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  • Two years in, Maryland leads most other states in use of ‘red flag' gun law

    Two years after Maryland adopted a law allowing for court orders denying gun access to people at high risk of harming themselves or others, police and the public have invoked the law far more often than in most states with similar laws. It is difficult to prove that domestic-violence assaults or suicides have been prevented. But advocates and law enforcement officials say they have seen that effect. Research has documented that extreme-risk protection orders, as such laws are known, can prevent suicides. Credit for the law's use goes to police training and 24/7 court access for emergency hearings.

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  • These groups try to hack the vote – so that real criminals can't

    Cyber security simulations are taking place across the country to help everyone, from government officials to journalists, to identify election-related cyber threats and coordinated disinformation campaigns and make plans to strengthen defenses against them. One company, Cybereason, holds simulation events, sometimes bringing together law enforcement officers from agencies including the Secret Service and FBI, to think through potential security threats and come up with corresponding solutions. Running through security breach simulations helps plan for a quick response to deal with the challenges.

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  • Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs

    When Portugal became the first country to decriminalize personal possession and use of small amounts of drugs, choosing to shift to treating drug abuse as a health rather than a criminal matter, the feared downside of turning the country into a drug-users' paradise did not materialize. Instead, HIV cases and crime dropped. Law enforcement resources could focus on major trafficking, while the health and social problems associated with the country's serious heroin problem could be addressed in a way that could begin to solve the problem. Up till then, arrests and prison had failed to have such effects.

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  • Second Largest Police Force to Stop Criminalising Drug Users

    Four UK police forces have adopted drug-decriminalization policies over the past five years, diverting hundreds of cases toward treatment and harm-reduction counseling, and away from criminal convictions, fines, and incarceration. The policies, which apply even in cases involving heroin and cocaine, have been found to reduce drug offenses and conserve police resources for more serious crime. Based on those programs, West Midlands, the second-largest police force in England and Wales, is launching a one-year pilot project aimed at diverting 1,500 people's cases away from the criminal process.

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  • This police officer has made it her mission to end domestic violence

    In southern Louisiana's Lafourche Parish, sheriff's deputy Valerie Martinez Jordan used her history as a domestic violence victim to create a countywide program to legally seize the guns of people convicted of domestic violence or whose gun rights are suspended under a protective order. The program, since expanded statewide by legislation she inspired, took more than 200 guns out of circulation in her parish alone since last year and is credited with preventing any domestic homicides by people disarmed through her program's efforts.

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  • Kalamazoo police look to violence intervention program and community partnerships to halt shootings

    In their Group Violence Intervention program, Kalamazoo police use "custom notifications" to intervene before street violence erupts. Working in tandem with community groups, the police tell likely shooters that more violence will get them arrested and imprisoned, but stopping now will be rewarded with job help and other services. Progress is slow. It gets measured one by one as young men get jobs and stay out of trouble. The pandemic disrupted the program, followed by a surge in violence. Community members praise the approach as an alternative to overly aggressive policing, but want more services programs.

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  • Grieving Murdered Children During A Pandemic

    The nationwide surge in gun violence during the pandemic has forced support groups for grieving survivors to persevere in their work using different tools and strategies in a process that depends on intimate forms of counseling. In Durham, one "grief circle" associated with the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham still hosts anti-violence vigils after each killing. Its support group for parents and grandparents of victims, led by fellow survivors for maximum effect, shifted to Zoom and telephone calls. Among the beneficiaries of the support: the organizers themselves, whose work gives them purpose.

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  • How a Chicago nonprofit cut gun violence by helping young men find work

    Chicago's CRED program (Create Real Economic Destiny) blends effective violence-intervention strategies with economic empowerment, life coaching, therapy, and education to provide the kind of opportunity so often lacking for young men prone to committing or suffering violence. While Chicago's citywide gun violence has increased by half, the neighborhood CRED serves has seen it fall by one-third. Even low-paying jobs are enough to lure the men off the street and out of danger so that they can benefit from the menu of services that rebut the notion that policing alone can solve the problem.

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  • Pro-gun localities accounted for nearly half of Virginia's red flag orders in law's first months

    Strong local opposition to Virginia's new red-flag law and other gun-control measures did not dissuade some local law enforcement agencies from using the law for its intended purpose: to temporarily confiscate the guns of people deemed a threat to themselves or others. In the law's first two months, roughly half of 21 red flag cases filed were in counties and cities that passed resolutions opposing the passage and enforcement of the law. In Virginia Beach, a self-proclaimed Second Amendment Constitutional City, police made multiple uses of the tool, as state legislators had hoped when they enacted it.

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  • What legislators can learn from a Boston public housing development

    Over the four decades that a major Boston public housing development was run by a tenant management corporation (TMC), residents' safety and relations with police improved in ways that serve as lessons today as gun violence in neighborhoods with high poverty rates has prompted debates over reimagining public safety. As the first of many TMCs in the nation, the one at the Mildred C. Hailey Apartments lowered crime by changing the dynamic between residents and police, through greater community control. The TMC, with its own police department, was disbanded in 2012. Crime since has gone up there.

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