“What’s rare is for the Houston Police Department to punish its officers for excessive force. An eight-month Texas Observer investigation found that during the past six years, Houston civilians reported officers for “use of force”—the department’s term for police brutality—588 times. The Internal Affairs division investigated each complaint and dismissed all but four.”
Read More“The United States’ National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. Top secret NSA documents that SPIEGEL has seen explicitly note that the NSA can tap into such information on Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Google’s Android mobile operating system.”
Read More“The fund has raised about $10 million since 2000, including about $1 million or 10 percent that a state law designated to help organ donors’ families pay funeral and medical expenses. But none of the money has been spent to defray those bills, a Tribune-Review investigation found. Even after the state started a smaller program…
Read More“The 2011 documents allege several instances of state inspectors taking bribes, one of many problems found in a six-month investigation of assisted living facilities by U-T San Diego and the CHFC Center for Health Reporting at the University of Southern California.”
Read More“This man owed $134 in property taxes. The District sold the lien to an investor who foreclosed on his $197,000house and sold it. He and many other homeowners like him were left with nothing.”
Read More“Hundreds of inmates with dangerous psychiatric problems languish in county jails across the state.”
Read More“The state government started trying to replace the Division of Motor Vehicles’ antiquated computer system in 2006, with the new system ostensibly to be working in mid-2010.”
Read More“Nearly a third of Austin police shootings — some fatal — came after chases on foot”
Read MoreA special workshop in programming for journalism, Oct. 10-13, 2013 at the University of Missouri-Columbia. IRE and the University of Missouri Journalism School are offering a special workshop Oct. 10-13 that will introduce the basics of newsroom programming by teaching how to build one of the simplest but most useful tools in a data journalist’s toolbox: a web scraper…
Read MoreFor the past few years, the number of high school football players around the country has dropped dramatically, the Post-Gazette reports. An annual survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations showed that more than 25,000 fewer kids played football in the U.S. last year than only four years before. About 10,000 fewer kids played last year…
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