Month: February 2024

When every second counts, you rely on the police to be there. However, staffing shortages and burnout at agencies could put that help in jeopardy.

Action News Jax Investigates asked each of our local departments how many positions they’re budgeted for and how many are open.

About half have a vacancy rate of around 5%, except Neptune Beach and Jacksonville Beach Police Departments. Both have about 9% vacancy rates. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office said it has close to an 11% vacancy.

There also may not be enough open positions to begin with. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the average ratio statewide is 1.6 officers per 1,000 people. Using the latest census data, we found the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office needs 76 more deputies to meet the average. St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office is short 112 deputies, and Clay County Sheriff’s Office needs 45.

Full story: ‘We are exhausted:’ Local police departments understaffed could put your safety in jeopardy – Action News Jax

Thanks to a growing network of license plate reader cameras in the metro area, investigators were able to gather evidence against a suspected bank robber accused of using a stolen getaway vehicle that didn’t have a license plate.

The advancing license plate reader technology, which uses artificial intelligence, is proving helpful for local law enforcement agencies, but raises more concerns among privacy advocates who call the systems unchecked “mass surveillance.”

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in Colorado’s U.S. District Court, bank robbery investigators were able to capture a getaway vehicle on a license plate reader camera even without a license plate number.

Full story: Artificial intelligence helps police track vehicles with surveillance cameras, even without license plate numbers

Monday night, Charlotte City Council agreed to appropriate $1,271,000 to a new Civilian Crash Investigation Program. The funds are coming from the Municipal Debt Service Fund, and will be moved to the Capital Equipment Fund to purchase vehicles for the program.

The idea behind the program is to have civilians addressing car crashes to ease the burden on police departments, especially departments who may be struggling to hire.

Full story: CMPD to get funding from city for civilian crash program | wcnc.com

The Drug Enforcement Administration, as part of its efforts to combat the fentanyl crisis, has identified a way to hit drug traffickers in a practical way: by going after high speed pill press machines.

DEA Deputy Assistant Administrator Scott Oulton said these machines are capable of pumping out thousands of illegal pills an hour. Hundreds of those presses were seized by federal law enforcement in 2023.

Full story: DEA cracks down on pill presses in latest front in the fight against fentanyl

It sounds like a fanciful script for a Hollywood thriller: foreign government agents plotting assassinations in the United States.

To be sure, there have been suspected state-sponsored killings in the past 20 years that have grabbed international headlines. Former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning with a radioactive isotope in London in 2006 is one example; the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi diplomatic facility in Istanbul in 2018 is another.

And just this month, Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, was found shot dead in southern Spain. The Kremlin declined to comment on the case, but there are suspicions Kuzminov’s killing could have been a Russian-ordered assassination.

None of those took place in the United States. But in the past few years, there have been assassination plots aplenty in the U.S. In just the past 18 months, the Justice Department says it has foiled four of them on American soil.

Full story: DOJ says it has foiled 4 state-sponsored murder attempts since 2022 : NPR

Every day we place an enormous amount of trust in the police to keep the peace and protect us from violence. More than that, we expect a perfect duality — we ask officers to make split-second life-or-death decisions while possessing the wisdom and wherewithal to slow down, evaluate, and proceed cautiously. We ask police to be masters of peaceful de-escalation while also being tactically prepared to operate like a special-forces soldier if an active-shooter situation arises.

And these highly scrutinized officers, having everything they do recorded, must do all of it without making one single mistake. The consequences of their decisions can be fatal.

I realize these expectations are high, and rightfully so. That is the commitment we make when we take the oath.

Full story: Do we expect too much from police officers?

A law that took effect on Jan. 1 means San Francisco police officers can no longer ask, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” Instead, they have to tell you the reason…

Full story: New San Francisco policy aims to limit ‘pretextual’ traffic stops, tackle racial bias – ABC7 San Francisco

The head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says he fears that a drumbeat of mass shootings and other gun violence across the United States could make Americans numb to the bloodshed…

Full story: Chief enforcer of US gun laws fears Americans may become numb to violence with each mass shooting

A group of law enforcement leaders urged President Biden to reclassify marijuana to a lesser status in a Thursday letter.

“We are current and former police chiefs, sheriffs, federal and state prosecutors, and correctional officials from across the country dedicated to protecting public safety and reducing unnecessary arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration,” reads the letter from the Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration group.

“We urge your Administration to reclassify marijuana from a schedule I to a schedule III substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA),” the letter continues.

Full story: Law enforcement leaders urge Biden to reclassify marijuana to lesser status | The Hill

AT&T says it has restored about three-fourths of its cellphone network after tens of thousands of customers in cities across the country lost service overnight, causing frustration and concern about disruptions to 911 dispatches.

Around 3:30 a.m. ET Thursday, outages reported by downdetector.com suddenly spiked from just a handful, peaking at more than 73,000 by around 8:20 a.m. ET. By late morning, however, the number of reports to the website appeared to be trending down.

In Virginia’s Prince William County, emergency services officials said early Thursday that the AT&T service outages had caused “a disruption in receiving 911 calls,” according to the Prince Williams Times. Also, police in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area in North Carolina said that customers were “briefly unable to contact 9-1-1. There are no disruptions to our call center’s ability to receive 9-1-1 calls. Service should be returning shortly.”

Full story: AT&T outage disrupts cell service, and access to 911, for thousands : NPR