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 "officer" ...
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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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America's Great State Payroll Giveaway
A state-employed psychiatrist in California made $822,000 by clocking in 17 hours every day last year, including Sundays and holidays. An employee cashed out with $609,000 for unused vacation when she retired, claiming she never took vacations in a 30-year career. A highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in salary, pension and leave payments. The chief money manager at a Texas pension fund got $1 million in salary and bonuses while posting investment returns that trailed those of peers who earned a quarter as much. Bloomberg News used freedom-of-information laws to obtain 1.4 million payroll records from the 12 largest states and show how taxpayers funded these out-of-control expenses and more, while at the same time states cut funding for universities, public safety, health care, schools and services aimed at the neediest residents.
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Driven To Distraction
This seven-month-long investigation revealed serious crashes, injuries and deaths caused by a danger that now exists in virtually every police car in the United States. Dashboard-mounted technology has turned modern patrol cars into offices on wheels. Computers, cameras, GPS devices, radios, smart phones and license plate scanners compete for the officer’s attention while driving, and the consequences of those distractions can be life altering. The series led to significant policy changes at two of the largest police departments in Texas. It sparked action from the world’s largest organization of police leaders. And our reporting also became mandatory safety training viewing for every highway trooper in one state.
Tags: Police; patrol cars; crashes; injuries; deaths; driving safety; highway trooper
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Untangling FOIA: a Test of Obama's Transparency Pledge
Bloomberg News filed Freedom of Information Act requests with 57 federal agencies in June to test President Barack Obama's 2009 promise that his administration would be the most transparent in U.S. history. The series revealed how few departments complied with the law by disclosing the travel costs of top officials in a timely manner. Overall, only eight agencies met the 20-working-day deadline. After six months, nine of 15 cabinet offices and about a third of the agencies overall still had yet to release the documents.
Tags: Freedom of Information Act; FOIA; federal agencies; Obama
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Cracking the Codes
Cracking the Codes documented how thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed Medicare for more complex and costly health care over the past decade – adding $11 billion or more to their fees – despite little evidence elderly patients required more treatment. The series also uncovered a broad range of costly billing errors and abuses that have plagued Medicare for years – from confusion over how to pick proper payment codes to apparent overcharges in medical offices and hospital emergency rooms. The findings strongly suggest these problems, known as “upcoding,” are worsening amid lax federal oversight and the government-sponsored switch from paper to electronic medical records.
Tags: Medicare; health care; billing; medical offices; hospitals; government; medical records
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Crime Data Investigation
The initial story in the crime data investigation found that from 2009 to early 2012 the Milwaukee Police Department misreported more than 500 aggravated assaults as lesser offenses not counted in the city’s violent crime tally. More than 800 additional cases followed the same pattern but couldn’t be verified with available records. Subsequent stories found police underreported aggravated assaults even when their own officers were severely injured; police clerks routinely changed dangerous weapon codes to generic ones in a way that allowed violent assaults to be underreported — and escape FBI scrutiny; the FBI’s crime auditing process is a fig leaf — metro police departments are rarely audited, and even then the sample sizes are too small to draw meaningful conclusions; Milwaukee police knew they misreported rapes and robberies, but didn’t mention this to city leaders or the public; high-ranking department officials raised red flags internally for years that there were problems but the public only heard a drumbeat that crime was down. In addition to these major installments, Poston and Diedrich wrote nearly two dozen follow-up stories that documented the fallout.
Tags: Crime data; police; assaults; city government
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Des Moines Register Reader's Watchdog
The Des Moines Register Reader's Watchdog column that takes on issues faced by individual Iowans who are at wits’ end and can't get answers from public officials, businesses and the justice system. Watchdog reporter Lee Rood's job is to give voice to readers who present important issues, to investigate all sides of those issues and to seek solutions that eluded others. This is a unique effort that both engages readers and values traditional watchdog reporting. At a time when journalists are seeking to remain relevant, build credibility and engage readers, she has launched this initiative that focuses not on the stories that she thinks are important, but on issues that are critical to our readers. In the past year, she wrote more than 60 columns, digging into watchdog issue brought to her by Iowans. Her work has put a new spotlight on wrongs that needed righting. Her work has led state lawmakers to propose legislation that requires Iowans to call 911 if they are present at the scene of an overdose. She has prodded the state attorney general's office to develop a plan to enforce laws that require companies to have worker's compensation insurance. She has fought through red tape for readers who didn't have someone in their corner to do so. Lee Rood's bold move to launch a new form of watchdog journalism for the Des Moines Register has made Iowans' lives better. Online, this body of work lives at DesMoinesRegister.com/ReadersWatchdog.
Tags: Public officials; businesses; justice system
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Death in Police Custody
An investigation into the death of a man who suffocated while in the back of a Milwaukee police squad car found officers had violated department policy in not seeking help and the medical examiner missed key signs pointing toward the officers’ actions being a factor in the death. The stories prompted a wave of action and reform: new departmental rules, a public inquest, an FBI investigation and the resignation of the medical examiner.
Tags: Police; death; department policy; medical examiner
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Dark Markets
The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of financial markets in 2012 performed a rare and extraordinary service: It exposed evidence of hidden manipulation by corporate executives and professional traders that the markets’ official government watchdogs were utterly unaware of. Reflecting potential widespread harm to millions of ordinary investors, federal prosecutors and securities regulators raced to follow the Journal stories with major investigations. A team of reporters spent six months creating a database examining how more than 20,000 corporate executives traded their own companies’ stocks over the course of eight years. What the team found was disturbing: More than 1,000 executives had generated big profits, or avoided big losses, by trading their company stock in the days ahead of corporate news announcements that led to big moves in the shares. The Journal also exposed a regulatory loophole that had helped the executives take advantage of inside knowledge ahead of other investors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission all launched investigations the day the Journal article appeared.
Tags: Financial markets; corporate executives; stocks; Federal Bureau of Investigation
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Maywood Confidential
On the evening of Oct. 23, 2006, as a premature snow fell in parts of the Chicago area, Maywood (Illinois) Police Officer Tom Wood pulled his marked SUV to a dimly lit corner known for drug sales, rolled down his window part of the way and began talking to somebody, likely a person he knew. Within minutes gunfire exploded from the street, ripping through the car and hitting Officer Wood in the head and elsewhere, killing the 37-year-old father of five almost instantly. More than six years later, the murder is still unsolved, and an eerie pall has been cast over the official investigation, and Maywood itself. The nonprofit Better Government Association (BGA) and WFLD-TV/FOX Chicago set out to determine what happened – why Officer Wood was killed and why the official investigation into his death had failed to produce an arrest or criminal charges. In a figurative sense, our findings (which form the basis for our entry) indict not a person, but a culture of corruption and apathy in Maywood that may have contributed to Officer Wood’s death, and certainly played a role in the subsequently botched homicide probe.
Tags: Murder; police officer; corruption; homicide