As a growing number of encounters between civilians and Department of Homeland Security agents — including the widely scrutinized fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis — are scrutinized in court records and on social media, federal officials are returning to a familiar response: self-defense.
Nicholas Moore pleaded guilty to repeatedly hacking the U.S. Supreme Court’s filing system and illegally accessing computer systems belonging to AmeriCorps and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Bipartisan lawmakers are seeking to secure a 35% federal pay raise for correctional officers at the Bureau of Prisons, in an effort to address longstanding staffing shortages across the agency.
The Federal Correctional Officer Paycheck Protection Act, which both House and Senate lawmakers introduced this week, would implement a 35% increase to the base pay rates for BOP correctional officers in the 0007 job series, as well as certain correctional officers on various other government pay scales.
“Persistent and often dangerous staffing shortages at federal prisons nationwide cause safety concerns for BOP personnel and incarcerated individuals alike,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), one of the bill’s original cosponsors, said in a statement. “Our bill will help to ensure that staff within our federal prisons are paid adequately for the critical work they do across this country.”
A bipartisan companion bill in the House comes from Reps. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who said that pay rates for correctional officers fall short of other similar federal law enforcement personnel. In turn, that leads to low staffing levels, coupled with excessive use of overtime to try to compensate for the vacancies.
“This strains workforce morale, disrupts inmate programming and creates unsafe conditions inside Bureau of Prisons facilities,” Bresnahan said in a statement.
The new bill comes shortly after BOP correctional officers received a 3.8% federal pay raise, as part of President Donald Trump’s orders for a larger 2026 pay increase for certain law enforcement personnel.
The American Federation of Government Employees said it “appreciates” the 3.8% raise for law enforcement, including BOP correctional officers. But AFGE added that for the BOP, “the one-time pay bump simply isn’t enough to make up for decades of pay disparity.”
Brandy Moore White, national president of the AFGE Council of Prison Locals, expressed support for the new legislation.
“This reform is critical. It will align BOP compensation with federal law enforcement standards, stem the loss of experienced officers and attract qualified applicants in an increasingly competitive hiring market,” Moore White said in a statement. “Most importantly, it will help restore safe staffing levels across federal institutions, reduce violence, protect staff and ensure mission readiness.”
The introduction of the bill also comes shortly after BOP Director William K. Marshall III announced upcoming retention-based pay incentives for certain correctional officers and other BOP positions seeing consistent staffing shortages. The new pay incentives, which are expected to take effect in February, will give some agency employees a temporary pay boost between 5% and 25%, depending on their job position and geographic location.
For years, BOP has attempted to stave off poor recruitment and retention levels by using pay-based recruitment and retention incentives as a way to try to keep federal correctional officers in their jobs. But because the pay incentives are a temporary fix, many have advocated for a larger and permanent federal pay raise for the BOP workforce.
A Justice Department Office of Inspector General report from February 2024 said the BOP workforce uses excessive overtime hours and staff “augmentation” to try to compensate for persistent understaffing. But the OIG wrote that those factors “overburdened existing staff and potentially contributed to staff fatigue, sleep deprivation, decreased vigilance and inattentiveness to duty.”
Recent federal workforce data also shows that BOP correctional officers’ attrition levels over the last year have resulted in 1,700 officers leaving their jobs, including more than 1,100 correctional officers who have either quit or retired since January 2025. Over the same time period, the agency had about 1,200 new officers join the ranks, resulting in a net loss of nearly 500 correctional officers over the last year.
Under the new legislation, the 35% pay increase would initially last for five years. Within the last six months of that timeframe, the bill would require the Justice Department OIG to assess the progress BOP has made toward improving recruitment and retention levels, as well as reducing overtime hours and staff augmentation. If that OIG assessment shows BOP has made progress as a result of the federal pay raise, the 35% salary boost would remain in place.
● Stanford’s Social Media Lab is developing interventions to improve digital and AI literacy among diverse communities.
● Specific educational tools, such as video tutorials on lateral reading, have proven effective in improving digital literacy and can be adapted for AI education.
● Building community trust is essential for the success of interventions, as it fosters resilience against misinformation and enhances user engagement.
The killing in Minneapolis is among the most serious in a series of incidents over recent months involving federal immigration agents’ use of force. Samantha Trepel writes in Just Security thatmany of these incidents raise questions about whether agents used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and federal criminal law.
Two scholars at the Manhattan Institute (MI) objected to my tweet, noting that Somalis aged 18–54 have an incarceration rate above that of other immigrant groups but below that of native-born Americans in the same age range.
When people talk about the psychology of security guards, the conversation usually centers on familiar talking points: long shifts, intense pressure, burnout, boredom, confrontation, and the unpredictable nature of the job. These factors absolutely shape the profession, but they only represent part of the whole picture. What is often missing is a deeper and more candid look at the psychological landscape security guards experience every day.
Minneapolis is once again the focus of debates about violence involving law enforcement after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, in her car.
Lassen Peak is developing a handheld radar system for concealed weapon detection. (Lassen Peak Image)
A Bellevue, Wash.-based startup is moving closer to commercialization of a handheld scanning device that it says could change one of the most dangerous and controversial procedures in policing: the physical pat-down for weapons.
Lassen Peak‘s radar-based imaging system allows officers to detect concealed guns, knives and other weapons from several feet away, without touching a person. The technology — similar to full-body scanners used in airport security checkpoints — is built around a custom-designed semiconductor chip that operates at extremely high radio frequencies, enabling detailed imaging through clothing.
Hatch Graham, co-founder and CEO of Lassen Peaks. (Lassen Peaks Photo)
Intended for use by law enforcement, military, and private venues, the device could help reduce use-of-force incidents during pat-downs — known as Terry frisks — while addressing long-standing concerns about privacy, bias and officer safety.
“We want to reduce the use of force. That’s our goal,” Lassen Peak Chairman and CEO Hatch Graham told GeekWire. “And to help build trust between society and law enforcement. Hopefully this does that. That’s our mission.”
Graham, a longtime inventor, engineer and entrepreneur, co-founded the company in 2019 alongside Chief Scientist Dr. Ehsan Afshari, a professor at the University of Michigan and an expert in ultra-high frequency microelectronics.
The company announced $10 million in debt and equity financings this week led by Menlo Park, Calif.-based Structural Capital. Lassen Peak, which was a finalist for Innovation of the Year at the 2025 GeekWire Awards, is also backed by Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group, among others, and has raised about $40 million to date.
Radar at 300 gigahertz
At the heart of Lassen Peak’s system is a proprietary imaging radar chip that operates in the so-called “terahertz gap,” at frequencies around 300 gigahertz — far higher than conventional radar used in autonomous vehicles or wireless communications.
At those frequencies, the wavelength of the signal shrinks to about a millimeter, allowing dozens of antennas to be integrated directly onto a standard chip.
The current chip integrates 24 receiver antennas and eight transmit antennas, enabling the system to capture multiple perspectives of an object simultaneously. The approach works similarly to human vision, using triangulation to infer shape and location.
“You close one eye and somebody hits you a baseball, it’ll hit you in the forehead,” Graham said. “But by having two eyeballs, you can triangulate.”
Raw radar data is processed using a combination of digital signal processing and artificial intelligence software that reconstructs images and highlights suspicious objects, such as the outline of a handgun or a knife. The system is designed to show only abstract shapes and bounding boxes, rather than anatomical details.
The system also includes a cloud-based backend that stores scan data, images and metadata such as time and location. That data can be retained for evidentiary purposes, similar to body-camera footage.
Safer alternative to pat-downs
Lassen Peak’s handheld scanner software uses digital signal processing and AI to reconstruct images and highlight suspicious objects (Lassen Peak Images)
The Terry stop and Terry frisk, named for a 1968 Supreme Court case, are brief detentions and pat-downs that allow officers to conduct an outer-clothing search for weapons when they have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
The frisk has long been criticized as invasive and is widely regarded by officers as one of the most dangerous moments in an encounter.
It’s when officers and those being detained can get hurt, according to Carl Rushmeyer, Lassen Peak’s vice president of public safety and a former law enforcement officer.
Instead of putting hands on a detainee, an officer standing six or eight feet away can remotely scan and verify an individual using the Lassen Peak device.
“You’re still going to do a secondary search before you get them in a patrol car,” Rushmeyer said. “But this is a very, very good initial search without having to contact or touch somebody.”
Demand and next steps
Graham said Lassen Peak has been endorsed by a number of law enforcement professionals as well as rights advocates. The scanner has generated interest from law enforcement agencies across the U.S. and internationally, especially in the U.K. and countries where knife violence is a rising concern.
The company has focused on large police departments with more than 1,000 sworn officers, narrowing its initial target market to about 160 agencies nationwide. Graham said Lassen Peak has met with 62 of them in the past year.
The company has about 15 employees and another 10 consultants and is not generating revenue yet, but expects to do so through a subscription model. Lassen Peak plans to conduct demonstrations and beta testing with police departments in early 2026, with initial shipments targeted for midyear.
While the first commercial product is a handheld scanner, Lassen Peak’s long-term vision centers on the chip itself, which can be embedded into multiple platforms. These include drones that could assess a potentially dangerous situation from the air or ceiling-mounted dome cameras with “eyes” on a hospital, school, courthouse or other sensitive location.
“It has to be a product that goes out into the world and does not come back,” Graham said. “And that’s as difficult in these life-and-death applications as anything. We’re heading into 2026 and we believe we’re in the final stages of commercializing.”
The specifics of a larger federal pay raise for law enforcement officers are coming into view, following President Donald Trump’s directive to offer a 3.8% salary increase for certain positions.
In a memo Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management established new “special salary rates” for federal law enforcement personnel, as a way to implement the bigger raise for 2026.
“These new special rates support ongoing agency hiring efforts for mission-critical law enforcement positions essential to implementing the administration’s priorities to secure the border, enforce federal laws, and protect public safety,” OPM wrote. “Without these special rates, agencies may face challenges in recruiting and retaining the personnel needed to carry out these missions effectively.”
The pay increase for law enforcement is nearly quadruple the 1% federal pay raise that most civilian employees on the General Schedule will receive, but in line with a 3.8% raise for military members. Trump signed an executive order finalizing the 2026 federal pay raise on Dec. 18.
The pay increase will take effect Jan. 11, coinciding with the first day of the General Schedule’s first full pay period of 2026.
OPM’s new memo comes after Trump directed OPM Director Scott Kupor to “assess whether to provide” up to a 3.8% raise for “certain federal civilian law enforcement personnel.”
After consulting with various agencies, OPM determined that the following law enforcement personnel will receive a 3.8% federal pay raise for 2026:
Customs and Border Protection law enforcement officers, including Border Patrol agents, officers, criminal investigators, and Air and Marine interdiction agents
ICE personnel, including special agents, detention and deportation officers, and technical enforcement officers
Secret Service personnel, including security specialists, officers, investigators and technicians
Federal Protective Service criminal investigators and officers
Federal Bureau of Prisons correctional officers
FBI special agents
Drug Enforcement Administration special agents
U.S. Marshals Service officers and special agents
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives special agents
National Park Service park police officers
Interior Department law enforcement officers
Forest Service law enforcement officers and criminal investigators
Agriculture Department law enforcement officers in the Office of Safety, Security and Protection
State Department criminal investigators in the Diplomatic Security Service
National Nuclear Security Administration couriers
The memo provides more specifics on the eligibility of certain law enforcement personnel for the 2026 raise. The pay tables for law enforcement are also now available on OPM’s website.
Like the rest of the General Schedule, law enforcement pay rates are still capped at the pay rate for level IV of the Executive Schedule, which for 2026 is $197,200.
“This statutory pay cap will prevent some covered law enforcement personnel from receiving the full 3.8% increase, but most employees should receive at least a 1% adjustment,” OPM wrote.
OPM also told agencies to request additional special salary rates for other law enforcement positions, as needed. Generally, special salary rates are reserved for federal positions deemed particularly difficult to recruit and retain.
Abstract: A decade ago, the terrorist attacks in Paris illustrated the risks and challenges posed by complex coordinated terrorist attacks (CCTA) in a Western capital. These marauding attacks, striking multiple scenes in quick succession, were different from the bombing of public transport in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. This article explains the evolution of the Western law enforcement response while facing such attacks, and how the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2015 Paris attacks led to operational and tactical evolutions in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
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