Today, we take a moment to recognize and honor our missing children and pray for their safe return.  The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) held its annual Hope Awards gala during the month of May to acknowledge this significant day and recognize the remarkable efforts to fight for children’s safety. 

Thomson Reuters had the privilege of participating in this gala and has been a supporter of NCMEC and its mission for many years.  NCMEC’s tireless work and resolve to save our missing children and reunite them safely with their families gives us all hope.

At the “Home of the Kentucky Derby”

By Daniel DeSimone, Thomson Reuters

In 1991, a group of law enforcement executives formed an association to provide their peers educational and networking opportunities.  FBI-LEEDA, Inc., also known as the Law Enforcement Executive Development Association, a non-profit corporation, was formed.  Today, FBI-LEEDA’s membership includes law enforcement executives throughout the United States, U.S. territories, and foreign countries. 

The Association holds its annual training conference in the Spring of each year to provide members with up-to-date information and education.  As part of an emerging public/private partnership agenda, FBI-LEEDA invites a limited number of companies to display the latest in technology and product lines for its attendees and Thomson Reuters was honored to participate. 

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COPS grant opportunities – part 3 of our 3-part series

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) is offering two grant opportunities to the law enforcement community:

• COPS Hiring Program (CHP) – “for the hiring and rehiring of additional career law enforcement officers in an effort to create and preserve jobs and increase their community policing capacity and crime prevention efforts.” Learn more and apply to the CHP grant >>
• Community Policing Development (CPD) Solicitations – “to advance the practice of community policing in law enforcement agencies through training and technical assistance, the development of innovative community policing strategies, applied research, guidebooks, and best practices that are national in scope.” Learn more and apply to the CPD grant >>

Application deadline for both CHP and CPD:  June 4, 2013

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Read Part 1 of our 3-part series – Policing grant opportunities (with deadlines in late April 2013)
Read Part 2 of our 3-part series – Child Support Enforcement grant programs
Read Justice Assistance Grant program (May 30, 2013 deadline)

Don’t miss these two events!

Thomson Reuters invites you to two special events we are holding on June 13, 2013 at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington, D.C.  These events will be widely attended and are expected to draw more than 100 industry professionals from the public and private sectors. 

During the day, from 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. we are hosting a conference on “The Virtual Economy: Potential, Perplexities and Promises.”  The goal of the event is to explore the opportunities presented by virtual currencies such as bitcoin as well as some of the unintended consequences in creating safe havens for illegal activity – money laundering and child trafficking.  Lunch will be provided and will offer the opportunity to network with other attendees. 

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By Melinda Arora, Thomson Reuters

The Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program is now accepting applications for funding under the Edward Bryne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program.  According to their website, this program furthers the Department’s mission by assisting state, local, and tribal efforts to prevent or reduce crime and violence.  They stated that JAG funds may be used for state and local initiatives, technical assistance, strategic planning, research and evaluation (including forensics), data collection, training, personnel, equipment, forensic laboratories, supplies, contractual support, and criminal justice information systems that will improve or enhance such areas as:

• Law enforcement programs
• Prosecution and court programs
• Prevention and education programs
• Corrections and community corrections programs
• Drug treatment and enforcement programs
• Planning, evaluation, and technology improvement programs
• Crime victim and witness programs (other than compensation)

Application deadline: May 30, 2013.  Learn more and apply to this grant.

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More grants:
Read Part 1 of our 3-part series – Policing grant opportunities (with deadlines in late April, 2013)
Read Part 2 of our 3-part series – Child Support Enforcement grant programs
Read Part 3 of our 3-part series – COPS grant opportunities (June 4, 2013 deadline)

By Daniel DeSimone, Thomson Reuters

As a 23-year veteran of the FBI, I am honored to serve as lead representative to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) on behalf of Thomson Reuters and its Fraud Prevention & Investigation business. The organization was created in 1984 to honor and remember the service and sacrifice of law enforcement officers in the United States.

For the second year, Thomson Reuters salutes the work of individuals and organizations that use our public records products and solutions in extraordinary ways with our Everyday Heroes Awards. A charitable donation is then made on behalf of the honoree to an organization of their choice. Among this year’s honorees were the Warren Police Department (Michigan) and the Pasadena Police Department (California), who donated $2,500 and $1,000, respectively, to the NLEOMF.

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Webinar date and time: Thursday, May 30, 2013, 2:00-3:00pm ET

 

REGISTER HERE for this complimentary session. 

Description
Could social media really have discovered the Boston bomber suspects? Ever since Boston, the idea of crowdsourcing has surged to mainstream levels. This webinar will observe the positives and negatives of crowdsourcing using Boston as an example. We will look at other popular crowdsourcing use cases, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Red Balloon Challenge and Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). We will also uncover the most masterful creators and participants of crowdsourced ideas. 

About the Presenter
Katherine Sagona-Stophel will lead this discussion. Katherine is employed by Thomson Reuters Special Services as a government analyst. Focused on open source collection, Katherine specializes in understanding the power of crowd sourcing through social media applications, gaming, and mobile technologies in order to solve intelligence problems.

REGISTER HERE for this complimentary session.

By Matt Angelicola, Thomson Reuters

I think that you can most appropriately define a folk-hero as someone who is more or less a hero celebrated by the common people.  Our heroes are generally flawed men or women who found in them the ability to perform deeds with the most noble of intentions.  Consider men like John Brown – who reviled the institution of slavery so much that he led an armed attack against the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859.  Although his motives were honorable many historians view him as America’s first domestic terrorist.   

This leads me to consider a potential modern-day folk-hero:  “The Hacktivist”.  Depending on your viewpoint, you may see him or her as sitting at the forefront of the fight for transparency or leading the charge against the “1 percent”.  On the other hand, you might see them as a 20 year old wearing a tin-foil hat living in mom and dad’s basement with nothing else to do other than cause trouble.  Regardless of perspective, we’ve taken quite an interest in these folks.  We may praise them for such activities as pursuing cyber-attacks on foes of the United States and for hacking into the Twitter accounts of child molesters.  This behavior is easy to rally around because it fits our sense of justice – the bad guy is getting their due.  However, when we look at other instances where their considerable talents have been pointed against American banking institutions, we have to decide if making a point is more important than the public’s access to its bank.  In this case it may be more difficult for some folks to utilize the same principles when determine right and wrong. 

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By Rob Russell, Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is a long-time supporter of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the nation’s most prominent nonprofit dedicated to finding missing children, reducing child sexual exploitation, and preventing child victimization. We provide in-kind donations of services, including our CLEAR online public record platform, which NCMEC uses to locate abductors and other people who might have information about the whereabouts of missing and exploited children. Several members of the Thomson Reuters Legal Government and Global Account Management teams were in attendance at NCMEC’s annual Hope Awards banquet, which recognizes individuals and organizations who make significant contributions to protecting our children. 

Always an emotional and inspiring event, this year’s Hope Awards were made all the more so by this week’s news of the rescue of three young women from more than a decade in captivity in Cleveland. NCMEC’s staff works tirelessly as an advocate for missing and exploited children and their families, and they too rarely have opportunities to celebrate successes like this week’s. 

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By Daniel DeSimone, Thomson Reuters 

The Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies (ASCIA) was founded in 1978 as a professional association consisting of senior executives from the statewide criminal investigative agencies in the United States.  At its inception, ASCIA included 11 state criminal investigative agencies.  Today, the number of active member agencies covers almost every state in the United States.  The mission of ASCIA includes, among other things, open sharing of ideas and innovative approaches to improving public safety.

Thomson Reuters’ Fraud Prevention & Investigation (FP&I) group co-sponsored the 2013 ASCIA Spring meeting, which was held May 5-8, 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee.  FP&I ‘s Sr. Director of Investigative Resources, Daniel DeSimone represented Thomson Reuters.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) served as the host law enforcement agency.  TBI Director Mark Gwyn provided all ASCIA attendees with a tour of TBI headquarters.  ASCIA Executive Director Bob McConnell and President Ron Sloan of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation provided a varied agenda of criminal investigative and national security topics.