The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "murder rates" ...
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The Deadliest Place in Mexico
The Juarez Valley, a narrow corridor of green farmland carved from the Chihuahuan desert along the Rio Grande, was once known for its cotton, which rivaled Egypt’s. But that was before the Juarez cartel moved in to set up a lucrative drug smuggling trade. “The Deadliest Place in Mexico” explores untold aspects of Mexico’s drug war as it has played out in the small farming communities of this valley. The violence began in 2008, when the Sinaloa cartel moved in to take over the Juarez cartel’s turf. The Mexican government sent in the military to quell the violence — but instead the murder rate exploded. While the bloodshed in the nearby City of Juarez attracted widespread media attention, the violence spilling into the rural Juarez Valley received far less, eve as the killings began to escalate in brutal ways. Community advocates, elected officials, even police officers were shot down in the streets. Several residents were stabbed in the face with ice picks. By 2009, the valley, with a population of 20,000, had a murder rate six times higher than Juarez itself. Newspapers began to call the rural farming region the “Valley of Death.” This investigation uses extensive Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents, and difficult-to-obtain interviews in Spanish and English with current and former Juarez Valley residents, Mexican officials, narcotraffickers and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials, to reveal that many of these shocking deaths were perpetrated with the participation of Mexican authorities. It shows scenes of devastation — households where six members of a single family were killed, without a single police investigation. It uncovers targeted killings by masked gunmen of community activists and innocent residents for speaking out against violence and repression facilitated by corrupt military and government officials. And it gathers multiple witnesses who describe soldiers themselves, working in league with the Sinaloa cartel, perpetrating violence against civilians. "The cemeteries are all full. There isn't anywhere left to bury the bodies," one former resident said. "You'll find nothing there but ghost towns and soldiers."
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Murder, Money and Politics
A $54.5 million program touted by Illiinois Gov. Pat Quinn to reduce violence consisted of teens handing out fliers to promote inner peace, take field trips to museums, march in a parade with the governor and even attend a yoga class to reduce stress. Two years after the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative began, the murder rate was nearly 20 percent in Chicago.
Tags: broadcast; violence; stress; neighborhood; murder rate
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More Than 1,500 Homocides Grow Cold in Prince George's County
Prince George's County, Maryland has one of the nation's highest murder rates, and though the police department's clearance rates have improved in recent years, decades of solving less than half of the county's homocides has left thousands of family members still looking for justice for their slain loved ones.
Tags: Homocides; Prince George County; Murder Rate
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Murder Mysteries
Schripps Howard News Service has conducted the most complete accounting ever made of homicide victims in the United States. Aggressive use of state and local Freedom of Information laws allowed the wire service to assemble a database of 525,742 homicides, including records of 15,322 killings never reported to the FBI. The "Murder Mysteries" project calculated the homicide clearance rate for every police department in the U.S., prompting four departments to promise reforms. Scripps also developed an algorithm that identified 161 suspicious clusters of unsolved homicides involving women of similar age killed through similar means. Authorities in Gary, Ind., and Youngstown, Ohio, Launched new investigations into possible serial murder in their communities as a result of this project.
Tags: Murder; mystery; FBI; homicide; killings; serial killer; police department; investigation; FOI; algorithm; computer-assisted reporting;
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Investigative work of Mike Wilksinson
The work samples of Mike Wilkinson are entries for the Gannett Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism. The first story shows how some struggling school districts are paying exorbitant teacher salaries. Another finds that a local television station's segments called "Best School Districts" are advertorials. The final story tracks the murder rates among young black men.
Tags: teacher pay; teacher salary; murder rates; advertising; school districts
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Murder Mysteries
Using state and local Freedom of Information laws, the author was able to assemble the largest database of homicides in the U.S. It also found records of 15,322 killings never reported to the FBI and calculated the homicide clearance rate for every police department.
Tags: police; homicide; Freedom of Information Act; FOIA; killing
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"Justice: Delayed, dismissed, denied"
This series “documented a Philadelphia court system deep in crisis.” The court system has the “nation’s lowest conviction rates, highest fugitives rates, endemic witness intimidation and a failure to punish crimes of gun violence.” To produce these results, the Inquirer conducted data analysis and found the rates from murder, rape, assault, robbery and illegal gun possession.
Tags: Court system; Murder; Rape; Robbery; Assault; Illegal gun possession; Defendants; Philadelphia; Crime; Violence; Conviction; Justice system
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Von Maur Shootings
In December 2007, a young man killed eight people then himself with an assault rifle at the Von Maur department store in Omaha. It was the largest mass murder in state history, a story that made national news. But when other media moved onto other stories, a team of World-Herald reporters spent much of 2008 digging into the issues surrounding such an astonishing act of violence. Some of their findings include: emergency responders were delayed getting to victims due to miscommunications by 911 dispatchers, a troubling suicide spike, and the depth of the gunman's psychological problems.
Tags: Von Maur murders; teen suicide; massacre; gunman; suicide rate; mental health problems; psychiatric records; treatment centers; shooter
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Homicide 37
Of the 179 homicides in New Orleans during 2007, the Times-Picayune explored the city's high murder rate through the thirty seventh murder of the year. The story examines the failed justice system from the perspectives of the detectives, the suspect and the family of the victim.
Tags: Lance Zarders; juvenile court; Anthony Pardo; teenager; NOPD; St. Roch; Ak-47; lineup
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The Buck Stops Nowhere
KTRK investigates the number of crimes committed by illegal aliens, finding that the crime rate has grown largely because of lenient methods of dealing with immigrants accused of breaking the law. More than 12,000 non-citizens were charged with crimes in 18 months, including "murders tied to illegal immigrants who had been deported and returned, or had been jailed repeatedly and released without deportation." Also, the station found there were "dozens of sexual offenses committed by illegal immigrants that had been released from jail instead of" being deported. The station also found that Harris County kept the arrest of criminal aliens secret from the federal government.
Tags: Illegal immigrants; deportation; criminal offenses; lenient jail sentences; Harris COunty