Police

New York City council member Ben Kallos has introduced the "No Killer Robots Act" as a preventative measure to expand the so-called Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST Act) and prohibit the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from using or threatening to use armed robots in the future. Similarly, Kallos urges that robots not be used in a way "that has a high probability of causing death or serious bodily injury."

The head of the London Metropolitan Police is under pressure to explain her officers' actions during a vigil in south London on Saturday in memory of Sarah Everard.

Police were seen grabbing and leading women away from the event in handcuffs.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was "urgently seeking an explanation" from Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, while Home Secretary Priti Patel has asked the Met for a report on what happened.

An evaluation of 700,000 police press reports by the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (BR) and the North German Broadcasting Corporation (NDR) showed that the state police deal with the naming of the perpetrators' nationalities very differently.

As a result, nationality is given in only 5% of the reports, in the most frequent cases in the case of theft and the naming of refugees. This contradicts the police crime statistics, where Germans are mentioned five times more often.

Tens of thousands of protestors have taken to the street in many French cities on Saturday, protesting a security bill that would restrict the filming and publication of police, especially regarding cases of police brutality. The bill will be considered in March by the French Senate after its proposal was approved by the National Assembly last year.

During a house search in the 21st district, the officers from the Vienna customs office found a total of 13 tons of tobacco and several machines for the production of cigarettes. According to a statement of the Ministry of Finance, the production was only under construction and had only been in operation for a short time. One person was arrested during the search.

The customs office estimates that around 52,000 cartons of cigarettes were produced, taken away and sold during the approximated ten weeks that the illegal factory has been active. According to the investigators this is "a highly profitable business, since the turnover to date amounts to at least 1.5 million euros on the black market".

The scandal over right-wing extremist chats with the police has now also hit Baden-Württemberg. The police headquarters in Göppingen informed about the initiation of 17 disciplinary proceedings against officers of the riot police.

Due to the small group of chat participants, the public prosecutor's office discontinued the proceedings, as the number of people did not involve the public use or distribution of unconstitutional images.

One photo showed that the dark station wagon was standing directly in front of the closed gate in an otherwise cordoned-off area. Written there was "Stop the globalization policy", on the other side "You damned murderers of children and old people". According to the license plate, the car is registered in the district of Lippe in North Rhine-Westphalia. The motive is still unclear.

According to a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act filed by the Mercury Tribune, the Guelph Police Service (GPS) has confirmed that a device called GrayKey has been acquired from the Atlanta-based technology company Grayshift.

The device enables low enforcement to unlock and copy data on iPhones. GPS stated in the letter that the GrayKey device "is used only by our technological crimes detectives" but that the agency has no internal policy or procedural documents and that no usage guidelines have been issued.

Attila Hildmann has been searched by the police. State protectors searched the flat of the vegan cook, who calls himself "ultra-right" and a conspiracy preacher, in Brandenburg on Tuesday. A police spokesman said that the search had been ordered by the district court of Bernau (Barnim) at the request of the Cottbus public prosecutor's office for the purpose of security. According to the police spokesman, several investigations are underway at the Cottbus public prosecutor's office against Hildmann, including on suspicion of sedition.

Zeena Ali has become the first New Zealand police officer to wear a police-issued hijab as part of her official uniform. She had joined the police forces after the Christchurch terror attack and now worked with the police to design a hijab that is both functional for work as a police officer and considerate to her religion.

After a police operation in a Cologne hotel due to fraud, the deployed officers had to find out that the Covid-19 measures had apparently been violated. In addition to the practice of prostitution (prohibited), rooms were probably also rented for tourist purposes (also prohibited). The police called in the public order office and made reports against hotel guests and the operator.

The Hessian police chief Ullmann took office after his predecessor had to resign due to mistakes in dealing with the threatened affair and the right-wing network NSU 2.0.

After 100 days, he commented today that he and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution do not see a proper network in his police department either. Some of the violations are "stupidities" and other suspected cases would be investigated. The investigation is difficult, however.

As a consequence of the attack in Vienna, the German police union ("Gewerkschaft der Polizei") is demanding that people who pose a risk to society are monitored by federal authorities in the future.

Complete monitoring of potential terrorists is no longer possible due to the lack of personnel at the state level.

Berlin currently counts 88 Islamists, whose surveillance would require 2,640 officials. The land has 190 at its disposal.

As of this week, the German federal police are testing the use of distance electrical pulse devices at three locations in Germany. With 30 devices one promises to be able to calm down situations in which possibly only the use of the firearm and thus the risk of a fatal gunshot wound would exist.

Tests are carried out in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Kaiserslautern.

The results of the Gallup survey show that Mexican security forces continue to be immersed in an image crisis due to corruption and violence.

Of all Latin American countries only in Venezuela the population feels less safe and distrusts the police more. Arturo Alvarado Mendoza, author and doctor of sociology at the Colegio de México, says that the current police force is at the service of the government and that it must "begin to attend to citizens' problems and improve its relationship with the population" in order to change its perception.

In recent weeks and months, various right-wing extremist chat groups by police officers have been uncovered throughout Germany. After Hesse and North-Rhine Westphalia, the first such case became known to the Berlin police at the beginning of October.

As it turns out today, Wednesday, not an isolated case. Once again a WhatsApp group, this time from Berlin police students, became known in which right-wing extremist memes and symbols were also sent to each other. Criminal investigations were initiated against the suspects.

Police forces across Ontario engaged in broad, illegal searches of a now-defunct Covid-19 database, two civil rights groups alleged Wednesday, claiming the use of the portal violated individual privacy rights for months.

Police units are apparently exposed to a higher corona risk than other professional groups. According to a query by the "Rheinische Post" at the state interior ministries and the federal police, more than 1,000 officials have probably contracted Corona since March. The state of Bavaria leads the list with 274 registered cases.

The police union suspects the reasons is the lack of precautions.

According to information from SPIEGEL, Horst Seehofer maintains his blockade against an independent racism study within the police. He sees no structural racism problems that should be examined. The German Police University had submitted a project application to the Interior Ministry to investigate "right-wing extremist attitudes and actions", but the three-year project is now on hold.

Not only Seehofer, but the CSU is also opposed to a study recommended by the EU.

Lower Saxony's Minister of the Interior Pistorius now wants to commission a study in cooperation with other federal states.

The City Council in Boston has, in a unanimous vote, banned the usage of facial-recognition technology by the police. Councilor Ricardo Arroyo has stated that "It puts Bostonians at risk for misidentification", which is the reason why the technology has not been in use previous to the ban. The second Councilor, Michelle Wu, who co-authored the order with Arroyo said that "Boston should not be using racially discriminatory technology" as a study by the MIT found that facial recognition technology has a racial bias against people with darker skin.