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The Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s program for finding abducted children is going national. The FDLE developed its program after critiquing what went wrong in response to the 2004 abduction of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia in Sarasota. A Justice Department official was in Ft. Myers today (Wednesday) to announce the national initiative – using Florida’s model. WGCU’s Valerie Alker has more.

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Voice recognition technology is helping with bookings and releases at the Lee County Sheriff’s Department detention facility.

Right now about 17-hundred inmates are being held in Lee County – about ten percent speak little or no English. Since human translators aren’t always available the agency has purchased three portable translation devices. Deputy Angelo Vaughn says they’ve been very helpful.

“what it does is phonetically analyze spoken phrases and match those with phrases that are prerecorded foreign languages such as Spanish german and creole. If the inmate is speaking in Spanish it will translate what the inmate is saying to us in English.”

And the device will also translate English into Spanish – or creole. The translators cost about 25 hundred dollars. Vaughn says they can’t replace humans – but are a good substitute in a pinch.

The Collier County sheriff is closing its boot camp for juvenile offenders at the end of the year. Analysis found that 97 percent of the graduates were re-arrested within the five years after graduation. WGCU’s Amy Tardif has more.

On college campuses throughout the country, self-defense courses are becoming commonplace. Sandy Schoepfer reports on one such training program – specifically for women - at Florida Gulf Coast University. The next RAD class runs from tonight thru Wednesday from 5 to 9 pm at the Kleist Health Education Center on the FGCU campus. (AUDIO)

Immigrants are not the only people who fall prey to human trafficking. Ryan Warner reports.
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Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. experienced several anthrax attacks using the U.S. mail to convey the deadly agent. The postal service then invested millions in screening technology. But local postal and health workers—along with law enforcement—realize equipment isn’t enough. There also has to be training. Amy Tardif takes us to an anthrax simulation - conducted Thursday at the Lee Civic Center in North Fort Myers. (AUDIO)

“Drug courts” are now common across the country – but the concept was actually born in Florida in the late 1980s – as a way of ending the revolving door of repeat drug offenders. Valerie Alker recently attended a “drug court graduation ceremony” at the Justice Center in Punta Gorda and prepared this report. (AUDIO)

Fourteen arrests have been made for false claims in Miami-Dade since four hurricanes swept through Florida last summer. The arrests lead to a Congressional investigation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It found 5000 people in Miami were given money for dubious reasons. Jill Morrison has more from Capitol Hill. (AUDIO)