Law Enforcement

By Will Grant A swarm of nano quadrotors has a menacing presence. The video embedded below is from the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory.   The flying robots are the work of professor Vijay Kumar and two graduate students. Kumar gave a lecture at this year’s Technology, Entertainment, and Design Conference in Long Beach, California, about how the robots work. “This gets a little challenging,” he says in the lecture, “because the dynamics of the robot are quite complicated. In fact, they live in a 12-dimensional space.” The quadrotors in the video have preprogrammed flight paths. Motion sensors in the lab’s ceiling guide the robots, which calculate flight commands 600 times per second. To a degree, they’re autonomous: There is no pilot. The robots determine themselves how best to get from point A to point B while coordinating their motion with their neighbors’ motion. Kumar and his students have shown that the robots can fly through hula-hoops, build small structures, and even play music. Their payload may be light, but they’re potential uses are many. For starters, the menacing-looking swarm could probably find good work off the coast of Somalia or in the Persian Gulf. But for such missions, the UAVs will need to be weaned from their controlled, indoor environment. Though these quadrotors rely on the overhead sensors for guidance, there are some that do not. The Scout and its Tablet. Courtesy of Aeryon. The Aeryon Scout unmanned aerial vehicle may have the most impressive resume of any quadrotor out there. It weighs... Read More -->

An excerpt from Come Back Alive By Robert Young Pelton The first major lesson in surviving crime is to expect it. Not just in bad neighborhoods or late at night but anytime, anywhere. In the pinball-like confluence of criminals and victims the chances are good that you won’t run into criminals today, but with enough time and travel you will. In general, you can safely assume that there is crime in bad neighborhoods when the bars close on Friday nights, and there is also crime at nine in the morning in nice neighborhoods, specifically because that is when people don’t expect it to happen. On the heels of expecting crime to happen follows the next advice. Don’t act like a victim. Criminals cue in on folks who carry themselves like they’re frightened of the world. Body language is everything. Darting eyes, head cast low, a meek posture and stride—all these suggest to some guy lurking in the shadows that you’re an easy mark. Instead, walk confidently and purposefully. Be Vewy, Vewy Cawfool Elmer had it right. Many crimes require a willing victim. Someone who stops to help someone, give directions, or tell the time is someone who entered into an evil appointment with all the best intentions. When they see a cheap pistol pointing at them, they can’t believe the nice man is, in fact, a thug. When it comes to attacks on women, almost 90 percent begin with some type of ruse to gain the victim’s trust. Your Home Despite spending thousands of dollars on... Read More -->

By Colin Despins Purchasing a gun can be a tricky predicament—so many manufacturers and calibers and so many varieties to choose from. Many enter into a handgun purchase having decided in advance that they want a certain caliber; they then proceed to the counter of local gun shop and state that they are looking for that caliber of handgun: “I would like to buy a 40 caliber.” This is like pulling on to a car lot and saying that you are looking for a V6. It’s a little backwards. After you have walked into the gun store and stated your agenda in this manner, the sales associate may size you up in certain regards and begin to offer you options. These options are typically driven by the sales associate’s own knowledge base, opinions and prejudices and how much you are willing to spend. Having walked in saying that you want to purchase a .40 handgun, chances are that you will walk out with one because that’s what you asked for. The process typically goes like this – the sales associate will put a number of guns in your hands, ask you how they feel, then you buy one, and the rest is history. When a firearms transaction takes place in this manner, you as the customer probably gained some knowledge about the gun from the sales person before you made your purchase. But there is a good chance you missed out on a great deal of fundamental information, and that you might not have... Read More -->

By Will Grant There are 28 High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas across 46 states in the US. From Washington, D.C. to Miami to Los Angeles, these areas are the focal points of in-flowing drugs. The HIDTA program was formed in 1990 after the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The US Office of National Drug Control Policy oversees the HIDTA program, and each HIDTA is managed by a combination of federal, state, local, and tribal personnel. The HIDTA program was set up to enhance coordination between agencies to control drug trafficking. A driving force of the program is tailoring programs and initiatives to local conditions—whether the behavior of smugglers, the local law enforcement infrastructure, or the natural environment. Not surprisingly, the largest HIDTA is along the US-Mexico border. It’s where the lucrative business of smuggling drugs has pushed narco-violence to a level of staggering brutality. Corpses hung from highway overpasses; bodies found without hands, feet or heads; storage units full of dead cops. The warring cartels of Mexico have washed the border with the blood of informants, rivals, and innocents alike. In southern Arizona, the wilderness of the Sonoran Desert presents an attractive thoroughfare for getting drugs into the US. To the east, from Tucson to New Mexico, the population is denser, which means more law enforcement. To the west, the ridges flatten out, and the lack of topographic relief means no high ground for cartel lookouts. This corridor of sparsely populated land—Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Tohono O’Odham Indian Reservation... Read More -->