INSIDER
When Deland-based Foundations to Freedom founder Katherine Russell placed two Narcan-dispensing vending machines in Volusia County, she knew people would pick up the free packets.
Earlier this year News 6 discovered the Florida Department of Corrections does much more than just operate the country’s third-large state prison system. FDOC has been operating a quick-reaction force created to respond to problems or complaints centered around convicted criminals living in society.
News 6 Anchor Erik von Ancken got a call from the State Attorney’s Office late last year and was notified his credit card number was one of the 1,200 that was found on the laptop of two gas thieves.
Less than a week after a wrongly-released convicted murderer was picked up in Central Florida, News 6 has learned a local jail is using eyeball scanning to ensure it never happens there.
It was a little good news, in the epidemic of Florida hit-and-run crashes: The Florida Highway Patrol made an arrest of a 49-year-old driver from Davenport after two case-cracking anonymous tips.
It was a project two years in the making: Meticulously inventorying, cataloguing and organizing the evidence room at the Lady Lake Police Department.
When the Orlando Police Department made a recent change in how it protects the Parramore community, the change ended up, unintentionally, leaving residents feeling abandoned and vulnerable.
The Sanford Police Department credits a long-running special tactical unit – the Neighborhood Response Unit – with lowering crime.
Orlando Police Chief Eric Smith insisted crime has decreased significantly since he took over in 2022, and lately his new app has continued to drive down the numbers.
It’s one of the longest-running self-defense classes in Central Florida taught by police, and it’s also one of the most popular programs at the Ormond Beach Police Department.
In a significant advancement in law enforcement techniques, the Casselberry Police Department has adopted a new method for restraining individuals who resist arrest.
Flagler County Sheriff’s Office CSI Supervisor Paulo Santos called it a “game-changer” – a new fingerprint machine that can pick up prints in a fraction of the time and record a 4K image to send around to state and national databases to catch more bad guys faster.
The Leesburg Police Department is one-upping crooks who try to wipe the contents of a cell phone remotely after a crime.
Veteran Flagler County Sheriff’s Office detective Joe O’Barr has a wake-up call for anyone thinking of starting off the New Year by making a fake threat against a school: You’re not gonna get away with it.
After a new state law went into effect last month criminalizing sleeping on public streets, some law enforcement agencies found themselves in a tough spot: When they enforce the law and make the homeless move along, typically the homeless just move somewhere else.
A local hero received the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Missing Children’s Day Citizen of the Year by the Orange County Commission and by Orange County Corrections where he works as a jail officer for something he did as a dad.
A local hero was just honored by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as its Missing Children's Day Citizen of the Year
It's the answer to a problem Central Florida's toll road operators have been trying to solve since the highways first opened decades ago: How do they know when and how badly their crash barricades are damaged?
They're an unlikely team: a recently-hired police officer from Tanzania and an Army veteran born and raised in Ocala tackling crime together in one of the city's roughest spots - Berkeley Pointe apartments.
The identification bracelets invented by Port Orange nurse Amanda Anderson promised to be revolutionary: no longer did a rubber wristband need the help of police officers to be interpreted and, thus, useful
After the Eustis Police Department became the first law enforcement agency in Florida to install and then activate school-zone speed cameras, the number of drivers detected speeding 11 mph over the posted speed limit steadily increased.
Melbourne, like so much of Central Florida, has grown so fast – and so has the police department, now with almost 200 officers, outgrowing its old buildings.
Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young is claiming a major drop in violent crime in his city, largely due to a team he put together of tough, aggressive enforcers.
Most homes are burglarized when no one is home or when the homeowner is on vacation, according to the Kissimmee Police Department, so the PD started a specialized Vacation Watch Program.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is fighting back with firepower – $355,000 against the hate directed at Jewish people here in Central Florida.
Monday evening, Oviedo city leaders will begin a contentious debate for a third time over asking voters for millions of dollars to build a new police station
It's the first arrangement of its kind in the state, according to the New Smyrna Beach Police Department: A department pairing an officer with a counselor to go into the woods and visit the homeless regularly, even daily.
The Chief of Police in Lake County's Eustis, the first-ever city in Florida to install speed cameras in a school zone and send out tickets, got a surprise after activating the cameras on April 3.
Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly revealed "Prepared Live," a software that 911 dispatchers use to access callers' cell phone cameras, has been utilized by Flagler County dispatchers 149 times since the Sheriff's Office purchased it in February 2023.
Six months after voters resoundingly rejected Oviedo’s request to tear down the city’s 3-decade-old police department headquarters and rebuild it almost quadruple the size for $47 million, the city is revealing Plan B – and five other smaller, less-expensive options.
Nonprofit Project Opioid announced on Monday that overdoses have finally fallen and the wide availability of naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, is the reason why.
When convicted felons are released from state prison, they must provide the Florida Department of Corrections with an address where they intend to live and then must register with the sheriff's office in that county. But that's it. In Flagler County however, Sheriff Rick Staly goes beyond that requirement.
When the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Safety Act required armed officers or guardians in every Florida school starting in 2018, that created an opportunity for the Clermont Police Department: to add officers to all elementary schools since the Lake County Sheriff's Office was already in middle and high schools.
Last October, News 6 told you about a breakthrough solution at middle schools across Orlando: The city embedded five adults full-time at the schools to do nothing but get troubled kids back on track.
It was an incredible stroke of luck combined with solid detective work that stopped a serial scammer responsible for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, from the elderly across Central Florida, according to police.
Most cruise ship passengers, more than anything, care about coming home safely. And the Coast Guard’s special unit – the Marine Safety Unit (MSU) based at the port – makes sure of that every day.
It's been just over a year since Volusia County's answer to the growing juvenile crime problem first opened: an all-encompassing Juvenile Detention Center in Daytona Beach, officially named the Family Resource Center by Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood.
It's the best piece of technology the Titusville 911 Call Center has installed in more than a decade, according to the Titusville Police Department.
Many Central Florida law enforcement agencies have partnered with mental health counselors to better respond to emergency calls with a mental health component but not in Brevard County - until last year.
A year ago, Raysean Brown was hired by the City of Orlando's Children and Families Division to start up a program that has been tried and tested in major cities around the country: Community Violence Initiative (CVI).
At any given moment, Volusia County is home to upwards of 1,000 registered sex offenders and 150 sexual predators. Some of them are branded with the offender/predator designation for life; some are on probation.
The Sanford Police Department’s new online crime reporting tool is getting results, making the police aware of crimes they might never have found out about and enabling investigators to get started on a case immediately.
It’s the time of year that high schoolers celebrate homecoming with spirit week leading up to the biggest football game of the season, the crowning of the homecoming king and queen, and the traditional homecoming dance.
The 11-year-old accused of taking a loaded gun from his mother's car and shooting two 13-year-olds at an Apopka Pop Warner game is now at least the third time in Central Florida over the past several months where a child has gotten access to a gun and fired it.
What else is our law enforcement doing to help those in mental health crisis, keep them out of jail and prevent violence?
It’s a mind-boggling, eye-opening story involving your friends and neighbors losing millions of dollars and an investigator who got much of it back.
It’s a mind-boggling, eye-opening story involving your friends and neighbors losing millions of dollars and an investigator who got much of it back.
It’s a mind-boggling, eye-opening story involving your friends and neighbors losing millions of dollars and an investigator who got much of it back.
This year in Flagler County, there are 13 school resource deputies (SRDs) protecting children, including two at both high schools.
It was an incredible story of success five years ago: A Clermont community easily considered one of the most dangerous places in Central Florida with regular robberies, attacks, and murders becoming a safe haven for seniors and families.
As more police departments and sheriff’s offices upgrade their body cameras to include livestreaming capabilities, more officers and deputies are using that feature regularly, even daily.
Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez said much of the search effort is “behind the scenes” and “all hands on deck,” especially when it’s a child missing.
Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood’s answer to fixing a major problem in his county—taking care of teens in trouble and keeping them off a path to prison—is a long-needed Juvenile Assessment Center.
