California Gov. Gavin Newsom had a chance this year to fight California’s rampant crime problem. He didn’t take it.

Law enforcement is a career that is always in the public eye, whether for heroic reasons or scandal. Currently, our nation's 800,000 law enforcement officers have even more of a spotlight than usual, though. To start, for the past two years they have been in charge of enforcing COVID-19 restrictions. In addition, there have been quite a few recent high-profile police brutality cases, including officers found guilty for federal civil rights violations leading up to the death of George Floyd. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech also called for the nation to “fund the police” with better training and resources.

During the six hours Trent Leach was hiding in an abandoned church in downtown Las Vegas on Sept. 21, police said, he fired 20 rounds, striking a SWAT vehicle and the window of an occupied apartment.

The Metropolitan Police Department sent two robots to find Leach, a 4-by-4-foot that stood near the door recording and an 18-inch-long robot that scoured the floor below.

Proposition A, one of two local measures on the Nov. 2 ballot, asks Austinites if they want to set a minimum staffing ratio for the Austin Police Department: 2 police officers per 1,000 residents.

Last year, the United States recorded the largest single-year increase in the murder rate since national record-keeping began more than 60 years ago. In Nevada, the murder rate rose 27 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Delaware became the seventh state in the US since 2015 to mandate body cameras for all police — and the latest government entity to put great trust in body-worn cameras (BWCs) to improve frayed relations between the police and the public.

An FBI mandate that took effect in January overhauled the way police agencies across the country report crime data, and local police are expecting it will project a rise in crime.