Memphis Police Want Public to Take Survey On Use Of Force

The Memphis, Tennessee, Police Department (MPD) is working with Response to Resistance to ensure it is protecting the citizens of Memphis with reasonable use of force techniques.  This groundbreaking and forward-thinking approach of garnering civilian perspective puts the MPD at the national forefront of improving police and community relations.  In October of 2016, all MPD officers took the survey, and it is now available to the community.  The survey takes about eight minutes and presents five different scenarios regarding reaction and response to resistance, ranging from simply failing to obey an officer’s instruction to use of a knife or firearm against the officer. The results for both law enforcement and civilians will be analyzed and compared to ensure the use of force techniques adopted by the MPD match the way in which the community wants to be protected.  Currently, more than 60,000 law enforcement, corrections, and civilian surveys have been completed across the United States.  National responses show that there is very little disagreement or variance between what citizens and trained officers believe are “objectively reasonable” responses when viewing the exact same scenario, regardless of race, age, or gender. In other words, people instinctively know what is reasonable when they see it.  Read More

Fusion Liaison Officer (FLO) Coordinator Best Practices:  March 29–30, 2017, in Orlando, Florida

The first session in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s 2017 Specialized Analytic Seminar Series is March 29–30 in Orlando, Florida.  The purpose of the Seminar Series is to provide dynamic and focused peer-to-peer analytic collaboration.  Participation in this program is targeted to state and major urban area fusion center personnel, as well as personnel from High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Investigative Support Centers, Regional Information Sharing Systems® (RISS) Centers, and major city/county intelligence units.  Each seminar addresses a specialized-threat topic area and the associated patterns, trends, skills, and resources necessary to effectively monitor and evaluate potential threats in the attendees’ areas of responsibility. 

The 2017 series includes the following sessions:

• Fusion Liaison Officer (FLO) Coordinator Best Practices: March 29–30, 2017, Orlando, Florida
• West Regional Jail/Correctional Intelligence: May 9–10, 2017, Los Angeles, California
• East Regional Jail/Correctional Intelligence: July 19–20, 2017, Nashville, Tennessee
• Geospatial/Geographic Information System (GIS): August 23–24, 2017, Bozeman, Montana
• Cybersecurity: November 15–16, 2017, Frankfort, Kentucky

Interested attendees should register at http://dhs.anl.gov/analyticseminar.  Due to limitations on the number of attendees, participants are encouraged to register for all applicable sessions as soon as possible.

Retired News Reporter Develops Algorithm to Try and Identify Serial Killers Using UCR Data

In 2004, Thomas Hargrove, a 61-year-old retired news reporter from Virginia, became aware of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Supplementary Homicide Report and contemplated whether it was possible to teach a computer how to spot serial killers.  He spent months trying to develop an algorithm that would identify unsolved cases with enough commonalities to suggest the same murderer.  Hargrove eventually founded the Murder Accountability Project (MAP), a small nonprofit seeking to make FBI murder data more widely and easily available.  MAP has already assembled case details on 638,454 homicides from 1980 through 2014, including 23,219 cases that had not been reported to the FBI.  This is the most complete list of case-level details of U.S. murders available anywhere, and the group’s Web site has made it available at no cost to anyone with statistical analysis software.  Read More

Twitter Suspends 377,000 Accounts for Pro-Terrorism Content

According to Twitter’s twice-annual transparency report, which publishes data on requests Twitter has received from the government and other legal entities to police content from its platform, the company suspended nearly 377,000 accounts in the last six months of 2016 for promoting terrorism.  Of the 376,890 accounts Twitter suspended for posting terrorism-related content, just 2 percent were the result of government requests to remove data.  This marks the first time Twitter included its efforts to combat violent extremism in its transparency posts since the company began publishing the reports in 2012, and the company said it plans to continue including that information in future reports.  Read More

Law Enforcement Cautions Against New Social Media App

A new smartphone application has law enforcement concerned about sexual predators gaining access to children’s private information.  In a matter of minutes, anyone—including sexual predators—can get on the Live.me application and watch videos of people near them and gather information the user provides.  From Facebook to Instagram to Twitter, there are now so many different ways people can “go live” on social media.  The one big difference with this app is that anyone can watch and record you, and there is not an age restriction.  The app also gives users the ability to search for streaming videos for people located near them.  Read More

Additional cyber-related resources are available on the Law Enforcement Cyber Center Web site.