Louisville police were executing a no-knock search warrant signed by Judge Mary Shaw when they shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in her home. The case put a spotlight on the way Louisville police executes search warrants and how seriously judges scrutinize them.In their new report, grantees from The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (KyCIR) examined more than 200 warrants ...
On March 18, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) closed all of its field offices to public-facing activities due to the coronavirus, effectively putting much of legal immigration to the United States on pause, including naturalization interviews and oath ceremonies. As the months went by, other federal and state agencies turned to virtual infrastructure for their activities, but ...
Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco took office in 2011 with a bold plan: to create a cutting-edge intelligence program that could stop crime before it happened. But the machine Nocco built has turned into a system of organized harassment, according to a new investigation by grantees Neil Bedi and Kathleen McGrory at the Tampa Bay Times. Deputies swarm homes in ...
The pandemic has presented universities a triple whammy: Reduced tax revenues slashing government support, online-only courses gutting dormitory and cafeteria revenues, and – with more students and families out of work – less ability to offset those losses with tuition increases.FIJ grantee Miranda Spivack’s report, published in USA Today, details how the pandemic’s economic impact on universities could create more ...
A National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study that demonstrated how a modernized American power grid could accelerate the growth of wind and solar energy and reduce reliance on coal was suppressed by Trump appointees in order to help the coal industry, according to FIJ grantee Peter Fairley’s report for InvestigateWest, also published in The Atlantic.The study, as Fairley reports, was ...
In California and other states across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic is hampering the child welfare system. A patchwork of new rules and guidelines meant to slow the spread of the virus has relaxed requirements for face-to-face meetings between caseworkers investigating abuse and children, leaving vulnerable children out of sight and caseworkers stuck at home.In their story, published in the ...
Carolina Public Press received a tip that some district attorneys in North Carolina “never” prosecute sexual assault cases. Journalists at the nonprofit news outlet pulled more than four years of data from the state’s court system and assembled a team to analyze it. What they found would lead to bipartisan reforms to the state’s sexual assault laws – reforms that ...
When a friend of Mark Betancourt’s moved to Detroit and posted on Facebook about tax foreclosure in the city, Betancourt searched the internet to learn what it meant. The freelance reporter, based in Washington, D.C., had never heard of it before and didn’t know that the government could seize people’s property if they didn’t pay taxes.Betancourt dug further and learned ...
When a group of journalists read Palm Beach Post reporter Lawrence Mower’s coverage of lottery irregularities in Florida several years ago, they started thinking about an unprecedented expose of the global lottery industry. Mower had issued public records requests for 20 years of data on frequent lottery winners in Florida. His subsequent reporting uncovered fraud, including people who were cashing ...