Public Safety
Covering topics such as corrections, criminal justice, emergency management, gun control and police/fire/EMS.
Facing surging caseloads tied to school bus violations, court officials are launching a pilot service to handle routine filings and payments without entering the courthouse.
As officers’ salaries increased, so did police killings of Black Americans. Job protections from collective bargaining can make some officers less worried about consequences. We need to rethink union contracts.
State Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin has issued major changes to how police officers should handle situations involving barricaded individuals after several instances in which people experiencing mental health crises have been shot.
The state’s largest current fire has encompassed nearly all 41,000 acres of the Ishi Wilderness, which hadn’t seen significant fire since 1990. No one from Cal Fire has been able to set foot in the wilderness area since the Park Fire began.
A study found that earthquakes before 2017 in Texas’ Delaware Basin originated at shallow depths that correspond to where wastewater from fracking was disposed. Nearly 2,000 earthquakes hit West Texas in 2021.
Automated external defibrillators are safe and easy for just about anyone to use, and they could save the lives of thousands of cardiac arrest victims every year. Making them available in public spaces is a job for state and local policymakers.
The databases are fraught with problems from due process to privacy rights to racial and ethnic disparities, raising the question of whether they really make cities safer.
Gun rights groups spent a total of $33.2 million in the 2020 election to re-elect Trump; the NRA alone spent more than $16 million. Gun control groups also spent $23.5 million in 2020 to boost Democrats.
The MyShake App is a free tool that delivers alerts to users as soon as ground sensors detect significant shaking in their hometown.
Despite fires and floods, they keep coming in search of affordability and warm winters. But there are strong signs that the stampede is slowing.
Many big-city departments are short of officers. It's not a new problem, but young people seem to be shying away from the field.
Six years ago, state police made a big push to catch up on a massive backlog. Now, waiting times exceed eight months and the number of untested kits is three times higher than in 2019.
Transit police have issued more than 700 citations over the past two months. Instead of fines, riders who don’t pay are being sent to court.
As the transit agency publicly worked to ensure their riders felt safe during their daily commutes, top executives experienced an internal breakdown in communication so bad that it resulted in a wrongful-termination lawsuit.
Last year’s Lahaina wildfire killed 102 people and forced thousands to flee. But more than 90 percent of 1,478 residential lots have been cleared of fire-related debris and a historic settlement will resolve 450 lawsuits.
Fire authorities wish people would stop doing stupid stuff like burning toilet paper, igniting smoke bombs or tossing cigarette butts out of cars. People, not nature, are responsible for most wildfires.
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