Crime

With US car thefts up 25.1% since 2019, it's clear that high-tech key fob immobilizers aren't cutting the mustard. But this might: UMich researchers have created a charmingly low-tech anti-theft device that turns the whole car into a security keypad.

Even if someone's fingerprints are found on an incriminating document, that person may claim that they handled the blank paper before the criminal printed anything on it. A new technique, however, can now be used to check if that really was the case.

It's a sad fact that mass shootings have become a common occurrence in the US. Defense tech company Axon has announced what it says will be a new means of resolving such incidents quickly and relatively safely, using a drone equipped with a Taser.

When you pull your car up on a quiet street at night, do you park under a street light thinking it will dissuade a thief from breaking into your car? New research challenges that assumption, finding rates of vehicle theft drop when street lights are off.

If you hear gunshots in an urban setting, it's important to get the police to their source as quickly as possible. A new system is being developed to help, by combining autonomous drones with an existing shot-locating technology.

We've all seen episodes of CSI where the dirt on a suspect's shoes is only found in one location. While that scenario is a bit far-fetched, new research shows that soil analysis may be used to eliminate large geographical areas from police searches.

Location-based augmented reality games are expanding into all kinds of avenues. Eastern Market Murder tasks players with solving a century-old true crime mystery in the actual locations where it all went down. New Atlas hit the streets to try it out.

Ordinarily, when a body is found, the time of death is estimated via insect activity or body temperature. Unfortunately, that doesn't apply if the corpse is in the water. Now, a new study suggests that bone proteins could still provide at least part of the answer.

Finding a person's fingerprints at a crime scene isn't always enough to convict them, as they can claim that those prints were left before the crime took place. That may be about to change, as scientists have devised a method of dating fingerprints.

The Epilepsy Foundation is striking back against a campaign by Twitter trolls to flood some hashtags with flashing GIFs designed to trigger seizures in vulnerable individuals. The cyber-attacks follow on from a similar attack on a journalist in 2016.

Although Tasers are an effective alternative to the use of lethal force by police officers, getting shot by one is still quite a painful experience. That's where the BolaWrap 100 comes in – when fired at a "difficult" suspect, it simply ties them up.

Misadventure in Little Lon is a location-based, augmented reality mobile game that asks players to help solve a century-old crime by walking the real-world streets of Melbourne, Australia, and talking to virtual characters. New Atlas goes hands-on.