Violent Victimization Falls 25%
The rate of violent crime excluding simple assault fell 25% in 2025, from 9.9 to 7.4 per 1,000 U.S. residents age 12 or older, according to preliminary estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Aggravated assault dropped 31%, from 4.5 to 3.1. Property victimization fell 19%, to 111.2 per 1,000 households, with motor vehicle theft down 30% and burglary or trespassing down 25%. The survey counts crimes whether or not anyone reported them to police. Itâs the redesigned survey BJS fully adopted in January 2025, so the numbers canât be compared with legacy survey estimates. They may change when final figures come out in 2027, and they include a one-time weighting adjustment for interviews missed in October and November 2025 during the federal funding lapse. đ More here
AI Answers Non-Emergency Line
âShe fills a seat basically, which is nice because she doesnât call in sick,â SNO911 dispatcher Jessica Carico says of Ava, the AI voice agent that now answers Snohomish Countyâs non-emergency line, The Seattle Times reports. Hold times there fell from more than 10 minutes to an average of 47 seconds this past year. About 41% of calls that start with Ava go to dispatchers and nearly 10% go to the emergency queue. The only count of Avaâs missed emergencies comes from its maker, which reports one. Other dispatch AI systems sold in Washington include GovWorxâs NEAL, Versatermâs CallTriage and Axonâs Prepared AI. None of their error rates are public, and no law requires vendors to report missed emergencies. Under SNO911âs contract, the agency bears responsibility if a dispatcher errs on a vendor systemâs recommendation. Short-staffed centers will keep making this move. Iâd write independent testing and error reporting into the contract, because the liability stays with the agency. âïž More here
ChatGPT to End Violent Chats
ChatGPT will be able to end a chat on its own when a conversation shows someone fixating on violence or on seriously harming another person, OpenAI said in an Oct. 30 post. If that happens repeatedly, OpenAI may temporarily pause the account. The company made more than 200 law enforcement referrals in the third quarter of 2026. Its first Community Safety Report is due in early 2027, with updates every six months. đ« More here
Adopting Lethality Screening
Pennsylvania State Police are training troopers to use the Lethality Assessment Program, a screening tool nearly 500 other agencies in the state already use, KYW Newsradio reports. At a domestic incident, officers ask the survivor a set of questions about the abuserâs behavior. Answers such as threats with a weapon, or abuse in public or in front of children, flag a victim as high risk, and that person is connected right away with advocates for safety planning and services. Last year, two-thirds of those screened were identified as high risk. The program has been around since 2012. Danni Beinschroth of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence said the State Police training will help rural communities âclose any existing gaps.â đ More here
Psychologists Watch Live Bodycam
Louisville officers on some behavioral health crisis calls can now have a licensed psychologist watch their body camera video live and offer advice, under a pilot Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Oct. 27, WLKY reports. LMPD officers have responded to more than 2,500 calls involving people in crisis since the start of 2026, and 10 involved force beyond hand control. The program joins LMPD, MetroSafe and Shelton Forensic Solutions and builds on the departmentâs Advanced Crisis Team, launched in September. âWe are supporting and not replacing their training or their judgment,â said Sarah Shelton, the firmâs founder. Officers still make the decisions on scene. LMPD told WHAS11 the pilot had been used a dozen times in its first two weeks. đ More here
Go to 13-minute mark: Mayor Craig Greenberg announces the pilot at an Oct. 27 news conference posted by LMPD. Assistant Chief Bryan Edelen and Dr. Sarah Shelton of Shelton Forensic Solutions explain how it works.
Testing CAâs Deadly Force Law
Justin Nix and John Shjarback used Californiaâs records of every officer firearm discharge from 2016 through 2024 to test AB 392, the 2019 law requiring that deadly force be ânecessary in defense of human life.â Against a âsynthetic Californiaâ weighted most toward Nevada, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, the stateâs use-of-force tally ran 6% lower after the law, a gap that was not statistically significant. Fatal shootings held near 11 a month while nonfatal hits fell from 9.2 to 6.6, so the fatal share of hits rose from 56% to 62%, significantly only in knife or edged-weapon encounters. Officer injuries showed no significant rise, though that estimate is imprecise. A companion law and the pandemic overlap the period. The observational study is a CrimRxiv preprint, posted Oct. 8, and has not been peer reviewed. đ Read the study
LA Murders Down 47%
Los Angeles had 161 fewer homicides between Oct. 22, 2022, and Oct. 22, 2026, a 47% decline, NBC Los Angeles reports, citing figures Mayor Karen Bass released Oct. 26. Shooting victims fell 50% over the same period, with 573 fewer people shot. In the San Fernando Valley, burglaries were down 41%, robberies 21% and motor vehicle thefts 31% compared with the same period last year. Bass pointed to her directive for LAPD to crack down on burglaries along Ventura Boulevard in Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills. The numbers came a week before Election Day, and challenger Nithya Raman said Bass is trying to âtake creditâ for a national trend. Ramanâs campaign cites longer 911 hold times and sworn officers filling civilian desk jobs. đ More here
Bodycams Off the Body
âThatâs a standard practice of mine at the hospital â to set the body camera,â Tempe field training officer Marra Guajardo said in a defense interview obtained by ABC15. A lawsuit alleges that in December 2022 two Tempe officers set their body cameras in the corner of a Tempe St. Lukeâs emergency room and recorded a mostly naked woman handcuffed to a hospital bed for about three hours. A judge dismissed the suit on qualified immunity, ruling the officersâ âalleged conductâ was not âegregious enough.â At an Oct. 28 Ninth Circuit hearing, the panel questioned whether âclearly established lawâ existed and indicated it knew of no similar prior cases. Tempe cleared both officers without its internal investigators interviewing them, records show, and has since barred removing cameras to record. đ More here
Firebomb Hits Paris Riot Officer
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called the Molotov cocktail thrown at a Paris riot police officer on Oct. 31 an âattempted murderâ and blamed far-left groups, AFP reports. The officer escaped with minor injuries. Authorities counted 320,000 protesters nationwide, the third straight weekend of demonstrations over living costs, inequality and school conditions, while youth groups put turnout near half a million. In Paris, masked groups pried up paving stones and hurled them at police. Four police officers and a gendarme were hurt in Paris, three burned by Molotov cocktails. Paris prosecutors opened an attempted murder investigation Nov. 1 with no suspects arrested. đ«đ· More here
FRANCE 24 English previewed the third weekend of protests on Oct. 31, as shops boarded up and 70,000 security personnel deployed to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 17 violence.
Chatbots Pay a Fairness Penalty
People rated an identical burglary-report chat as less fair and less satisfying when told an AI chatbot, not a human officer, was responding. Ben Bradford of University College London and five colleagues randomly assigned 648 UK adults, recruited through Prolific in March 2024, to eight versions that also varied polite or brusque treatment and whether officers would be sent. Among the 579 who passed quality checks, that fairness penalty was less than half the gain from fair treatment, and fair treatment worked about as well from the bot. Sending officers mattered most, raising end-of-chat satisfaction about four times as much as fair treatment. Participants judged someone elseâs scripted chat, not their own report. The study was published online Oct. 18 in Police Practice and Research. đ€ Read the study
Narrowing Welfare Checks
âThe police were attending calls where there really wasnât a policing issue,â said Siobhan OâNeill, Northern Irelandâs mental health champion. From the start of November, police there will no longer carry out concern-for-welfare checks unless there is a risk to life or harm, or a crime, BBC News NI reports. They handle 30,000 mental health calls a year. Under Right Care Right Person, used by some forces in England and Wales since 2023, 999 calls will be triaged and some passed to health and social care staff. Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson told a Stormont committee that just 3% of calls about a person potentially in danger related to crime. Dr Ross Irvine of the Royal College of Psychiatrists said 30% of posts across the province sit vacant. đ More here
Why Not Count Prevention?
Most police departments can say how many thefts occurred last quarter down to the block and hour, but not how many vacant properties were secured or streetlights repaired, Joel Caplan writes in an Oct. 27 post on his blog. Crime generates an incident report, he argues, while successful prevention often leaves no comparable record, so a decline nobody can credibly explain can feel like luck. Caplan wants proactive contacts, problem-solving projects, environmental fixes and community partnerships logged with a date, location and record of what was done, then mapped and shared across agencies. He concedes documentation doesnât establish causality but says it would support evaluation and outlast staff and budget changes. Officials could then show residents what was done, he writes, rather than only announcing a 20% decline. đ More here
The Rise of Intelligence Returns
A couple of years ago at IACP in Boston, Rick Smith and I put on The Rise of Intelligence: The Rock Opera. We asked how much control weâd hand over to AI in a world where we could have just about anything we wanted. Plenty of people walked out asking, âWhat in the heck did I just see?!?â Or, âThat was the weirdest thing Iâve ever seen...at a policing conference.â Others (yes, some) loved it. I like to say it was critically acclaimed, just not popular at the box office.
Then last weekend in Orlando, several chiefs asked if weâd do it again. As luck would have it, Iâd been working on a sequel, The Rise of Intelligence: The Animated Odyssey. I updated the script with ChatGPT, connected it to Higgsfield AI and made the whole thing by talking to my phone, sometimes on a plane, sometimes while making dinner. Never typed a prompt. Never opened a laptop. ChatGPT even built the YouTube channel. My toughest creative note: âDonât give Rick so much gray hair.â A few scenes are glitchy and goofy. I kept them because it was more about the experiment: Could I do this only on the phone and only by talking to AI.
New episodes drop every few days, intermissions included. đž Watch the series
The official trailer for The Rise of Intelligence: The Animated Odyssey, made start to finish by talking to a phone. I play Overload, Rick Smith plays Optimus and Jason Gavin plays the Human.