The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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Motorcycle fatalities on rise; helmet laws repealed
Thomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service studied records provided by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and found “deaths in U.S. motorcycle crashes have nearly doubled in a decade, mounting to 4,000 annually, as more states have repealed mandatory helmet safety laws.” The analysis of 2004 federal accident data showed that “the per capita…
Read MoreTracking of excessive force inconsistent in Texas
Nancy Martinez and Sarah Viren of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reviewed a database from the state Attorney General of in-custody deaths and found a lack of records of excessive force complaints and inconsistencies in the records that did exist. “No reports are sent outside the department unless someone dies, no agency collects comparable data on…
Read MoreHundreds of Texas racehorses fatally injured
John Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News examined the Texas Racing Commission’s database of horse injuries, which never had been analyzed by outsiders, and found that “at the state’s five licensed tracks, Marsh and other veterinarians with the Texas Racing Commission have euthanized or documented the deaths of 300 horses in the past five years,…
Read MoreSleepy truckers cause crashes, don’t get ticketed
Nancy Amons of WSMV-Nashville analyzed truck accident reports statewide over the past five years and found that “64 crashes where a trucker who was listed as ‘apparently asleep’ injured or killed someone. In 70 percent of those cases, the trucker never got a ticket.” Analysis of another database of Department of Safety inspection reports found…
Read MoreSchool districts don’t know who drives the buses
Karen Eschbacher of The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger found that most school districts on the South Shore hire private contractors to provide bus service for students. “Several South Shore communities fail to run background checks on school bus drivers, and others can’t even produce the names of people allowed behind the wheel.” “While state laws…
Read MoreIncome not checked for emergency food stamps
Kathleen Chapman of The Palm Beach Post investigated the emergency food-stamp program in Florida after Hurricane Wilma and found that nearly 700,000 Floridians, many of whom were not really too poor to buy food, got in line for the stamps. “Florida didn’t require proof of income to get the payments, and the state hasn’t completed…
Read MoreTroops kept on duty while mentally unfit
Lisa Chedekel and Matthew Kauffman of The Hartford Courant used military investigative records to show that unsuitable practices handling troops mental health “have helped to fuel an increase in the suicide rate among troops serving in Iraq, which reached an all-time high in 2005 when 22 soldiers killed themselves — accounting for nearly one in…
Read MoreHigh-interest payday loans increase in N.H.
Karen Spiller of The (Nashua, N.H.) Telegraph found that payday loans with high interest rates — as high as 500 percent or more — are increasing in New Hampshire, the only state in New England not to regulate them. “Last year alone, more than 100,000 payday loans were written in the state for an average…
Read MorePrisoners paroled early despite lifetime sentences
Robert Patrick of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch used court records and Department of Corrections data to show that prisoners who were sentenced to prison terms of double their lifetimes or more have been quietly released after doing only a fraction of their time in Missouri and Illinois. “In all, at least 189 murderers and 40…
Read MoreUtility district spent ratepayers’ money on sports
Andrew McIntosh of The Sacramento Bee found that “the Sacramento Municipal Utility District has spent more than $1 million in ratepayers’ money on partnership deals with the Sacramento Kings and Monarchs since 2002.” The public utility’s contracts with Maloof Sports, disclosed under the state’s Public Records Act, offer a rare glimpse into an NBA team’s…
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