Archive for April, 2009

Grand jury indicts bakery leader in murder of Chauncey Bailey

The San Francisco Chronicle and The Chauncey Bailey Project report that Yusuf Ali Bey IV, leader of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, was indicted by an Alameda County grand jury.

Girl’s death leads to scrutiny of police department

The Fayetteville Observer investigated a police department’s mishandling of a child abuse case. The department’s actions ultimately led to its loss of felony arrest powers, scrutiny from the Cumberland County district attorney and a grand jury probe of corruption.

Unescorted prisoners transferred on public buses

An investigation by KSTP-Minneapolis/St. Paul discovered that federal prisoners are being transferred unescorted on public buses unbeknown to the bus companies or the public.

Airports with high rates of bird strikes pinpointed

National Public Radio combined the Federal Aviation Administration’s wildlife-strike reports with airport activity figures to calculate airport “strike rates,” an industry measure that is not publicly available and that standardizes bird strikes according to the amount of traffic at an airport. They also provided an interactive map for Web users to find out strike rates [...]

New teachers twice as likely to teach in poor D.C. neighborhoods

Students in the region’s poorest neighborhoods are nearly twice as likely to have a new or second-year teacher as those in the wealthiest, a Washington Post analysis has found. The pattern means some of the neediest students attend schools that double as teacher training grounds.”

Cities and county failed to inspect fire hydrants

An investigation by Matt Dixon of The Villages Daily Sun (The Villages, Fla.) revealed that fire hydrants in Sumter County have not been regularly inspected. A request for maintenance records by the paper revealed that none existed. Municipalities county-wide had been under the impression that the county was responsible for the maintenance of fire hydrants.

Newspaper reveals problems with narcotics-related warrants

Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker of the Philadelphia Daily News report that, “Again and again, supervisors in the Philadelphia Police Narcotics Field Unit signed off on cookie-cutter applications for search warrants, which are now the subject of an expanding FBI and police Internal Affairs Bureau investigation.

Tip leads to police corruption probe

Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis wrote a four-part narrative investigation, “The Informant,” to chronicle a public corruption probe of Minneapolis police. Federal agents and the Minneapolis Police Department launched the investigation in late 2006 after an informant’s tip alleging that police officers were providing gang leaders with confidential police [...]

Poisoned Waters

Poisoned Waters, a two-hour special by PBS Frontline, looks at the nation’s two great coastal estuaries – the Chesapeake Bay and the Puget Sound – as case studies for water quality. Examining the growing hazards to human health and the ecosystem, the production team looked at U.S. Geological Survey databases for dozens of [...]

Tracking pharmaceuticals in waterways inadequate

Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard of The Associated Press report that, “U.S. manufacturers, including major drugmakers, have legally released at least 271 million pounds of pharmaceuticals into waterways that often provide drinking water — contamination the federal government has consistently overlooked.” The scant tracking by the federal government of pharmaceuticals released into waterways [...]