more immersive and realistic training environments for its police officers. “We have started to embrace training simulators, augmented reality”, said Moh. These augmented environments train officers by simulating potential incidents like terror attacks, which officers can respond to.

Handheld scanners now allow officers to take real-time 3D scans of crime scenes. They take measurements of objects found at crime scenes without physically measuring the real object.

2. Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is now helping police officers to identify crime patterns and stop future crimes. “Based on accumulated experience or data, they can predict how much percent of this would be happening,” Noboru Nakatani, Executive Director of the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) in Singapore told GovInsider.

The Netherlands is using AI algorithms to analyse huge amounts of investigation requests, so its police officials can sieve out important intelligence on potential threats. “Sometimes, very valuable information can end up in a file, in an office. But what if in this file is crucial information about a potential terrorist group?” said Anita Hazenberg, Innovation Director of the IGCI. AI allows police agencies to be “more efficient towards each other with law enforcement co-operation,” she added.

Meanwhile, police officers can now outsource tasks to AI and robotics, so they have more time to work on more complicated cases. “In a couple of years, some police functions will hardly exist. There will be robots,” Hazenberg predicted.

The Dubai Police has built smart police stations that are run entirely by AI-powered robots. “There are no human beings there,” she said. The smart police station, which operates 24/7, provides services like crime reporting, lost-and-found requests, and victim support, and receives labour complaints and home security requests.

3. Cyber analytics

As cyberspace becomes the new domain for warfare, cyber attacks are now the new norm. In June, the personal information of 1.5 million patients were stolen from Singapore's SingHealth servers – the country's largest cyber breach to date. Meanwhile, last year's WannaCry ransomware attacks infected tens of thousands of computers across 74 countries, Wired reported.

Countries are fighting back against cyber threats with big data analytics. Australia, for one, is building a national network of cyber threat sharing centres to detect and protect its citizens from malicious cyber attacks.

In these sharing centres, cyber security experts from academia, businesses and government can pool sensitive data on cyber threats in an online sharing portal. They then use big data analytics to detect patterns of malicious cyber activity and implement adaptive, data-driven ways of responding to cyber threats. So far, the federal government has set up centres in four major cities – Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney – with plans to roll more out across Australia.

At the state level, the New South Wales (NSW) government has inked an AUD$11 million deal with Data61 – Australia's largest data innovation group – to use data analytics to identify cyber threats in real-time. “Cyber security has emerged as one of the most high profile, borderless and rapidly evolving risks facing governments across the globe, so it is essential we are at the forefront of new ideas and thinking,” announced Victor Dominello, NSW's Minister for Finance, Services and Property, in a press statement.

With tech-enabled tools for crime fighting, police officers are transforming the very face of law enforcement to keep their cities and communities safer.

https://govinsider.asia/innovation/three-big-trends-for-the-future-of-public-safety/

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Washington State

Eight eastern Washington agencies to join in using Tyler's New World public safety software

Tyler Technologies, Inc. TYL, +0.88% announced today that it has signed an agreement with the Bi-County Police Information Network (BiPIN) for Tyler's New World Mobile™, New World Enterprise Records Management System™ (RMS), New World Corrections™, and field reporting public safety solutions.

Through the agreement, BiPIN will leverage Tyler's New World public safety software to modernize, streamline efficiencies, and improve workflows for eight law enforcement agencies in eastern Washington. Agencies that make up the consortium include Franklin and Benton counties; the cities of Kennewick, Connell, Pasco, Prosser, Richland, and West Richland.

The BiPIN consortium was looking for a reliable, scalable technology platform to enable greater efficiencies through consolidation. After observing Tyler's public safety solutions in use, BiPIN's agency decision-makers unanimously selected Tyler to meet the consortium's public safety software needs.

“The eight agencies in the BiPIN consortium were won over by Tyler's longevity, stability, and reputation for excellence in both technology solutions and client service,” said Christina Palmer, director of management services for the City of Kennewick and IT project manager for BiPIN. “Until we were introduced to Tyler's New World public safety solutions, we were struggling to find a technology platform that met the needs of the consortium. With New World, we will be able to make all agencies more efficient by streamlining mission-critical tasks, allowing us to keep our communities safer.”

By implementing Tyler's New World public safety solutions within all eight of its agencies, BiPIN will have access to advanced functionality, such as:

Paperless workflow to maximize time and efficiency

Digitally-linked evidence barcoding that is easily tracked within the records management system

Mobile field reporting capabilities

High-volume file uploading capabilities, including multimedia formats

Technology that easily interfaces with other systems

“BiPIN required solutions that could be easily deployed across multiple agencies within its consortium, and we believe our public safety solutions will be the perfect fit to make their agencies more efficient and more responsive to citizens' needs,” said Greg Sebastian, president of Tyler's Public Safety Division. “The consortium will be able to take advantage of advanced functionality with a reliable platform that can grow with their needs.”

With the addition of the BiPIN consortium to Tyler's client roster, Tyler now serves more than 100 public safety agencies in the state of Washington. Additionally, Tyler's New World software is utilized in over 20 consolidated arrangements nationwide, including those in Snohomish County, WA, the Marion Area Multi-Agency Emergency Telecommunication Center (METCOM) in Woodburn, OR and the state of Delaware.

About Tyler Technologies, Inc.

Tyler Technologies TYL, +0.88% is a leading provider of end-to-end information management solutions and services for local governments. Tyler partners with clients to empower the public sector - cities, counties, schools and other government entities - to become more efficient, more accessible and more responsive to the needs of their constituents. Tyler's client base includes more than 15,000 local government offices in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia, and other international locations. In 2017, Forbes ranked Tyler on its "Most Innovative Growth Companies" list, and Fortune included Tyler on its "100 Fastest-Growing Companies" list. More information about Tyler Technologies, headquartered in Plano, Texas, can be found atwww.tylertech.com.

https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/tyler-technologies-to-provide-consolidated-public-safety-solutions-to-washington-states-bipin-consortium-2018-11-29

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United Kingdom

Does Banning Specific Dog Breeds Improve Public Safety?

An investigation in the UK shows that breed-specific legislation is not working.

In many places one of the most contentious issues faced by dog owners has to do with laws that attempt to protect the public from dog bites from dangerous and aggressive dogs. Typically, such laws are hastily put together as a political response to an outcry in the media due to some high profile incidents where people were mauled, or perhaps even killed, by dogs of an identifiable breed. An example of this can be found in the UK in its 1991 "Dangerous Dogs Act."

I think that most responsible people can agree with a law that makes it a crime for an owner to allow any dog "to be dangerously out of control." However the law in the UK took an action which many dog owners and dog organizations find offensive — namely the banning of specific breeds of dogs. Section 1 of the Act includes the so-called Breed-Specific Legislation (BSL), which makes it illegal to own, sell, breed, give away or abandon specific breeds/types of dog regardless of the animal's behavior or temperament. The British parliamentarians chose to be fairly conservative in designating the list of dangerous breeds, limiting themselves to four dog breeds known to be bred for fighting. These are the pit bull terrier, Japanese tosa, dogo Argentino, and fila Brasileiro. However, like most other examples of breed-specific legislation, the act permits any dog to be seized as a "dangerous dog" simply because a member of a police force concludes that the dog "looks like" one of those breeds. If this happens, the dog is placed in a police-appointed kennel pending examination. Even if the dog has no genetic relationship to one of these banned breeds, based only on its appearance, the owner may still have to go through the courts if they want to keep it. To do so they must be deemed a "fit and proper" owner and the dog must be assessed as not posing a risk to public safety.

Numerous animal welfare groups have argued that breed-specific legislation is really not useful, and is ultimately unfair and arbitrary. Politicians, on the other hand, have become concerned for budgetary reasons. Specifically it was revealed that in the past eight years, 3 million British pounds has been spent on kenneling seized dogs, and over 5 million pounds on police costs for investigation and prosecutions. Ultimately the combination of pressure from animal groups and budget minded politicians triggered a parliamentary investigation by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. The inquiry was launched to investigate breed-specific legislation and the wider implications associated with dog control covered by the Dangerous Dog Act. The resulting report indicates that there are definitely problems with the current law, and no evidence for any benefit to public safety.

The data obtained reveals a distressing pattern, since more than half of the dogs killed after being seized by police have not harmed anyone. The latest available figures show that in 2015 to 2016 a total of 307 dogs were destroyed after being seized, but that 175 of these (57%) would be widely regarded as “innocent." In fact, the vast majority of dogs seized during that period (599 out of a total of 731, or 82%) had not attacked anyone or showed dangerous intentions. Nonetheless, their owners faced a long and expensive legal fight if they decided to try to get their pets back.

The death of innocent dogs does not seem to bother some of the politicians involved. For example the parliamentary report notes comments made by Environment Minister Lord Gardiner, when he appeared before the committee. He was questioned about a case of a pit-bull type dog which had to be put down by Battersea Dogs and Cats Home despite the fact that it was clear to all involved that the dog posed no threat to anyone. Asked whether he regarded the death of the dog who appeared to have been "good-tempered," as "merely collateral damage," the minister blandly replied "Yes", with no further elaboration.

The information uncovered in this investigation makes it clear that the existing legislation has not improved public safety. The report noted that figures from 2015 suggested that hospital admissions related to dog bites had risen 76% from those recorded 10 years previously. Furthermore the committee pointed to RSPCA statistics which indicated that of the 30 people killed by dogs between 1991 and 2016, 21 of them (70%) had been attacked by dogs that were not banned breeds.

Obviously this new set of data indicates that breed-specific legislation is not working in the UK. However, its very existence allows individuals with political agendas to use the list of banned breeds to further their own aims. Recently PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) submitted a proposal to amend the Dangerous Dog Act by adding Staffordshire Bull Terriers to the banned list of dangerous dog breeds. What is astonishing is that they argue that it should be done for their protection of the dogs.

The PETA website states that Staffies are "one of the most abused [breeds] – in fact, the RSPCA has confirmed that 80 per cent of its cruelty-to-animals prosecutions concern Staffies. The breed is also the most likely to be abducted and used by criminal gangs for fighting rings or as guard dogs." The website then asks the question "why would anyone fight the introduction of legislation that would prevent people from bringing more of them into a world that treats many so cruelly?"

Apparently the members of PETA do not see the absurdity of their argument. It is equivalent to arguing that the solution to the problem of child abuse is to make it illegal for people to have children. However, the motivation behind PETA's proposal becomes obvious when we consider that its founder, Ingrid Newkirk, stated in an interview with Newsday in February 1988, “In the end, I think it would be lovely if we stopped this whole notion of pets altogether.” Obviously, putting all dog breeds on the banned list would be one way to help achieve this "lovely" outcome.

In response to PETA's action, a national petition was signed by more than 156,000 people in a bid to stop this breed from being banned. The petition was set up by Steve Quinn, who said Staffies are loving companions and people created dangerous dogs rather than breeds of dog being bad.

Once a petition reaches 100,000 signatures, it has to be debated by Parliament. The outcome has apparently gone well for the petitioners since a spokesman told the BBC that "The Government has no intention of prohibiting the keeping of Staffordshire Bull Terriers." This was interpreted by many people as an act of kindness which will keep another dog breed from being abused by breed-specific legislation. It was also was taken as an indication that the government is considering recommendations for a major set of changes for the Dangerous Dog Act, perhaps also modifying or abandoning the concept of breed-specific legislation itself.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201811/does-banning-specific-dog-breeds-improve-public-safety?amp

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Qatar

Qatar among world's safest countries: Public Security chief

The Director-General of Public Security H E Staff Major General Saad bin Jassim Al Khulaifi said the State of Qatar holds high ranking in the list of safest countries in the world and its successful development is a reflection to the stability, safety and peace in the State, despite all challenges and crises in the region.

In an interview with Qatar News Agency (QNA), Al Khulaifi touched on many topics related to the efforts of the Ministry of Interior and its success in the field of security and services as well as its preparations for the future including securing the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Al Khulaifi said the factors of success and growth seen in the State for different services and development programs is a normal reflection of the success in security, amidst the crises and terrorist attacks taking place in the region. This is an indication of the strength of the security structure in Qatar which has been confirmed by the international indicators which is completely neutral, where the State has assumed an advanced position among the countries of the world, he said.

The Director-General said these successes come despite the imposed unjust siege on the State, where Qatar has struck a great example for resilience facing regional and global challenges with tact and professionalism and continued to move towards achieving goals with determination.

Staff Major General said the wise directives of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani followed by the accurate follow-up by Prime Minister and Interior Minister H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani has made Qatar the region's leader in peace, safety and stability.

Al Khulaifi said in 2016 and 2017, Qatar ranked first among the GCC and Arab countries and the 30th out of 163 countries in the Global Peace Index.

This is due to the low crime rates especially those of murder and violence, the low number of prisoners, the absence of terrorism and the stability of the political situation, he added.

The Director General said Qatar ranked first globally in the years between 2014 and 2017 in the business costs of crime and violence index of the Global Competitiveness Report. In addition, it was ranked sixth in combating organised crime, ninth in public confidence index in services provided to the public, he said.

Al Khulaifi said these rankings indicate the amount of efforts exerted in maintaining peace and security on a local and external scale and refutes the suspicions, allegations and fabrications that the siege counries have to prove which is that Qatar supports terrorism.

Al Khulaifi said in light of these achievements, the State of Qatar was able counter all malicious attempts by the siege countries to undermine its security and deprive its decision and sovereignty and make it dependent through false claims, according to the global community.

Al Khulaifi said the siege countries sought to distort Qatar's image through terrorism and destabilise the region. They also tried to weaken the State whether through an economic siege or other tactics but it failed greatly and Qatar remained strong in its security, economy, sovereignty, diplomacy and international presence, he said.

The Director General of Public Security highlighted Qatar's clear and firm stance since the beginning of the crises, which is that dialogue is the only way to resolve the issue, provided that the sovereignty of the State or interference in its internal affairs is not affected.

Al Khulaifi said expressed his thanks and gratitude to the Amir of the State of Kuwait H H Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah for all the efforts made to resolve the crisis. Staff Major General also praised the role of all the brotherly and friendly countries that supported Kuwait's mediation to resolve it, reiterating that the solution will only come through dialogue.

MoI's achievements

In response to a question on the Ministry of Interior's most important achievements in the security and service fields in the light of its past strategy (2011-2016), the Director General of Public Security confirmed that the Ministry has made clear and tangible achievements during the past period, through the implementation of the strategies on the ground, in accordance with the development and modernisation plans based on the provision of human and material capabilities and the provision of equipment and devices, considering the importance of excellence and leadership in the security and service.

In the field of services, he said that this field has witnessed a remarkable development, where the Ministry of Interior has paid attention to the completion of services and transactions, whether directed to the public or governmental and private institutions and institutions, and made it accessible to all, and also it worked in expanding the circle of access to geographically and electronically (either through Metrash 2 or through the website of the Ministry of the Interior).

The Staff Major General stressed the keenness of the Ministry of Interior on moving forward in providing services to the public in different classes and categories, according to its strategy based on the application of ‘Decentralized services' and serving the public through various digital platforms and geographical locations.

On the achievements in the filed of security, he pointed out that the Ministry is always seeking to establish security and stability all over the country and to achieve public safety.

The Director General of Public Security said the security stability witnessed by the State of Qatar came through the rapid development and modernisation of security and police agencies at both technical and human levels, significant and ongoing partnerships with police and security organs in different countries both in the area of training and capacity-building or the creation of secured and safe environment.

Staff Major General Saad bin Jassim Al Khulaifi said the Ministry of the Interior has made huge leaps in the field of public security, which relates to the security situation in the country, where major crimes rates significantly dropped in Qatar according to international security indexes, and despite the high population within the country during the past years.

In this context, he pointed out that the indicators of the security situation for the past year witnessed a significant decrease in the number of communications of major crimes at the level of specialised security and geographic departments. Major crimes amounted 3 percent of the total number of criminal offenses committed in 2016, while the rate of serious crimes also decreased by 12.9% compared to previous years.

Speaking to QNA, Al Khulaifi said that the Ministry of Interior applies the highest international standards of community safety and security, in order to preserve lives and properties, in line with the global indicators for measuring the state of peace and security in the world.

Fighting terrorism

Responding to a question on Qatar's cooperation with other countries as well as regional and international organizations to address the challenges associated with terrorism, organized crime and drugs, Maj. Gen. Al Khulaifi said that the State of Qatar has a comprehensive vision for fighting terrorism, organized crime and drugs, adding that Doha's efforts to achieve international peace and security have become clear and visible to the whole world.

In this context, He pointed that the State of Qatar, for example, strongly supported the Doha Declaration issued by the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, a declaration on crime prevention and criminal justice in cooperation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

He explained that this declaration, funded by the State of Qatar represented by the Ministry of Interior, has so far managed to reach more than 20,000 beneficiaries under the four components of it the various programs (Integrity of the Judiciary, Education for Justice, Youth Sports for Crime Prevention, Rehabilitation of Prisoners. The Declaration has covered 192 countries.

The Staff Major General said that the Ministry also chairs the National Committee to Combat Terrorism. “The State of Qatar has signed several agreements, memorandums of understanding and letters of intent to reaffirm the principle of international cooperation to combat terrorism as well as related crimes.”

On the level of combating organised crime, he said Qatar participates in all meetings and conferences held at the regional and international levels adding that it has made initiatives and proposals that have been accepted by specialists in order to reduce organized crime in all its forms. He further stressed the need for joining all international and regional efforts to combat crime and achieve justice.
Security efforts

He also pointed out that the Ministry of the Interior has built systems and committees and issued laws and rules to keep pace with local, regional and international security developments. He pointed out in this context to the establishment of several important committees to strengthen security efforts and international communication, including the National Committee for Combating Terrorism, the National Committee for Combating Drugs, the National Committee for Traffic Safety and the Supreme Civil Defence Council in addition to the modernisation and development of various sectors and security departments in the ministry.

The Director-General revealed the establishment of a special, fully equipped, building for the coasts and borders security, which will be opened soon, to enhance protection and monitoring of the coasts and territorial waters of the State. “This development comes in the context of the development and modernisation of various security departments and sectors in the State,” he said.

About the most sensitive security systems, he told QNA that the Ministry of the Interior has an electronic security system equipped with advanced appliances and trained qualified personnel to protect all state institutions in light of the many hacking attempts, in addition to combating cybercrime, stressing the importance of this system and its role in protecting and securing the World Cup in Qatar 2022.

Qatar 2022

On the role played by the Ministry of the Interior in the preparations for the World Cup Qatar 2022 and its training programs in this regard, Maj. Gen Al Khulaifi explained that the Ministry of Interior is part of the international event, pointing to the terms of reference of the Security Committee of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC), which oversees and takes responsibility for the security aspects of the 2022 World Cup. He explained that the Ministry of Interior's Strategy 2018-2022 has put securing the hosting of the 2022 World Cup as a core objective, “In this context, we are working with a clear training plan in building the human and technical capabilities of police and security personnel.

The Director-General of Public Security said the Ministry of Interior continuously seeks to implement its plans and programs to expand outlets of these services as needed to enable the public to get their transactions done, whereas the coverage rate of services in the State reached 95 percent.

Police training

On attracting, qualifying and training Qatari personnel to work in the Ministry of Interior, Al Khulaifi said it began with the first police training school which was established in 1971 train all employees of the ministry and develop police work in the country, the school's name was then changed to Police Training Institute in 1983.

He said the institute provides the police with trained human resources qualified to carry out its duties. It also works on raising the level and efficiency of the police staff by conducting refresher training courses, developing police curricula and training them at the level non-commissioned officers. Al Khulaifi said the State stayed up to date with the scientific and academic development, where Amiri Decision No. 161 of 2013 was issued to establish the Police College and its subordination to the ministry.

On qualifying female candidates in the police and security force, Al Khulaifi said Qatar is one of the most developed countries in all activities especially that related to women. There are now female advisory council members and women in academic, medical, administrative and police fields. He said the ministry gives great importance to qualifying and training women in different civil and military sectors and praised the great successes achieved by women in the security and services field.

On the Permanent Committee for Emergency (PCE) in the Ministry of Interior, he said the PCE is generally specialised in preparing studies, developing plans and procedures to deal with disasters and setting rules and regulations to ensure the speedy relief of those affected and ensuring the safety and security of transportation and communications, as well as developing and disseminating awareness plans in the media.

Permanent residency

On the laws recently enacted such as the permanent residency, asylum and the amendment of the law of expatriates entry, exit and residency, Al Khulaifi said that these laws have been enacted in the framework of Qatar's keenness on ensuring and protecting human rights. He stated that the Permanent Residence Card is an extension of fundamental constitutional concepts and a vivid embodiment of Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani's speeches when he joins the citizens with the residents. It targets benefiting from the competencies residing in the country.

On the procedures of implementation of this law by the Ministry of Interior, the Director General of Public Security stated that a working team has been set up to prepare for the implementation of this law by preparing the necessary decisions to implement it and to select the headquarters and the necessary technical and human requirement.

He said several meetings were held with the competent authorities, namely the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Municipality and Environment on determining of the rules and conditions of the permanent residence card in accordance with the law. He said that all applications for permanent residency are subject to legal scrutiny to ensure compliance with all legal conditions and other conditions by legal auditors.

On the amendment in Article 7 of Law No. (21) of 2015, regulating the entry and exit of expatriates and their residency, Al Khulaifi said that such laws are a natural development through which the rights of the workers can be better protected, especially since Qatar has started a new approach in the recruitment of workers.

Law of asylum

Speaking about the law of asylum, Al Khulaifi said that this law comes as a result of the development of international law, and asylum is generally the result of reasons that make the people come out of their country as a result of fear or conflict or other. The United Nations represented by the UNHCR adopted in September 2016 a set of commitments to strengthen the protection of refugees and migrants.

As for the objectives Interior Ministry's strategy for the next five years at the security and service level, Al Khulaifi noted that the strategy comes in the context of the Ministry's keenness to perform its duties and tasks in accordance with planned programs and plans that harness all possibilities for preserving security, lives and property, and for providing excellent services for citizens and residents.

In the context of this vision and these objectives, The Ministry developed it strategy for the years (2018-2022), which includes many goals derived from Qatar National Vision 2030, he added.

https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/26/11/2018/Qatar-among-world-s-safest-countries-Public-Security-chief

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London

London's Metropolitan Police force considers armed foot patrols

The Metropolitan Police is considering deploying armed officers on foot patrols to prevent violence in areas "where gang activity is likely".

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick told a hearing the move would only be used in "extreme circumstances".

In a memo seen by the BBC, she said the measure would only be used for "short periods of time".

The Met said armed patrols would not be "routine", but a Labour peer warned they would be "seen as provocative".

'Temporary measure'

The number of violent deaths in London has reached 127 so far, surpassing 2017's total of 116 killings.

In the memo seen by the BBC, email recipients were told the idea of armed police on foot patrol was part of a "recent internal discussion" into how to reduce violent deaths in the capital.

If adopted, the armed patrols would be "based on an informed and reliable intelligence picture of where gang activity is likely", only be done in "full consultation with the local policing borough" and be used as a "temporary measure for short periods of time", the memo stated.

Does the presence of armed police reassure people?

Ms Dick told a London Assembly hearing the change would only be "half a step on" from the status quo and represent a "small change in tactic in extreme circumstances".

Met assistant commissioner Sir Stephen House told the same hearing the armed patrols were part of a "range of tactics" the force was considering to "get ahead of the violence", and added the force was at "very early stages" of a "very limited consultation".

In a later statement, he said: "We are not considering routine deployments of armed officers in our communities.

"As part of our response to the increase in violent crime in London we are examining how our armed officers can provide extra support and augment other units, either in response to a serious assault, or to be deployed to areas where we have intelligence that serious violence is imminent.

"Any deployments would be for a limited time only and done in consultation with local policing commanders, and after a community impact assessment had been carried out."

'Inspire fear'

The Met confirmed it had contacted a community group for "initial views" on how communities might be impacted by such activity, but had not yet made a decision.

But Labour peer Lord Harris told the House of Lords he was "not convinced" the move would be helpful.

He added: "It would be seen as provocative, it will inspire fear rather than reassurance, it will hinder community confidence and do little in itself to reduce the number of violent incidents."

Ms Dick told the hearing she and her colleagues were "hugely aware" of the "sensitivity there has been over changes to the disposition of armed officers.

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-england-london-46385822

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by Alfie Moore

Overstretched officers are having to act as a last line of defence Is it time to say enough is enough?

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) tells us that “overstretched police forces are having to ‘pick up the pieces of a broken mental health system' on top of tackling crime”.

As an experienced police officer, for me the standout words in that sentence are “having to”. The police are never closed, can't knock off early and are always the last line of defence. We can never say “no”. This seems a far cry from the partnership working ethos of the noughties, when there was so much overlap between services that people were far better supported. In these austere times, services continue to “shrink apart”, and vulnerable people are falling through the gaps.

I read with deep concern that “the top five individual repeat callers to the Metropolitan Police Service (all of whom have mental health problems) called a combined total of 8,655 times in 2017. It cost the service £70,000 just to answer the calls.” That's a startling figure, as £70,000 equates to two full-time police officers managing five people.

With the sad decline of community policing, what our police have become is very much a “response service”. What meaningful response can the police offer the same five individuals 8,655 times? Without knowing the details, I would suggest those callers need a comprehensive support plan. Is the police force the appropriate agency to manage that? Almost certainly not.

I've already said that we can't say “no”… or can we?

Here's the elephant in the room, the question no one wants to answer: at what point do we say “enough is enough”, make the referral to adult services and simply block the repeat caller's number? Surely your answer is never, as they are vulnerable and at risk of harm. The reason we think like that is because those five people are real, identifiable and the police have a duty of care towards them. Just imagine what the headlines would be if we blocked their call and one came to significant harm?

Now consider the people we cannot identify and quantify – the callers who couldn't get through because the police were busy dealing with those 8,655 calls. What if they too were vulnerable, and some almost certainly were? What if they came to significant harm or even died – and they may have? Where was our duty of care to them?

Police 'picking up pieces of mental health system', says watchdog

These are the decisions that the police service has to consider as the pressure on resources continues to build. Of course, all conscientious, hard-working coppers hate the fact that they can no longer provide a premium service. The vast majority blame the Tory government's austerity policy, but many also blame the chief officers who put ambition before integrity and remained silent when the squeeze came. You know who you are – keeping your heads down, quietly selling off building stock, sharing specialist services and outsourcing anything you could lay your hands on.

I can feel the winds of change now, though. A small handful of bosses have started to quietly protest in the last couple of years and now they are growing in numbers and beginning to roar. Hardly a week goes by when I don't read about another chief making a stand against the “centre”, for instance by planning legal action against government cuts, or demanding more resources from the Home Office.

Good for you. I applaud you. It's not too late, and we can still save the finest police service in the world, but it really is time to stand up and be counted now before it's gone. The public, who have seen their council tax increase and their level of service from the police drop, don't have to wait for the election ballot box; they can lobby their MPs to reverse cuts now. The Police Federation of England and Wales is highlighting the public health risk because of police cuts, and the rising assaults on police themselves due to austerity. Some experienced officers became despondent about the crippling cuts and left the force, exacerbating the problem. Those who remain need to try to put their disenchantment behind them and support their chiefs against the common adversary. And now, the HMICFRS has stepped in.

The HMICFRS is our inspectorate, not our friend. They are described as “independent assessors”, but are considered by most in policing circles to be very corporate and by the very nature of their work, critical. When even they start feeling sorry for the police, and risk raising their heads above the parapet to offer outspoken support, then you know we're in deep trouble.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/police-force-cuts-mental-health

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Missouri

Disbanding of Columbia police's Community Outreach Unit elicits mixed emotions

by Emily Lentz and Sam Balmer

After the Columbia Police Department announced Monday that it would be ending its Community Outreach Unit, some residents who live in the neighborhoods the unit serves expressed uneasiness about the effect the unit's disbanding could have on their communities.

Deputy Chief Jill Schlude said the program was ending at the end of the year because of understaffing in the department as well as a low number of applicants for vacant positions. The Community Response Unit initiative will replace the outreach unit by staffing eight officers across eight beats in the city who will take on the same duties of the outreach unit. The outreach unit had 14 officers, which means six will go back into patrol beats.

The unit was formally created in May 2015, following five years of geographic policing in which officers were assigned to areas of the city known to be “hotspots” for crime. In October 2015, the City Council formed a 2015 Strategic Plan and chose three neighborhoods on which to focus the unit's resources. Two officers were assigned to each neighborhood, tasked with building relationships with the community.

Councilman Mike Trapp insisted that the Community Outreach Program is not ending but is rather being rebranded as the Community Response Unit.

“The officers will be free from the geographic constraints (of the neighborhoods) and will be free to work with other officers while still paying attention to high-crime areas,” Trapp said.

But some residents say they worry their communities will become a low priority for officers with the disbandment of the outreach unit.

Pat Kelley, who lives on Grand Avenue in the Central Strategic Plan Neighborhood, is afraid the change will hurt the community rather than help it. According to Kelley, for years there were incidents of property damage — like kids shooting out windows with BB guns, throwing firecrackers at cars and other crimes — that were never investigated even when reports were filed. Too often they were deemed low priority by police.

“We know they're small crimes, but the whole idea of (the Strategic Plan) is to address them before they're big,” Kelley said.

When the Strategic Plan was implemented, Kelley was relieved to have an officer assigned to look into crimes in her community. Under the unit, robbery, assault and burglary rates, among other crimes, all decreased. While crime wasn't completely eliminated, Kelley worries rates will rise again once the plan officially ends. She pointed out that especially in low-income communities, spending $100 to fix a broken window can be debilitating, and even more so when it happens repeatedly.

Three weeks ago, John McFarland returned from the library to find bullet holes in his front window on Jewell Avenue. The same thing had happened three houses down. Three weeks before that, someone had shattered a car windshield just down the street.

“What if someone had been standing there?” McFarland, a resident of the central neighborhood, said.

McFarland worries that there will be no interest in his community unless the crime is murder.

“If there's no more outreach program, people are going to feel like they can get away with anything,” McFarland said, and added that it might lead to more acts like those committed on his street.

McFarland doesn't think the decision is financially motivated.

“They can always find money,” McFarland said. “We're just not a priority.”

Besides the physical risks, Kelley said she believes the two community outreach officers assigned to her neighborhood also heightened trust in the police. She cited one summer event in particular, where officers brought pizza and community members came out to hear music and socialize.

“It brought out people who maybe don't have a positive image of the police, and they got to know each other,” she said.

Kelley believes that having officers interacting with the community not only helps citizens to trust them but vice versa. She said having an officer who knows the community personally can help prevent profiling based on race or class because community outreach officers know the person and not just the location.

Judy Bowers, a resident of the East Strategic Plan Neighborhood, has a different view. Because the Columbia Police Department is understaffed, Bowers thinks making friends in communities where people are hostile toward the police is impractical. She said her perspective is not popular, but it comes from how people interacted with police when she was growing up in Columbia.

“When I was younger and Columbia was smaller, you knew your police officers, so it was a community thing just kind of naturally,” Bowers said. “Nobody knows their officers now — they don't even know their neighbors.”

Bowers said she's seen Columbia and society in general change. Along with that came an increasing animosity toward the police.

In July 2016, Bowers attended a community outreach barbecue and said safety had been a concern of hers after four bullet holes were shot into the back of her house, according to previous Missourian reporting.

“I kind of felt like I was an odd ball (at the barbecue),” she said. “It seemed to me that a lot of people were angry at the police. I told my husband, ‘I have nothing wrong with the police. I haven't done anything to attract their attention.'”

The people who are angry at the police are the ones causing trouble, Bowers said.

“I'm not saying there's no profiling and there aren't any officers who do different things for people with different skin colors, but there's way too much pressure on the police department,” Bowers said. “If you do your part, then you don't have to worry. The police are there if you need them.”

Bowers said she wishes the funds were available to keep the outreach unit going and that the climate was different, but she questions why anyone would want the job when attitudes toward police are negative.

Columbia's Neighborhood Outreach Specialist Glenn Cobbins conducts needs-assessments in all three neighborhoods and serves as a courtroom advocate for residents. He said no one consulted him or anyone else as far as he knew.

“I'm just sideways about it,” Cobbins said. “All of a sudden? Without even telling me? I really can't believe it; I don't understand the politics behind it.”

Cobbins, who said he was beat by the police and shot at by cops when he was younger, said the outreach program means a lot when it comes to getting along and working toward the same thing.

Columbia could have been a prototype for similar-sized cities, bigger cities and even internationally with its community policing, Cobbins said.

Community police officers are the ones who risk their lives to help communities, Cobbins said. The communities feel safer with them, and people saw real change, he added.

“Any time you want safety, the best thing in the world is knowing who is making you safe,” Cobbins said. “Getting to those kids before the street players get them, that's what they were doing and you can see it making a difference.”

Trust and communication will suffer if policing goes back to the way it was before the outreach program, he added.

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/disbanding-of-columbia-police-s-community-outreach-unit-elicits-mixed/article_029bd296-e853-11e8-ab77-ab281ab102ef.amp.html

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California

California Eases Crime Penalties, Boosts Scrutiny of Police

by DON THOMPSON,

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California is continuing a years-long easing of criminal penalties even as it increases public scrutiny of law enforcement.

In his final action on legislation before leaving office in January, Gov. Jerry Brown this weekend stuck with his long-term goal of reducing mass incarceration, rehabilitating juvenile offenders, trimming lengthy prison sentences and offering second chances to the criminally convicted.

One new law will automatically erase or reduce marijuana-related convictions now that the drug is legal recreationally.

Brown signed a bill redefining the state's felony murder rule that held accomplices to the same standard as if they had personally killed someone. Prosecutors warned that hundreds of people can seek resentencing, sometimes forcing near re-trials of cases that may be decades old or the product of plea bargains.

"California's murder statute irrationally treated people who did not commit murder the same as those who did," Democratic Sen. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley, the bill's author, said in a statement. California is now "reserving the harshest punishment to those who directly participate in the death."

Brown also barred 14- and 15-year-olds from being tried as adults.

"We're concerned about public safety and about the rights of victims in these cases," said Jennifer Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the California District Attorneys Association, which opposed both laws. "These are people with violent criminal pasts who will be allowed out of jail."

Other bills in a package by Los Angeles-area Democratic Sens. Ricardo Lara and Holly Mitchell remove those 11 and younger from juvenile court jurisdiction entirely unless they are accused of murder or certain violent sex crimes, and another gives judges discretion over whether to impose what were mandatory five-year additional prison sentences for repeat serious offenders.

The bills "make rehabilitation and community recovery the focus of our criminal justice system," said Lara. "Thirty years of harsh sentencing laws resulted in overcrowded prisons without improving public safety."

Brown has long acted to help reverse some of the tougher criminal penalties, including those adopted when he was first governor in the 1970s and 1980s. He most recently promoted a 2016 ballot measure allowing earlier parole for thousands of inmates while keeping more juveniles out of the adult system.

"There is a fundamental principle at stake here: whether we want a society which at least attempts to reform the youngest offenders before consigning them to adult prisons where their likelihood of becoming a lifelong criminal is so much higher," Brown wrote in signing one of the bills.

Other new laws allow prosecutors to ask judges to shorten prison sentences and extend an existing law that allows nonviolent offenders between 18 and 21 to serve sentences in juvenile facilities and eventually have their charges dismissed.

He also made it easier for about 220,000 Californians to erase old marijuana convictions that already were eligible to be stricken since California eased drug laws and approved recreational cannabis. The new law requires state officials to find pot convictions that can be removed or reduced and allows judges to remove them automatically unless prosecutors object.

The measure will create "a simpler pathway for Californians to turn the page and make a fresh start," said the law's author, Democratic Assemblyman Rob Bonta of Alameda.

Brown also rolled back a law he approved earlier this summer that vastly expanded the number of criminal suspects who can be diverted to mental health treatment programs and have their charges dismissed. The revision excludes those charged with murder, rape and other sex crimes, among other changes.

He approved two laws responding to nationwide concern over the killings of civilians – primarily young black men – by police.

One opens a California law considered among the nation's most secretive in protecting investigations of police. It allows public access to internal investigations when police officers use force causing death or serious injury, commit sexual assaults on the job, or are dishonest in their official duties. The other requires law enforcement agencies to release audio or video recordings of serious use of force within 45 days unless the release would interfere with an investigation.

Peter Bibring, director of policing practices for the American Civil Liberties Union of California, said the bills will "help address the current crisis in policing."

Peace Officers Research Association of California president Brian Marvel called the investigation disclosure law "reckless" and overbroad. He said the video release law could imperil witnesses to crimes.

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-10-02/california-eases-crime-penalties-boosts-scrutiny-of-police?context=amp

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Maryland

Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period

by Eliott C. McLaughlin

(CNN) A police officer in Prince George's County, Maryland, was charged this week with raping a woman during a traffic stop. He's pleaded not guilty, but it's a disturbing headline -- even more disturbing when you consider there are hundreds more like him.

Yes, hundreds. According to research from Bowling Green State University, police officers in the US were charged with forcible rape 405 times between 2005 and 2013. That's an average of 45 a year. Forcible fondling was more common, with 636 instances.

Yet experts say those statistics are, by no means, comprehensive. Data on sexual assaults by police are almost nonexistent, they say.

"It's just not available at all," said Jonathan Blanks, a research associate with the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice. "You can only crowdsource this info."
The BGSU researchers compiled their list by documenting cases of sworn nonfederal law enforcement officers who have been arrested. But the 2016 federally funded paper, "Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested," says the problem isn't limited to sexual assault.

"There are no comprehensive statistics available on problems with police integrity," the report says, and no government entity collects data on police who are arrested.

It adds, "Police sexual misconduct and cases of police sexual violence are often referred to as hidden offenses, and studies on police sexual misconduct are usually based on small samples or derived from officer surveys that are threatened by a reluctance to reveal these cases."

The nation's foremost researchers on the subject, thus, must often rely on published media reports. The BGSU numbers, for instance, are the result of Google alerts on 48 search terms entered by researchers. The scholars then follow each case through adjudication.

While those numbers represent a fair portion of cases, arrests rely on a victim making a report and a law enforcement agency making that report public, after an arrest or otherwise. With sexual assaults by police officers, neither is guaranteed.

Why the numbers are lacking

One of the greatest impediments to understanding the scope of police sexual assault is the victims' reluctance to report the crime.

"Who do you call when your rapist or offender is a police officer? What a scary situation that must be," said Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice who served as principal investigator for the police integrity paper and whose research assistants maintain the BGSU database.

No one interviewed for this story could give an estimate, even ballpark, on how underreported these types of crimes might be.

"I have to think it's a much worse problem than my data suggests," said Stinson, himself a former police officer.

There are several reasons behind the muddy data. The federal government cannot compel states to make the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies report the numbers. Even if they could, the Justice Department wouldn't have the resources to oversee and maintain such a database, Blanks said.

Unions also work hard to protect police officers and their reputations, he said.

"They don't want their officers and membership shamed if something goes wrong," Blanks said.

There also can be legal hurdles to obtaining basic information in such cases, he said, "and that's on purpose." Some states' laws shield the identities of police officers who commit crimes, he said, while some jurisdictions include nondisclosure agreements in victim settlements.

"The system is rigged to protect police officers from outside accountability," Blanks said. "The worst cops are going to get the most protection."

Victims include suspects and those police are supposed to protect

What data is available paints a jarring picture. One statistic from Stinson indicates that for every sexual assault that makes the news, there are almost always more victims -- on average, five more.

About half of the victims are children, researchers say. Stinson has gotten accustomed to hearing his research assistants proclaim during their work, "Oh my God, it's another 14-year-old."

Victims can include both the people police are supposed to be chasing and those they're charged with protecting, according to the police integrity paper.

"Opportunities for sex-related police crime abound because officers operate in a low visibility environment with very little supervision," it says. "The potential victims of sex-related police crime include criminal suspects but also unaccompanied victims of crime."

Experts say officers who prey on people they encounter while on duty take advantage of the trust the public places in police as an institution.

"Police have a reputational advantage over anyone, especially someone accused of a crime," Blanks said, explaining that a regular Gallup poll shows again and again that police are third only to the military and small business owners in terms of trust. "People want to believe the police."

Offenders who seek to victimize people know this, experts say, and they strategically select victims, bolstering their chances of not getting caught.

Researchers find that a predominance of the victims fall into at least one of several categories: They have criminal records, are homeless, are sex workers or have issues with drug or alcohol abuse. Essentially, predatory cops are "picking on people who juries won't believe or who don't trust police," Stinson said.

The ripple effect

To be clear: The majority of police officers are good people, not sexual predators. Every expert interviewed for this story concurs on this point. But the problem is much larger than individual officers, said author and former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper.

"I think it's a huge problem," he said. "In reality, there's probably no law enforcement agency that has not had this problem."

The ripple effect can be devastating to a community. Stamper, who was a policeman in San Diego for 28 years before taking the helm in Seattle in 1994, recalled when California Highway Patrol officer Craig Peyer was convicted of the on-duty killing of student Cara Knott after a traffic stop.

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No San Diego officer was tangentially involved, yet the department experienced enormous trust issues with the community, he said. Residents were fearful and some motorists were anxious about being pulled over, said Stamper, whose books address the "dark side" of policing and how to fix it.

"It cheats good cops," he said. "If a police officer is arrested for having fondled a DUI suspect in a jurisdiction, that affects all officers."

The trust issue is only exacerbated by the "blue wall" of silence that's erected when an officer is accused of a crime, he said. That's to be expected, Stamper said, because officers rely heavily on each other, especially in dangerous situations, and ratting out a colleague could mean trouble for an officer the next time she or he needs backup.

"If I'm a snitch, then the chance that my fellow officers will not have my back is significant," the former police chief said.

Some possible solutions

Stamper and others believe the solution lies in revamping police culture.

"The paramilitary, bureaucratic structure produces a dysfunctional culture," Stamper said, adding that for one of the "most delicate and demanding" jobs in America, officers largely go unsupervised.

Specific to sexual assault, experts would like to see departments enact:

Policies "to make victims feel safe," Stinson said, which could include online or anonymous reporting and special officers trained in dealing with sexual assault victims

GPS tracking of officers, especially those with take-home vehicles, and monitoring of officers. If a supervisor notices a patrolman predominantly stops women between the ages of 18 and 30 at the same time of night in the same part of town, it would raise red flags

Rules forbidding departments from hiring officers who were fired from other agencies, which happens too frequently, Stamper said

Mandates that officers must activate their bodycams and dash cams and be punished if they don't. (This will actually vindicate officers more often than not, experts say)

Occasional sting operations, involving internal affairs, aimed at ensuring police officers are appropriately interacting with the public

"It's critical supervisors trust officers, but trust is earned," Stamper said, adding that the job is too important to trust officers blindly.

Police chiefs and sheriffs defending bad cops also erodes trust, Stamper said. He finds himself frustrated, he said, every time he sees a police executive step to a podium to decry the "bad apples" responsible for a crime that has tainted a department.

"If they repeatedly go back to that bank of microphones to bemoan the bad apples, it's time to look at the barrel. ... Look at the orchard," he said.

Are national standards in order?

Accountability is critical to changing police culture, experts say.

Stamper believes uniformity -- via the licensing of individual officers and the certification of police departments -- is key.

All 18,000 departments operate under their own rules, based on their traditions, policies, procedures and recruitment methods, he said. He believes creating national standards -- not for small things, but for larger constitutional issues -- could improve the quality of policing.

If a licensed officer were to violate someone's rights -- by illegally searching or arresting them, manipulating evidence, using unnecessary force or, of course, engaging in sexually predatory behavior -- that officer's license would be yanked.

Likewise, a city police department with a pattern of violations could lose its certification and be taken over the by the county. An offending sheriff's department could be taken over by the state, he said.

It's pie in the sky, Stamper acknowledges, but until America changes the nature of the conversation around policing, things are destined to remain the same when it comes to crooked cops.

"The forces of resistance are powerful," he said. "If you push the system, it's going to push back with equal or greater force.S