Almost three years after Palm Beach County officials set out to combat the opioid epidemic, it looks like their efforts are paying off: The State Attorney’s Office reports there were 326 opioid deaths in 2018, down from 558 in 2017. That’s a 41 percent decline. When the crisis started in 2012, 143 deaths were attributed to these addictive prescription drugs. Then there were 189 deaths in 2014, and 307 in 2015. They hit a peak of 569 in 2016.

In the evening of Dec. 15, 2016, Dakota James called his friend Shelley in a panic. He was cold, disoriented, and scared out of his mind, wandering the streets of downtown Pittsburgh, trying to find someone—anyone—who would help him. “I don’t know where I am,” he told her, sobbing. “I’m so cold. Please help me. I’m lost.” Shelley didn’t hesitate.

Chris Hansen, the well-known host of the former NBC television program “To Catch a Predator,” was arrested on Monday. Hansen allegedly ordered nearly $13,000 of marketing materials, but the check he used bounced, authorities say. Peter Psichopaidas told cops that Hansen ordered 355 ceramic mugs, 650 vinyl decals, and 288 t-shirts, saying he would pay in full before the goods were delivered. Instead, Psichopaidas said, Hansen waited three months after first receiving invoices back in September 2017 before someone from Hansen News LLC sent in a check for the full amount of $12,998.05.

A British man is sentenced to life for the second time today for a bloody attack on a defenceless victim. Stephen Leonard (57) received a first life in 1979 for the murder of a 3-year-old girl. That case was so horrible that its details were never revealed. In 2002, however, he was released after a parole committee ruled that he was “no longer dangerous”. In the summer of last year, however, he struck again. Equally merciless.

The wraps have come off the Ford Police Interceptor Utility, giving the world its camouflage-free look at the 2020 Ford Explorer. Thanks to the car's black paint job, as well as its police livery, lighting and bull bar, a lot of Explorer's styling details are obscured from view.

A 17-month-old girl taken during a car theft has been found safe and well. Maria Tudorica was taken in Nine Acres Close, Newham, east London, at 16:37 GMT. Scotland Yard tweeted just before 20:00 that she had been found less than a mile away in the Ruskin Avenue area. Maria was in the front passenger seat of a black Audi A5 when her father met an unknown man with a view to selling the car - but the thief jumped in and drove away.

The New York police officer hailed for using nonlethal force to fend off a gang of men in a confrontation shown on a viral video said Thursday that pulling a gun should not always be an officer's first option. "Life is precious, and going to that weapon is not necessarily the first thing we should be thinking about," Officer Syed Ali said to reporters Thursday about his management of a tense confrontation Sunday night.

911 emergency services in several states across the U.S. remain down after a massive outage at a CenturyLink data center. The outage began after 12pm ET on Thursday, according to CenturyLink’s status page, and continues to cause disruption across 911 call centers

A sleepy town in Massachusetts is in the headlines after a 25-year-old man died while being arrested for viciously attacking his Tinder date. Erich Stelzer, 25, a bodybuilder who shared fitness videos on YouTube, died in custody after he was tased by police in Cohasset, Mass. The incident took place Thursday evening after Cohasset police received a call about a disturbance and arrived to find Stelzer assaulting a 24-year-old woman with weapons, including a knife.

A tool that identifies false robbery reports is being rolled out across Spain

Predictive policing using data analytics is gaining acceptance among police forces, but at what cost?

The government isn’t really after the password, after all; it’s after any potential evidence it protects. In other words: fishing expedition.

Over the weekend, the New York Times Magazine published a lengthy and in-depth piece on how U.S. law enforcement has willfully ignored the threat of white supremacist extremism for decades. The author, Janet Reitman, takes an ostensibly deep dive into how law enforcement — particularly federal agencies — has neglected the growth of the violent far right, in part owing to Republican political agenda setting. For a story framed around a “blind spot,” though, the piece itself is hobbled by an egregious case of sightlessness.

We all have an innate ability to pick a face out of a crowd. But some can memorise thousands of people – often seen only fleetingly on CCTV. Alex Moshakis meets the ‘super recognisers’

Tyler Barriss is poised to face a stiff punishment for the game-related swatting call that ultimately killed Wichita resident Andrew Finch, not to mention a host of other crimes. Barriss has pleaded guilty to 51 charges as part of a deal, including making a false report resulting in death as well as bomb threats to numerous US states and Canada. The agreement will see him face at least 20 years in prison if the judge approves the terms.

Tyler Barriss, 26, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to making a false report resulting in a death, after he placed a hoax call late last year that resulted in police fatally shooting an unarmed man in Wichita, Kan. Barriss pleaded guilty to a total of 51 charges as part of a plea deal. He will be sentenced in January, The Associated Press reports.

Spanish police are asking for help naming a rescued puppy that they plan to train as a new member of the force. Responding to a call, the authorities in Granada found a man kicking a German shepherd on the street. After stopping the man and rushing the dog to hospital, the officers decided to adopt and recruit the puppy.

The morning of September 22, 2017, Cristopher Precopia went to work at a lumber yard in Georgetown. By the end of the day, he was in jail facing 99 years in prison. But he didn't know why. Why had police come to his work and arrested him? Why was he being accused of these horrible crimes? Who was accusing him? She said he broke into her home in Temple. She said he sliced an "X" into her chest with a box cutter.

Despite scanning millions of cars every year, the average police department in the US only matches a license plate with a car they’re looking for 0.5 percent of the time, according to a new cache of data on the use of automated license plate readers. Police agencies across the country have been tracking the license plates of millions of drivers for years, but few people realize how widely police departments share this data, and how rarely it’s actually useful.

These dramatic images today reveal Scotland Yard’s new hardline war on London’s violent moped gangs. Extraordinary dashcam footage shows police pursuit drivers ramming fleeing moped thugs, sending them sprawling in the road. Police said the new strategy of ending pursuits with what the Met calls “tactical contact” was now in  common use across London.

There was no “maybe.”

A missing 13-year-old girl from North Carolina has been found alive in Oklahoma, authorities say. Aubrey Acree, who was reported missing on Monday, was found safe more than 900 miles away in Checotah, Oklahoma on Wednesday after an alleged abduction. Police arrested 23-year-old Jacob Gardea, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, after finding Acree, according to a statement from the FBI and Rutherford County sheriff’s department.

Police in New York have found the couple who got engaged in Times Square on Friday but lost the ring down a grate. The NYPD tweeted on Sunday that arrangements were being made to return the ring to the pair, who are from the UK. CCTV images showed the couple unsuccessfully trying to retrieve the piece of jewellery.

The Sacramento County’s Department of Human Assistance (DHA) is terminating its invasive automated license plate reader (ALPR) program, following an EFF investigation that found the agency was accessing driver data to investigate welfare recipients without enacting the basic civil liberties safeguards required by California law.

A Dutch church has been holding a service for over 800 hours to protect an immigrant family from deportation because Dutch law forbids police from entering places of worship while a service is ongoing. The Hague's Bethel Church has been holding the ceremony around the clock since 1:30 p.m. on October 26, the church said. It is trying to protect the Tamrazyan family, who fled Armenia in 2010, CBC and CNN reported. The family has three children.

A police department in Washington state made a lot of people laugh this week with a back and forth Facebook exchange with a criminal who had a warrant out for his arrest for allegedly violating his probation. Anthony Akers, 38, had a warrant issued after he failed to comply with the terms of his probation, Richland Police Sgt. Drew Florence told BuzzFeed News. Florence didn't immediately have the information on Akers' original crime.

The New York Police Department is to start using quadcopters in its crime-fighting work. Trained cops will have access to various models — all made by DJI — for use in particular situations such as search-and-rescue missions, hostage situations, and hazardous material incidents.

Police say a 31-year-old protester who told children Santa Claus is not real has been arrested for trespassing at a North Texas church. Aaron Urbanski was arrested Saturday after authorities were called to a church in Cleburne, which was hosting a "breakfast with Santa" event. Police say they found three people demonstrating outside the church after responding to a trespassing complaint.

One of the leading U.S. forensic experts, who served as the primary DNA specialist prosecutor in O.J. Simpson's murder trial, says Canadian agencies are doing victims a disservice by using a potentially misleading DNA technique, instead of a surer method to identify suspects. But it's a method that does come with some privacy risks.

Police in New Jersey teamed up with Amazon to install porch cameras and add GPS trackers to fake boxes so they could easily locate and arrest thieves when a box gets stolen. The first theft happened just three minutes after a fake box delivery was made.

Nearly two years before the U.S. government’s first known inquiry into the activities of Reddit co-founder and famed digital activist Aaron Swartz, the FBI swept up his email data in a counterterrorism investigation that also ensnared students at an American university, according to a once-secret document first published by Gizmodo.

Though DNA has revolutionized modern crime fighting, the clues it may hold aren't revealed quickly. Samples of saliva, or skin, or semen are sent to a crime lab by car (or mail), and then chemists get to work. Detectives are accustomed to waiting days or weeks, or more, for the results. Some labs are so backed up, they only take the most serious crimes. Some samples never get tested.

Met Police: no worries—if you decline to be scanned, it won't be suspicious at all!

An Ohio police officer stopped a teen driver going 100 miles per hour in a 65 zone, and then penned an emotional letter to the 18-year-old, warning him about the dangers of reckless driving. The North Ridgeville Police Department shared the officer's note on Facebook and it quickly gained widespread attention. The officer was brutally honest, and many people praised him for his powerful words to the young man.

A northern Ontario woman was charged with fake witchcraft just two days before the archaic offence was removed from the Criminal Code. Timmins police charged 33-year-old Tiffany Butch on Dec. 11, accusing her of demanding money in return for lifting a curse. Two days later, Section 365 of the Criminal Code — which prohibits "pretending to practise witchcraft" — was formally repealed.