Extra! Extra!

"Conduct Unbecoming" Continues

Eric Nalder and Lewis Kamb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer uncover more police abuses in a continuation of the "Conduct Unbecoming" series. In their latest installment -- focusing on a specialized King County Sheriff's unit assigned to police the Metro regional transit system -- Nalder and Kamb, with assists from P-I beat reporters, turned out a quick-hitter investigation off a daily news story involving officers' controversial arrests of demonstrating bicyclists. In three weeks, the reporters used personnel documents and arrest, incident and complaint reports to supplement interviews with whistleblowers and other resources for this one-day package. Computer-assisted reporting specialist Daniel Lathrop complemented the print package with interactive online maps showing the most troublesome security spots along Metro's transit routes.

"Teflon Don"

The Times Herald-Record's Michael Levensohn conducted an exhaustive investigation painstakingly detailing how a local businessman, Donald Boehm, looted an estate of millions of dollars and has become the focus of a police investigation in the most notorious unsolved killing in the region. The reporting for this story began in April 2004 with the bankruptcy filings of three of Boehm's companies. In the two years since, Levensohn conducted dozens of interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of court filings, contracts, property and bank records, correspondence and other documents to report this story.

House of Lies

An extensive four-part series by Debbie Cenziper, Susannah Nesmith and Tim Henderson of The Miami Herald has uncovered extensive corruption in the Miami-Dade Housing Agency. Their investigation uncovered a system which has operated like "an unchecked cash machine for developers and consultants and its own leaders and failed the families it was meant to serve." Such failings include millions being allocated for housing that was never built while developers kept the money. The agency also "diverted another $5 million money earmarked by state law to build homes for the poor to pay for a new office building complete with a $287,000 bronze sculpture of stacked teacups called Space Station that was shipped from Italy." Reaction to the series has been swift, as County Manager George Burgess has already fired a number of people at the Miami-Dade Housing Agency. Burgess commended the Miami Herald for their investigation saying, "'Our hat's off to you for laying it out there.'"

Indianapolis library expansion mired in mess of mismanagement

The Indianapolis Star's Kevin Corcoran looks into the construction project to expand Indianapolis's Central Library which is now two years behind schedule and more than $50 million over budget. An extensive review of documents and interviews with involved parties suggest that the Library Board's decision not to employ a general contractor led to this debacle. A Marion County grand jury looked into conflict-of-interest concerns regarding three of the Library Board members. No charges have been filed.

Air Marshals Warn System Failures Threaten Security

In a coordinated series that broadcast in Denver, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Dallas, investigative reporter Tony Kovaleski of 7NEWS in Denver spoke to 17 Air Marshals from those four cities who believe current policies jepordize national security. Don Strange, a former director of the Air Marshal Service's Atlanta office, addressed his concerns in memos to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff wherein he claimed current policies "unnecessarily enganger the lives of federal air marshals and the flying public." In addition, the marshals interviewed assert that innocent people are being placed on watch lists simply to meet expected monthly quotas which are tied to employment incentives.

Death at Memorial Hospital

Following the announcement of murder charges against a New Orleans doctor and two nurses on duty in the wake Hurricane Katrina, CNN continues its Emmy-nominated investigative series, "Death at Memorial Hospital" with exclusive interviews with siblings of the accused Dr. Anna Pou, who maintains her innocence. "In October, CNN reported exclusively that after deteriorating conditions -- with food running low and no electricity -- some medical staff openly discussed whether patients should be euthanized," says a CNN.com report by Drew Griffin, produced by Kathleen Johnston.

Witnesses, Army records describe confusion and cover-ups in Tillman case

ESPN.com offers a series delving deeper into the 2004 death of Pfc. Pat Tillman, who left the NFL to serve with the Army Rangers in Afghanistan, and the questions still under investigation by the defense department. TThe story of Tillman's patriotism and personal sacrifice made headlines, but the Pentagon later acknowledged that he was killed by friendly fire. "For the past five months, in an effort to shed light on how Tillman died and whether there was an attempt to use his good name and valor for political purposes, ESPN.com has interviewed nine of the 35 Rangers who were engaged with Tillman in the firefight, more than 50 additional Army officials, politicians, and medical and military experts, plus relatives of the principals involved in the incident." Mike Fish's reporting is accompanied by links to eyewitness interviews and original documents. The second part explores official efforts to promote Tillman as a fallen hero. "The Army began crafting Tillman's Silver Star application in the days just after his death; and according to transcripts of investigation witness statements, top Army officials already suspected fratricide when they wrote it."

Organic food standards backed by weak oversight

Paula Lavigne of The Dallas Morning News found that "the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out." Audits and inspection reports point to weak oversight of the certifying organizations that bestow official organic status on behalf of the USDA to more than 20,000 producers worldwide.

America's Racial Expulsions

In the story "Leave or Die: America's Hidden History of Racial Explusion," Elliot Jaspin of Cox News Service used Census Data and other documents to expose the systematic expulsion of blacks from counties across the U.S. "Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white. In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census data. The expulsions often were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South." The Austin American-Statesman has put together a thorough multimedia package for the story.

Indiana boaters lack safety skills

With Fourth of July revelers bound for the lakes, Marc Chase of The Times of Northwest Indiana wrote, A Times' computerized analysis of U.S. Coast Guard recreational boating accident records for Lake and Porter counties between 1995 and 2004 shows the circumstances involved in the three cases are largely the rule, not the exception, when it comes to mishaps on region waterways." He also noted a "bottleneck problem that resulted in a disporportionate number of accidents on Indiana's relatively limited coastlines. The data used in this series is available from the IRE and NICAR database library.

Lax regulations compromise safety of cargo flight industry

In a 9-month investigation, The Miami Herald uncovered inaccuracies regarding the government's reporting of the frequency of fatal cargo crashes. Through the analysis of extensive government documents dating back to 2000, the reporters found that 69 planes have crashed claiming the lives of 85 people, thus "making air cargo the nation's deadliest form of commercial aviation." Despite this fact, pleas to apply more stringent safety regulations on cargo flights have been ignored. Worse yet, when these lax safety standards result in fatal crashes, the pilots are often saddled with the blame. (NOTE: The FAA's accidents and incidents data is available to journalists from the IRE and NICAR Database Library.)

Dallas school district credit card abuse

Kent Fischer, Tawnell D. Hobbs and Molly Motley of the Dallas Morning News analyzed local school district credit card transactions to find that "only a fraction of purchase receipts are scrutinized, and thousands of purchases run afoul of DISD policy and state purchasing laws." Among the $20 million spent each year by district employees with credit cards were purchases for "a $200 blanket and pillow set from The Land of Nod, $1,700 in electric scooters, $200 in moisturizer from Bath and Body Works, and a $24.95 charge to an online dating service, Americansingles.com." Millions have also been spent at restaurants and on insentive gifts. One administrator - who is no longer with the district - spent over $1,500 on bullet-shaped flasks engraved with the school logo defending his purchase by saying "the flasks were to get teachers thinking about "Biting the Bullet," to crack down on discipline problems in the coming year."

$1 million grant issued to study restrictions on public records

Richard Willing of USA Today reports that "The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million. . .to produce a national "model statute" that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that potentially dangerous information 'stays out of the hands of the bad guys.'" The grant was included in this year's budget for the Defense Department by Congress, and will be administered by the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks a dangerous playground

Mike Sherry of the Kansas City Star used federal data to determine that the Lake of the Ozarks is the "third-most accident-prone waterway in the country." The Lake of the Ozarks trails only the Atlantic Coast and the Colorado River in number of of serious mishaps according to his analysis of over decade's worth of data from the U.S. Coast Guard. (Note: The Coast Guard's boating accident data and boat registration data is available to journalists from the IRE and NICAR Database Library.)

Ag programs spend billions to prop up suburbanites, temporary price dips

Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul of The Washington Post analyzed payment records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an investigative series. People who don't farm at all have received $1.3 billion in government handouts since 2000, the investigation found. They also found that growers reaped benefits even in good years from a USDA program. "The subsidy is called the loan deficiency payment." "It is just cash paid to farmers when market prices dip below the government-set minimum, or floor, if only for a single day." Most of the money went to farmers who sold at higher prices. The LDP had become so ingrained in farmland finances that farmers sometimes wish for market prices to drop so they can capture a larger subsidy.