By Corinne Worthington, Eleni Manis, Casey McLaughlin, Will Owen, and Nikita Ermolaev

Evolv is an AI weapon detector firm that has gained national attention following federal investigations, shareholder lawsuits, and close connections to Mayor Eric Adams. In this report, S.T.O.P. and IPVM present original research to reveal the high error rates and inaccuracy of Evolv weapon detectors in real-world conditions.

Key Findings Include:

• Many of New York City’s biggest tourist venues waste huge sums of money leasing Evolv sensors that frequently misidentify weapons and everyday objects;

• Venues continue to spend over 20 times the cost of comparable metal detectors on Evolv rentals, even as the company faces everything from federal investigations to lawsuits for false advertising and falsified earnings;

• S.T.O.P. and IPVM observed Evolv walk-through scanners in use at five top New York City attractions: three museums, one performing arts venue, and a sports stadium, as well as a popular bowling alley for comparison with the city’s largest venues;

• S.T.O.P. and IPVM’s research found Evolv sensors falsely claimed that one in four visitors had weapons, when, in practice, none did. On rainy days, the false alarm rate could reach 54%;

• Operators routinely ignored alarms or responded with only a cursory check, making the alerts almost entirely meaningless.

NOTE: S.T.O.P. and IPVM jointly conducted this study, including fieldwork and data collection. IPVM’s contributions focused on engineering analysis, survey methodology, and technical background, while S.T.O.P. took the lead in drafting the final report. S.T.O.P. reached out to Evolv and the venues for comment but the venues either failed to reply or declined to comment.

By CTEC Staff

Local government officials experience increasingly high rates of threats and harassment, while lacking guidance about which threats amount to constitutionally protected political speech and which threats may justify legal action. This executive summary provides a brief overview of the two requirements for speech to constitute a “true threat,” at which point it is no longer protected by the First Amendment. The remainder of the document contains a detailed summary of these requirements, including case citations, and examples of relevant cases.

A threat may merit legal action when:

1. It is a threat to commit an act of unlawful violence, and 

2. The speaker or writer acts with reckless disregard, i.e., “the speaker is aware that others could regard his statements as threatening violence and delivers them anyway.”

First criteria: threat to commit unlawful violence

• An explicit threat to commit an act that is both illegal and violent is likely sufficient.

• Symbolic speech such as cross burning may be sufficient, but it depends on the context and the history of the use of such symbols.

Second criteria: speaker intent

• Courts have extensively debated the intent requirement, and future Supreme Court cases may alter the standard.

• Currently, the standard is recklessness: The speaker must have acted with reckless disregard for the threatening nature of their speech.

• The speaker must have been “aware that others could understand their statements as threatening violence, and delivers them anyway.”

• “Political hyperbole” does not lose constitutional protection (see below for example).

• A speaker does not have to intend to carry the threat out.

• Threatening speech that does not show sufficient intent can still be removed from public spaces such as social media platforms, public forums, etc.

• Indirect threats may be sufficient to qualify as true threats.

• Speech that does not qualify as a criminal threat under state statutes may still be sufficient to justify civil action such as protective orders against individuals, or other civil remedies such as civil assault claims.

This document is not intended to provide guidance as to what kinds of threats are credible, i.e., likely to be acted on by the speaker or their allies and therefore deserving of law enforcement scrutiny. Threats that fall outside the boundaries of “true threats” under the First Amendment may still warrant law enforcement attention and should be reported. Threats should quickly be reported to allow the relevant law enforcement agency to determine whether it meets the threshold for further action, especially if an individual is concerned about personal safety. Reporting subthreshold or edge-case threats also allows law enforcement to track and evaluate cumulative behavior, provide context for other actions, and allow for investigation of the speaker’s mental state. For guidance on threat assessment, please see resources in footnote, as featured in the PDF upload.

Monterey CA:  Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, Middlebury Institute of International Studies.   2024. 8p.

By Sunita Patel

Scholars and activists are urging a move away from policing and towards more care-based approaches to social problems and public safety. These debates contest the conventional wisdom about the role and scope of policing and call for shifting resources to systems of care, including medical, mental health, and social work. While scholars and activists in favor of reducing society’s reliance on police recognize the co-constitutive relationship between policing and care work, they have not sufficiently grappled with the explicit overlapping mechanisms of carcerality. Surveillance and criminal enforcement permeate medical centers delivering care to low-income patients. Using numerous government records related to the U.S. Veterans Affairs Police Force (VAPF), this Article describes how the VAPF criminalizes low-income and sometimes Black or Latinx veterans with disabilities stemming from U.S military service. These populations are among the most medically vulnerable populations in the United States. It argues that care workers and health institutions become dependent on police to address harm and safety, and proposes alternatives grounded in anticarceral care to reduce reliance on police. In doing so, this Article shows just how difficult it will be to remove police from institutions because it requires rethinking care, not only policing. At the same time, this thick descriptive account provides a guide for how to reduce society’s reliance on police in institutional contexts. This Article assesses the multiple intersections between U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare and embedded policing as a metaphorical healthcare policing web. Part I maps the process of assimilating policing into the VA, providing a primer on the agency and its patients. It explains the convergence of order maintenance, disability management, and workplace safety regulations that built the embedded policing infrastructure in place today. Part II explains how police influence clinical decisions and the care environment through Disruptive Behavior Committees, criminal enforcement, and workplace threat assessments, thereby altering the institutional culture. Part III draws lessons from the VA and proposes a list of potential solutions, adopting an abolitionist ethic for decoupling care from policing and embedded police from institutions

UCLA Law Review, Vol. 69, 2022,

By Paul Cassell and Richard Fuwles

Cassell, Paul and Fowles, Richard, "Does Bail Reform Increase Crime? An Empirical Assessment of the Public Safety Implications of Bail Reform in Cook County, Illinois" (2020). 

Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided. These issues involve important empirical questions, including whether releasing more defendants before trial leads to additional crimes. An opportunity to investigate this public safety issue has developed in Chicago, our nation’s third largest city. There, the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Courts adopted new bail reform measures in September 2017 and reviewed them empirically in May 2019. Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new procedures had released many more defendants before trial without any concomitant increase in crime. This article disputes the Study’s conclusions. This article explains that, contrary to the Study’s assertions, the new changes to pretrial release procedures appear to have led to a substantial increase in crimes committed by pretrial releasees in Cook County. Properly measured and estimated, after more generous release procedures were put in place, the number of released defendants charged with committing new crimes increased by 45%. And, more concerning, the number of pretrial releasees charged with committing new violent crimes increased by an estimated 33%. In addition, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, the Study’s data appears to undercount the number of releasees charged with new violent crimes; and a substantial number of aggravated domestic violence prosecutions prosecutors dropped after the changes, presumably because batterers were able to more frequently obtain release and intimidate their victims into not pursuing charges. These public safety concerns call into question whether the bail “reform” measures implemented in Cook County were cost-beneficial. And because Cook County’s procedures are state-of-the-art and track those being implemented in many parts of the country, Cook County’s experience suggests that other jurisdictions may similarly be suffering increases in crime due to bail reform.

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship. 2929,

By  U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office)

To help law enforcement agencies improve their services, processes, and reputation, agencies can disseminate this survey to community members to gather their opinions and experiences. The survey asks community members to assess five key components of their local agency: community involvement, safety, procedural justice, performance, and contact and satisfaction. The survey takes approximately five minutes to complete, and responses are confidential to the extent provided by law. This survey is available in Spanish at https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter?item=COPS-W0807.

Washington, DC: COPS Office, 2025. 8p.

By Emily Grisé; Alexander Cooke; David Cooper; Zane Oueja; Willem Klumpenhouwer; Amy HobbsOn transit systems across the United States, rising rates of drug use along with deteriorating safety conditions for customers and staff have become increasingly pressing and complex issues for transit agencies to solve. Many challenges surround agencies’ responses to drug use on transit, such as inconsistent data collection and the low uptake of support services.

TCRP Synthesis 179: The Impacts of and Response to Drug Use on Transit, from TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program, documents and synthesizes the current practices of transit agencies in addressing the consumption and distribution of illegal drugs on their systems, as well as the resulting effects on customer and staff safety and security.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Transportation Research Board; Transit Cooperative Research Program. 2025. p91.

 By Lisel Petis

The practical application of the U.S. bail system is a complex issue that intersects with overcrowded jails, socioeconomic disparities, and public safety concerns. To better understand how these issues vary from state to state and to observe trends and areas of opportunities, we undertook a comprehensive analysis of bail reform laws across all 50 states. This analysis sheds light on the landscape of pretrial justice in the United States, outlines current trends in bail reform, and explores how states can expect bail discussions to progress moving forward. Several key areas of opportunity emerged in our analysis, including expanding immediate-release options, defining time limits for setÝng bail, using pretrial risk assessments, and encouraging the presumption of unsecured release. Some important secondary issues also emerged, including considering a defendant’s ability to pay bail, emphasizing the need for statewide pretrial services, and expanding the types of offenses that are eligible for preventive detention. Additional opportunities for improvement include integrating needs assessments and pretrial support. Collectively, these themes suggest that there is value in shifting away from the traditional cash bail system and moving toward a more equitable, efÏcient, and data-driven pretrial justice framework. Although these themes provide a guide for reform, the path to a more effective bail system will likely face challenges driven by political dynamics and evolving public sentiment. To navigate this landscape, policymakers should strive for balanced, common-sense solutions, drawing inspiration from data and successful models in other states. Achieving meaningful change in the bail system will require careful consideration, bipartisan dialogue, and a commitment to addressing the multifaceted challenges within the U.S. pretrial justice system 

Washington, DC: R Street, 2024. 71p.

By Cristina Tilley

American law and American life are asymmetrical. Law divides neatly in two: public and private. But life is lived in three distinct spaces: pure public, pure private, and hybrid middle spaces that are neither state nor home. Which body of law governs the shops, gyms, and workplaces that are formally accessible to all, but functionally hostile to Black, female, poor, and other marginalized Americans? From the liberal mid-century onward, social justice advocates have treated these spaces as fundamentally public and fully remediable via public law equity commands. This article takes a broader view. It urges a tort law revival in the campaign for just middle spaces, taking as its exemplar the problem of racially oppressive policing. Inequitable policing arises from both system-level policies and personal officer biases. Public law can remake systems, but struggles to remake people. Consequently, this piece argues that the legal quest for humane policing has overemphasized public law litigation under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 and underemphasized the private law of tort. Personal injury law, specifically the intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) tort, has untapped potential to influence the private bias of officers and the communities they serve. IIED invites individuation of Black litigants, self-reflection on the meaning of racial dignity in middle spaces, and construction of shared norms about civilian humanity—a panoply of exercises social psychologists have identified as the essential tools of anti-bias work. Returning to broader themes, the article builds on the example of inequitable policing to petition for full private law partnership in the bid for twenty-first century social justice.

Brooklyn Law Review , Vol. 89, No. 2, 2024

U Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2024-08