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Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FBI. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Child Safety Resources:
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
WEWS Producer at the FBI: Missing Kids
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The following day, a team from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children arrived in Cleveland. A few hours after their arrival, an alert Cleveland FBI agent formed a hunch that led to the discovery of little Emilliano.
Sadly, the toddler had been dead for days. It would seem the initial story told by his mother to investigators the day before was not entirely truthful after all.
It’s the worst outcome imaginable, but it’s also a reality that some families face daily. About 2,000 children are reported missing every day in the U.S. It's a terrifying fear that strikes at the heart of any parent. Who do you turn to when this happens?
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children specializes in finding missing children and it has a pretty decent success rate. And the FBI is more than happy to get help from them.
NCMEC’s Alexandria, Va. office is located a few Metro stops away from the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in downtown Washington, D.C. I was fortunate enough to be a guest of both as a member of the FBI Citizens’ Academy of Cleveland.
In fact, you’re probably familiar with its most famous founder, John Walsh, whose son Adam was abducted in 1981 and murdered.The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, founded in 1984, does just what it sounds like. It's a non-profit organization that exists only as a resource for law enforcement agencies, as well as exploited children or their families.
In 1990, NCMEC’s recovery rate for missing children was just over 60 percent. Today, its recovery rate is 97 percent.
That number is impressive. But what I found even more impressive about NCMEC was how efficient the organization is. In its time, it has formed several different departments and databases to specifically handle the different needs involved in missing and exploited children.
Most of the cases NCMEC investigates fall into three categories: family abductions, forensics or runaways. Most often when a child disappears, it's a family abduction. Maybe a marriage turned sour and one spouse took their child and left without even leaving a note. These cases happen and sometimes the search can last decades.
NCMEC’s main division is its Missing Children Division. Its goal is to find missing children and prevent their victimization. It has a call center that operates around the clock. And no matter what language the caller speaks, the hotline is literally staffed with someone who can speak it, too.
The Forensic Services Division focuses on children who have been missing for a long time or cases where the victim is unidentified. Science plays a large part in this division.
If you’ve ever seen an age progression photograph, showing what a child who disappeared in 2000 would look like now, chances are a NCMEC analyst helped make it.
But how do they do it?
Forensic experts typically start with the last known photograph of the child, then they look at pictures of the parents at the same age, as well as pictures of siblings. Using those features very often helps create a startlingly accurate age rendition.
In those cases, there is still a chance the missing child is alive. But there are cases where the remains of dead children are found and the only hope is to identify them. Sometimes all investigators have to work with is a skeleton.
But NCMEC has experts who handle those cases, too. Their job is to work with the skull and study its bone structure in an attempt to reconstruct what the victim looked like. This may sound like a stretch, but both pictures of reconstructed faces and age-progression composites have solved many cases, leading to closure or reunions for estranged families.
It is also a grim truth that some missing and exploited children fall prey to sex trafficking. Some of them are runaways. NCMEC has a division for these cases that has built up extensive suspect and victim bios in recent years, and those databases helps serve to locate victims. NCMEC also helps U.S. Marshals track non-complaint sex offenders.In some instances, children who never realized they grew up a missing child, spotted their own composite photos and called NCMEC, eventually leading to a reunion with their rightful family.
But NCMEC’s job is not over once a child is recovered and reunited with his or her family.
There have been cases where a boy was abducted at a very young age, grew up to believe his abductors were his real family, only to be recovered a decade later as a teenager. In other instances, sex trafficking victims who have lived on the streets for so long, have grown a distrust of law enforcement and need a more patient approach to open up.
That’s where the Family Reunification Unit comes in. This division specializes in helping families reunite, address their trauma, and learn how to speak to each other without letting guilt or unrealistic expectations sabotage the reunion.
But all of this is simply a crash course into the systems that NCMEC developed over the years. Each one has been fine-tuned to help do the work that many local law enforcement agencies may not have the time, resources or manpower to do on their own.
NCMEC is not a law enforcement agency. Instead, its primary goal is to provide a service to law enforcement agencies.
The problem is, not every law enforcement agency is even aware that NCMEC exists. When a child disappears, NCMEC and all its resources are available at no cost or glory to help locate that child.
Simply enough, NCMEC is there for you.
The FBI has a strong working relationship with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and it hopes to spread the word about the good work the organization does so more law enforcement agencies can utilize its resources to help bring families back together.
Like many law enforcement agencies, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children thrives on people doing what they feel is right. If you have a tip, spot a child you recognize from a missing poster, or even if you suspect you may have been abducted as a child, you can call NCMEC’s 24-hour free hotline 1-800-THE-LOST.
More information can be found at: www.missingkids.com.
[ Look for further updates from Colin McDermott’s experience with the FBI Citizens’ Academy in the coming days]
Monday, November 19, 2012
Making the Ultimate Sacrifice - Law Enforcement Officer Deaths Released:
Making the Ultimate Sacrifice
Report on Law Enforcement Officer Deaths Released
11/19/12
Tragically, during 2011, 72 law enforcement officers from around the nation were killed in the line of duty, while another 53 officers died in accidents while performing their duties. And 54,774 officers were assaulted in the line of duty…all according to our just-released annual report Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2011.
Here’s a look at some of the data collected for this report:
- While the 72 officers killed in the line of duty came from city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal agencies, the majority (50) were employed by city police departments.
- The average age of the officers feloniously killed was 38, while their average length of service was 12 years. Forty-nine of these officers were slain while on assigned vehicle patrol.
- Most of the 72 officers slain were killed with firearms, and 51 of these officers were wearing body armor at the time of their murders.
- Of the 53 officers who died accidentally, 39 were killed as a result of vehicle-related accidents.
- The rate of officer assaults in 2011 was 10.2 per 100 sworn officers.
Our Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) report is intended to provide law enforcement agencies with detailed descriptions of circumstances leading to officer fatalities. This data can then be incorporated into police training programs to help officers stay safe during similar situations.
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| View the Report |
The primary goal of our overall LEOKA program is to reduce incidents of law enforcement deaths and assaults. In addition to its annual report, the program also offers an officer safety awareness training course that provides potentially life-saving information to help law enforcement personnel enhance their situational awareness during activities like arrests, traffic stops, foot pursuits, ambushes, and other high-risk encounters that police face on a daily basis.
Beyond services provided by the LEOKA program, the FBI offers other training initiatives geared towards officer safety to our law enforcement partners.
For example:
- Our one-week Law Enforcement Training for Safety and Survival program at the FBI Academy is designed to teach participants basic survival techniques as well as the skills and mindset required to identify and handle critical situations in high-risk environments (i.e., arrests, low light operations, ballistic shield deployment).
- Our National Academy curriculum includes a communications course for law enforcement leaders on how to incorporate measures into their policies that will help ensure the future emotional well-being of officers who have survived shootings (as well as officers who have shot suspects).
In addition to the above training, the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC)—accessed by more than 92,000 agencies—offers a measure of protection for law enforcement as well, particularly through its recently added Violent Persons File. Once fully populated with data from our users, a quick response from an online NCIC query can warn officers on the spot if, during a routine traffic stop or another type of encounter, they come across an individual who has a violent criminal history or who has previously threatened law enforcement.
The release of this latest LEOKA report clearly demonstrates what we already know—despite the dangers of law enforcement, the profession continues to attract brave men and women willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect their fellow citizens.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
FBI - Celebrating Women Agents:
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| The families of fallen agents Robin Ahrens and Martha Dixon Martinez were given memorial plaques at a recent meeting of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. |
Celebrating Women Agents
Part 7: Two Have Made the Ultimate Sacrifice
Part 7: Two Have Made the Ultimate Sacrifice
11/01/12
With eight kids under the roof, the Dixon’s one-bathroom house in Pittsburgh had no room for the mitts, hockey sticks, and other accoutrements of active all-weather children. So everything was kept on the front porch. When things went missing, nobody was surprised when Martha, the sixth child and a future FBI special agent, initiated her own stake-out, sleeping on the porch and nabbing the culprit red-handed. It was the paperboy.
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| Robin Ahrens, left, was killed in 1985 during an operation to arrest an armed robber. Martha Dixon Martinez was killed in 1994 when a gunman opened fire on law enforcement officers in a police station in Washington, D.C. |
“That to me was probably the most revealing thing in her childhood of a law enforcement personality,” said Monica Dixon Dentino, Martha’s younger sister. “For her to say, ‘Yep, I’m going to sleep by myself on the front porch to confront somebody that’s invading our house’—she was tough like that.”
Many years later, in 1994, when a gunman began shooting in a squad room at the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., Martha Dixon Martinez apparently chose to confront the attacker rather then retreat. She and fellow Special Agent Michael John Miller were killed in the exchange, along with a D.C. police officer.
The event, recounted by Martha’s two sisters at a recent convention of former special agents recognizing the 40-year anniversary of women agents, marked the second time in the Bureau’s history that a woman agent was killed in the line of duty. Nine years earlier, in 1985, Special Agent Robin L. Ahrens was killed in Phoenix during an operation to arrest an armed robber. Both agents’ stories—the last part of our series marking four decades of women agents—punctuate how a desire to serve has led women from all backgrounds to become special agents since the position opened to women in 1972.
October 1972
Forty years ago, the FBI Training Academy graduated the first two women agents of the modern era following a policy change in May 1972 allowing women into the ranks of special agents. Joanne Pierce and Susan Roley began 14 weeks of training on July 17 of that year and graduated as agents on October 25, paving the way for thousands of women who followed over the next 40 years.
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“You couldn’t tell her not to do that job because we worry about you,” said Christian Ahrens, one of Robin’s four brothers. “She would just go forage forward. That’s [the decision] she made—to be a special agent. I wish I could go back and say, ‘Be careful. Watch your back.’ But that’s not possible.”
Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Robin was one of six kids who thrived outdoors, volunteering as a teenager on the National Ski Patrol. As a school teacher in Virginia, she led a field trip to the U.S. Marine base at Quantico—home to the FBI Training Academy—and decided what she wanted to do. She became an agent in June 1985; just four months later she was killed.
“It was a tragic event,” said James Ahrens, Robin’s older brother. “But when she was joining the FBI, she was excited. She was so happy to be in. I keep looking at that part of it, too.”
While Robin’s path to the FBI seemed serendipitous, Martha Dixon’s journey appeared preordained. A chemistry major in college, she worked in the lab of a local hospital, determined to one day work at the FBI Laboratory. She became an agent in 1987 and quickly discovered in her first office in Knoxville that she preferred working on the front lines. “She liked solving the problems and closing a case,” her sister Monica said.
Martha transferred to the Washington Field Office, where she went to work on a cold case homicide squad. On November, 22, 1994, a gunman passed her by as he entered the squad room at police headquarters, possibly mistaking her for a secretary. Then came the shots.
“She heard the noise and chose not to leave,” said Jan Dixon Smith, Martha’s older sister. “She went in. She just knew that she might be able to do something. And that makes us very proud.”
Friday, October 26, 2012
FBI - Cyber Security Focusing on Hackers and Intrusions:
Cyber Security
Focusing on Hackers and Intrusions
Focusing on Hackers and Intrusions
Cyber Security
Focusing on Hackers and Intrusions
Focusing on Hackers and Intrusions
10/26/12
Early last year, hackers were discovered embedding malicious software in two million computers, opening a virtual door for criminals to rifle through users’ valuable personal and financial information. Last fall, an overseas crime ring was shut down after infecting four million computers, including half a million in the U.S. In recent months, some of the biggest companies and organizations in the U.S. have been working overtime to fend off continuous intrusion attacks aimed at their networks.
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| October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month |
The scope and enormity of the threat—not just to private industry but also to the country’s heavily networked critical infrastructure—was spelled out last month in Director Robert S. Mueller’s testimony to a Senate homeland security panel: “Computer intrusions and network attacks are the greatest cyber threat to our national security.”
To that end, the FBI over the past year has put in place an initiative to uncover and investigate web-based intrusion attacks and develop a cadre of specially trained computer scientists able to extract hackers’ digital signatures from mountains of malicious code. Agents are cultivating cyber-oriented relationships with the technical leads at financial, business, transportation, and other critical infrastructures on their beats.
| Podcast: Cyber Intrusions |
Today, investigators in the field can send their findings to specialists in the FBI Cyber Division’s Cyber Watch command at Headquarters, who can look for patterns or similarities in cases. The 24/7 post also shares the information with partner intelligence and law enforcement agencies—like the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security and the National Security Agency—on the FBI-led National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force.
A key aim of the Next Generation Cyber Initiative has been to expand our ability to quickly define “the attribution piece” of a cyber attack to help determine an appropriate response, said Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Bureau’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch. “The attribution piece is: who is conducting the attack or the exploitation and what is their motive,” McFeely explained. “In order to get to that, we’ve got to do all the necessary analysis to determine who is at the other end of the keyboard perpetrating these actions.”
The Cyber Division’s main focus now is on cyber intrusions, working closely with the Bureau’s Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Divisions.
Special Agent Richard McFeely
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“We are obviously concerned with terrorists using the Internet to conduct these types of attacks,” McFeely said. “As the lead domestic intelligence agency within the United States, it’s our job to make sure that businesses’ and the nation’s secrets don’t fall into the hands of adversaries.”
In the Coreflood case in early 2011, hackers enlisted a botnet—a network of infected computers—to do their dirty work. McFeely urged everyone connected to the Internet to be vigilant against computer viruses and malicious code, lest they become victims or unwitting pawns in a hacker or web-savvy terrorist’s malevolent scheme.
“It’s important that everybody understands that if you have a computer that is outward-facing—that it’s connected to the web—that your computer is at some point going to be under attack,” he said. “You need to be aware of the threat and you need to take it seriously.”
Resources:
- National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012: Are You the Weakest Link?
- National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force
- Infragard: A Partnership that Works
- Cyber Crimes Stories
- Cyber Crime
- How to Protect Your Computer
- National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2012: Are You the Weakest Link?
- National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force
- Infragard: A Partnership that Works
- Cyber Crimes Stories
- Cyber Crime
- How to Protect Your Computer
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Former FBI profiler weighs in on missing child Jessica Ridgeway case:
Former FBI profiler weighs in on missing child Jessica Ridgeway case:
1:14 PM, Oct 9, 2012 | 5 comments
"When you look at the statistics on missing children, the longer it takes to find them - in all honesty - the lesser your chances of getting them back," Van Zandt said.
He thinks investigators are heavily-focused on Jessica's backpack, which was found Sunday morning about six miles from her home. Van Zandt says the backpack could offer hidden clues that go beyond DNA.
"Many times, we've seen abductors take a victim south and then drive north and dispose of an item ... trying to point investigators ... in the wrong direction," he said.
Van Zandt also says residents could play a key role in solving the case. He thinks a passersby who may have seen a commotion may have thought they were passing by kids playing, but now realize that it could be an incident involving Jessica.
Van Zandt also says that there are registered sex offenders in Jessica's neighborhood. He expects that investigators have been interviewing them.
He says that all hope is not lost, in terms of Jessica being returned home safely.
"If in fact she was taken by an unknown person, that person [may have] taken care of her and is trying to make a decision on when to return her to her family," Van Zandt said. He says police may urge the person to drop Jessica off at a fire station, police station or "anywhere where she could make a call ... and get back with her family again."
If you've seen Jessica Ridgeway or have a tip regarding her disappearance, call 303-658-4336 or emailPDamberalert@cityofwestminster.us.
He thinks investigators are heavily-focused on Jessica's backpack, which was found Sunday morning about six miles from her home. Van Zandt says the backpack could offer hidden clues that go beyond DNA.
"Many times, we've seen abductors take a victim south and then drive north and dispose of an item ... trying to point investigators ... in the wrong direction," he said.
Van Zandt also says residents could play a key role in solving the case. He thinks a passersby who may have seen a commotion may have thought they were passing by kids playing, but now realize that it could be an incident involving Jessica.
Van Zandt also says that there are registered sex offenders in Jessica's neighborhood. He expects that investigators have been interviewing them.
He says that all hope is not lost, in terms of Jessica being returned home safely.
"If in fact she was taken by an unknown person, that person [may have] taken care of her and is trying to make a decision on when to return her to her family," Van Zandt said. He says police may urge the person to drop Jessica off at a fire station, police station or "anywhere where she could make a call ... and get back with her family again."
If you've seen Jessica Ridgeway or have a tip regarding her disappearance, call 303-658-4336 or emailPDamberalert@cityofwestminster.us.
(KUSA-TV © 2012 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)
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