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Tony Saavedra, Monica Rhor and Aldrin Brown of The Orange County Register analyzed eight statistical categories for Orange County’s police agencies and found wide disparities in way police prevent and solve crime. The categories analyzed included response times on emergency calls, the success rates for solving homicides and other violent crimes, officer-to-resident ratios and the…
Read MoreKen Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette used EPA data and records to show that a chlorine-producing plant in Natrium is West Virginia’s single-largest air polluter, emitting more than 1,200 pounds of mercury into the air every year. Although much of the focus on mercury pollution centers on coal plants, chlorine producers are responsible for…
Read MoreJoe Mahr and Mitch Weiss of The (Toledo) Blade reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed dozens to find that Toledo-area police helped the local Catholic diocese hide cases of sexual abuse by priests. “Beyond past revelations that the diocese quietly moved pedophile priests from parish to parish, The Blade investigation shows that at least once…
Read MoreMark Pitsch of The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal used Kentucky’s Open Records Act to obtain emails showing that “less than three months before the state hiring investigation began, Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s deputy chief of staff and the transportation personnel director confided to each other in e-mails that laws may have been broken.” The state’s Attorney General,…
Read MorePat Stith of The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer, with assistance from database editor David Raynor and news researcher Brooke Cain, reports that “the state Department of Transportation has ignored a series of increases in truck weights approved by the legislature and failed to protect more than 1,000 bridges that are not strong enough to…
Read MoreDavid Milstead of the Rocky Mountain News used documents and recordings to find that the benefits offered by Colorado’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association to its employees have been generous. “In total, leave payouts have cost PERA more than $2 million since 2000. The benefits don
Read MorePamela Hamilton of the Associated Press used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain records showing that “one in five educators sanctioned by the state for bad behavior in South Carolina in the past three years had been accused of sexual misconduct such as molesting or having sex with students or other children.” Nearly…
Read MoreBrad Branan of the Tucson Citizen used databases from two courts to analyze about 33,000 drunken-driving cases filed from 1999 to last year. He found that “thousands of motorists are charged with drunken driving each year in metro Tucson, giving the area one of the highest DUI arrest rates in the country. But nearly half…
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