Posts Tagged ‘law enforcement’
Watchdogging law-breaking law enforcement
By Kasia Kovacs Ask anyone the biggest news story of the past year, and chances are you’ll hear some variation of “Ferguson” or “police shootings.” It’s a hot topic, and not without reason. After the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo., the police chokehold that killed Eric Garner in New York, and the…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | Killed by the Cops
How many times a year do police kill people? And what happens to officers after they fire a fatal shot? Those were just some of the questions prompted by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York. On this episode of the IRE Radio Podcast we’ll be talking to…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | Cracking the Crime Stats
Welcome to another episode of the IRE Radio Podcast. On this week’s episode we’re talking about crime – everything from fact-checking police stats to building databases to track gun violence. Here’s the lineup: Michael Berens of The Seattle Times gets things started with a story about an odd beam of light, some dead rabbits and…
Read MoreUsing new nonprofit law center, Hawaii’s Civil Beat wins access to police misconduct records
In the flood of paperwork that made its way each year to the Hawaii legislature, a shocking statistic slipped under the radar: About once a week the Honolulu Police Department was suspending or firing an officer for misconduct. Often the offenses were serious – abusing suspects, lying to federal investigators, tipping off drug dealers. And…
Read MoreDon’t miss at IRE 2013: Criminal Justice investigations
The 2013 IRE Conference in San Antonio features several panels on criminal justice reporting, including the following sponsored by Criminal Justice Journalists: Criminal justice and gunsFeaturing Gerardo Reyes of Univision, Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and moderator Ted Gest of Criminal Justice Journalists Criminal justice and prisonsFeaturing Scott Henson of the Grits for Breakfast…
Read MorePost-CAR Conference sale in NICAR data library
Fresh out of CAR 2013 and itching for data to work with? The NICAR database libarary is offering discounts on popular federal databases to help you get started. The data library updates databases on a variety of topics. You can explore our data by searching for a specific database, or looking for data by topic…
Read MoreBehind the Story: Questionable border patrol shootings
In December, Tim Steller, a reporter and now columnist for the Arizona Daily Star, reported on the increasing number of shootings occurring between Border Patrol and illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. The victims in some cases appear to have been unarmed. This fact and the lack of transparency in the investigations has cast doubt…
Read MoreBehind the Story: Colorado’s untested rape kits
Keli Rabon and KMGH Denver purchased their own rape kit over the internet to help understand the different elements of the process. Credit: KMGH Denver In November, a KMGH Denver investigation revealed that Colorado police departments had failed to test hundreds of rape kits — 44 percent of the 1,064 kits that Denver Police have…
Read MoreBehind the Story: Investigating a building collapse, creating an interactive timeline
A normal day on the local government beat became two months of investigating for Lansing State Journal reporter Lindsay VanHulle. After a portion of the residential St. Anne Lofts building collapsed in East Lansing, Mich., VanHulle discovered problems in the city’s building code and development programs. Prior to the building’s collapse, these problems allowed unpermitted…
Read MoreNow accepting 2013 CAR Conference T-shirt designs
The journalists who attend the Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference do many things for their newsrooms: They analyze data, build websites, write stories, scrape and acquire records. To honor this work, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting will sell a T-shirt celebrating the data geek in us all, and you’ll help design it. Proceeds from the shirt will help…
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