Archive for the ‘Social issues’ Category

Police under investigation for fatal shooting days after Katrina

Times-Picayune reporters Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi and ProPublica’s A.C. Thompson report that “a former New Orleans police officer is under investigation for shooting Henry Glover” four days after Hurricane Katrina.

Blacks three times more likely to be stopped in Toronto

Race Matters, a series by The Toronto Star, investigated why blacks are three times more likely than white to be stopped and questioned by police. “In each of the city’s 74 police patrol zones, the Star analysis shows that blacks were documented at significantly higher rates than their overall census population by zone, and that in many zones, the same holds true for “brown” people — mainly people of South Asian, Arab and West Asian backgrounds.”

San Diego County’s social welfare programs lacking

San Diego County’s social welfare safety net is riddled with gaps. A voiceofsandiego.org investigation has found that the county government’s historical resistance to provide social welfare programs has left a wide chasm between last-resort aid and those on the bottom rungs of economic survival.

Legislation proposed to help protect young runaways

Ian Urbina of The New York Times reports that “state and federal lawmakers from around the country are pressing a variety of new laws that would make sweeping changes in the way runaways and prostituted children are handled by police officers and social workers.

Disabled workers paid cents-per-hour for work at state-run homes

Clark Kauffman of the Des Moines Register reports that more than 300 mentally retarded wards of the state are being paid less than the minimum wage for work performed at two state-run homes for the disabled. Seventy-four of the workers are paid an average hourly wage of 60 cents or less, and some of the [...]

Human Trafficking in America series

A series by The Kansas City Star explores the problem of human trafficking, and how the U.S. is failing in its promise to end trafficking and other human rights abuses. Their investigation “found that, in spite of all the rhetoric from the Bush and Obama administrations, the United States is failing to find and help tens of thousands of human trafficking victims in America.”

Agent Orange series

A series by The Chicago Tribune traces the lingering impact of the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The evidence of exposure can still be seen in the many who suffer serious health issues, and birth defects have carried the legacy forth into a second generation.

Domestic Silence series

A Columbus Dispatch investigation of domestic violence by Stephanie Czekalinski, Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner shows flaws in Ohio laws and policies that create a culture of tolerance and indifference about the top crime in the state.

Felon awarded $1 million to supply AIDS/HIV services

In the third part of “Wasting Away,” an investigation of D.C.’s AIDS program,The Washington Post found the city awarded a $1 million AIDS contract to a woman who had just been convicted in federal court for a mortgage fraud scheme that bilked lenders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Wasting Away series

In a city ravaged by the highest rate of AIDS case in the nation, the D.C. Health Department paid millions to nonprofit groups that delivered substandard services or failed to account for any work at all, even as sick people searched for care or died waiting. A ten-month Washington Post investigation found AIDS money was [...]