Crime

You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives – after all, if someone who doesn’t want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing that most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That’s why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person’s body. The NYPD announced the project yesterday. Read More

In the TV series Max Headroom, one of the sources of security for hardcore news videographer Edison Carter was the fact that his camcorder was constantly transmitting a live audio/video feed back to his co-workers at Network 23. If anyone attacked him out in the field, his colleagues would know about it, and would have the attack recorded on tape for the police. Well, given that we're now probably at about the time in history when the series was set, perhaps it only makes sense that we may soon be able to get a smartphone app that does pretty much the same thing as Edison's camera. Its working name is, appropriately enough, Help! Read More

Although police officers in most countries are issued bulletproof vests, they don’t necessarily wear them at all times – would you want to heave one of those things around for an entire shift? What they do often carry, however, are clipboards. Taking the “every little bit helps” approach, Ohio’s IMPACT Armor Technologies has put two and two together, and come up with something that should actually offer some protection – a Ballistic Clipboard. Read More

Chances are, you’ve seen at least one or two TV shows in which the police examine news footage shot at several different crime scenes, and recognize the same person’s face showing up repeatedly in the crowds of onlookers ... the ol’ “criminal returning to the scenes of their crimes” scenario. Realistically, it’s pretty hard to believe that one person could look through all that footage, and remember all those faces. It turns out that a computer could do it, however, as scientists at Indiana’s University of Notre Dame have illustrated with their “Questionable Observer Detector," or QuOD. Read More

Crime fighters may soon be adding another tool to their arsenal - one that is literally designed to strike fear into the hearts of evildoers. With an integrated taser, video camera and protective forearm armor, the BodyGuard is a stun device that wouldn't be out of place on the forearm of a certain caped crusader in Gotham City. BodyGuard has already been used in Mock Prison Riots in West Virginia and is headed to real world city streets with testing and evaluation of the device due to commence in Los Angeles later this year. Read More

We’ve seen it in numerous TV shows and movies – the witness to a crime looks through a book of mug shots, then works with a police sketch artist to come up with a likeness of the nasty person they saw. After looking through hundreds of mug shots, however, it’s possible that the tired-brained witness could look right at a photo of the guilty party and not recognize them. It’s also possible that there is a mug shot of the criminal on a database somewhere out there, but that this particular witness will never see it. A computer system being pioneered at Michigan State University, however, could be the solution to such problems – it automatically matches faces in police sketches to mug shots. Read More

Promising early results from research undertaken by the University of Abertay Dundee and the Scottish Police Services Authority could lead to fingerprint evidence being obtained from clothing, for use in criminal prosecution. Refining an existing technique that's been used to successfully recover print detail from smooth objects such as glass and plastic, forensic scientists have managed to create a kind of photo negative of fingerprint impressions on fabric. It's a bit hit and miss at the moment, but even when clear ridge detail isn't retrieved, the technique could still prove useful to investigators looking for other evidence. Read More

Sexual offenders are increasingly using condoms when committing their assaults, both to reduce the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases, and to avoid leaving their DNA at the crime scene. While an offender might still leave their fingerprints behind, that often only proves that they were at a given location, and not that they were involved in any wrongdoing. Researchers from the Biomedical Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, however, have recently developed technology that detects condom lubricant in fingerprints. If a suspect could be tied to a crime scene by their fingerprints, and be shown to have handled a condom at that location – well, they’d have a lot more explaining to do. Read More

Bikes are an all-too-easy target for thieves and protecting your two-wheeled conveyance from their pilfering mitts is almost impossible. While chains and cables are the traditional choice for cyclists looking to make life just a little bit more difficult for would-be thieves, they are usually easily handled with a pair of bolt cutters – even if that results in a nice blast of permanent dye. The latest hard-core solution we've encountered is this innovative bike lock created by a group of German designers that literally puts your bike beyond the reach of thieves by carting it up a light pole. Read More