With this solicitation, the National Institute of Justice seeks applications for funding for investigator-initiated, randomized controlled trial studies of approaches to the challenges of policing in the United States that address the strategic priorities and objectives identified in NIJ’s Policing Strategic Research Plan, 2017-2022. Applicants are required to identify the strategic priority and relevant objective(s) that their proposal addresses on the title page of their application’s program narrative.  Applications proposing research involving partnerships with criminal justice or other agencies, are to include a strong letter of support, signed by an appropriate decision-making authority from each proposed, partnering agency.

All applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 7, 2019.

The Police Foundation, in collaboration with the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, implemented the Averted School Violence (ASV) database to provide a platform for sharing information about averted incidents of violence in institutions of elementary, secondary, and higher education. The ASV project defines an incident of averted school violence as a violent attack planned with or without the use of a firearm that was prevented before any injury or loss of life occurred. This preliminary report analyzes 51 averted incidents of school violence selected from the ASV database to begin to improve our understanding of averted school attacks. The report begins with a case study of one averted attack and then details findings on the 51 averted incidents in the study. It concludes with recommendations for law enforcement and school administration to improve school safety. A companion report “A Comparison of Averted and Completed School Attacks from the Police Foundation Averted School Violence Database” (Langman and Straub 2018) compares these 51 averted attacks with 51 completed attacks and presents findings on the similarities and differences.

The IJIS Institute recently announced the release of the Law Enforcement Facial Recognition Use Case Catalog, a joint effort by the Law Enforcement Imaging Technology Task Force (LEITTF) composed of IJIS Institute and International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) members.  The intention of this white paper is to briefly describe facial recognition systems and their parameters, determine the ways in which facial recognition is being used, and document cases that demonstrate the technology’s ability to protect the public.  The objective is to empower public safety practitioners and industry innovators to communicate the ability of facial recognition to policymakers and the public, while reducing misunderstanding and minimizing the potential misuse.  A conclusion section completes the catalog, including four recommended actions for law enforcement leaders.

The 2019 National Cyber Crime Conference (NCCC) will be held from April 29 to May 1, 2019, in Norwood, Massachusetts. 

The NCCC is hosted by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.  The NCCC has distinguished itself as one of the premier annual cyber training events for law enforcement, offering hundreds of individual training sessions.  The event will provide extensive training regarding the most recent and challenging cyber concerns for law enforcement.

This guidance document was developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), which is a one-stop resource for education stakeholders to learn about topics such as data privacy and confidentiality.  The resource consists of 37 commonly asked questions about schools’ and school districts’ responsibilities under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) relating to disclosures of student information to school resource officers, law enforcement units, and others.  It seeks to explain and clarify how FERPA protects student privacy, while ensuring the health and safety of students and others in the school community.