Professor Martin Blatt knows his history and is concerned local officials are about to repeat it – namely arrests and violence against protesting students.

Schools in Cambridge and Somerville are protesting over Gaza, but administrators and police are moving with caution, emphasizing support for protest and free speech to contrast with the tarnished images of officials elsewhere.

The 911 emergency dispatch system suffered problems for several hours statewide Friday that also hit Cambridge and Somerville.

The Cambridge police officer named in an April 2 accidental gunfire incident has been placed on administrative leave pending a full review of the incident.

A high school resource officer discharged their firearm accidentally at around 1:45 p.m Tuesday on campus without disrupting the school day.

As with police departments nationwide, Cambridge struggles to hire officers while staying active in an array of enforcement, outreach and other work from combating a drug crisis to tamping down fights in schools, leaders said.

Public meetings this week look at an evaluation for embattled schools superintendent Victoria Greer and the state of policing in Cambridge. There’s also the first of two town halls run by an organization looking into the term’s City Council agenda on housing.

Public meetings this week look at a proposed six-story U-Haul rental center, creating and shaping public safety policies, an Inner Belt hotel and more.

The surveillance technology is “unreliable, ineffective and poses serious threats to basic civil rights,” says a letter from an ACLU Technology for Liberty Program.

The book is based on Zalkind’s decade of reporting about a brutal triple murder in Waltham that claimed the death of her friend Erik Weissman.