A small police training company owned by Chicago officers, the International Tactical Training Association (ITTA), has been training units of the police of El Salvador in the use of force, according to a recent report by FIJ grantee Danielle Mackey.According to Mackey’s investigation, the training has no oversight from either the U.S. or Salvadoran governments, although ITTA appears to have ...
A counter-extremism grant program funded and administered by the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security lacked transparency and deepened government mistrust among some minority communities it targeted, according to a report by FIJ grantee Julia Harte in The Nation magazine. As Harte reports, two-thirds of the applications chosen by the Trump administration focused on immigrants or Muslims, mostly ignoring domestic ...
A former Southern California businessman sought in connection with the ambush slaying of a Rolling Hills Estates lawyer and the home-invasion killing of a Whittier, Calif., man lives in a $2 million home along the Adriatic Sea in Montenegro, where the lack of an extradition treaty with the U.S. protects him from arrest.Richard Henry Wall, 67, who was identified in ...
The 2020 census will make a huge imprint on the nation for a decade, from determining how much federal money goes to states to divvying up congressional seats and helping city planners figure out where to build schools. But, as FIJ grantee Natasha Haverty reports for Reveal, when the Census Bureau does its next count this April, it will be ...
In October 2018, Carolina Public Press, a nonprofit news outlet, took a look at sexual assault conviction rates in North Carolina. What they found were outdated, ineffective laws that blurred the lines of consent and made it harder for offenders to be convicted. “We looked at court data – a 4½-year data set – and analyzed it for the first ...
It all starts with our grantees – the reporters and investigative journalists who commit their lives to uncovering, unraveling and documenting the stories that impact the world most. From migrant abuse at the border to the Flint, Michigan, water crisis and beyond, our grantees reported on a diverse array of issues in 2019. Below, we give you a breakdown of ...
Reporter and FIJ grantee Rachel Nielsen investigated the complaints of foster parents in Washington state who say government caseworkers have created a culture of fear. The foster parents say they are being intimidated by state officials over trivial issues. State officials have held two meetings with groups of foster parents, but there have been no changes, according to records obtained ...
For more than 12 years, Washington State Patrol troopers have been searching drivers from minority communities, particularly Native Americans, five times more often than whites, FIJ grantees Jason Buch and Joy Borkholder, report for InvestigateWest. Their investigation also found that although there is a state law requiring that officers file reports on the race of drivers they stop, state troopers ...
Even as the immigration court system becomes more and more backlogged — rising to more than 1 million cases in September — and detention facilities managed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have hit record levels, holding more than 50,000 people nationwide, officials are seeking much higher bonds for immigrants or refusing them altogether, FIJ grantee Paul Ingram reports for ...
In 1988, Erin Hunter was convicted of a murder in New Orleans he claimed to know nothing about after a trial that took place in a single morning. Years later, the detective who investigated the case went to federal prison for extortion, the prosecutor remembered the single eyewitness as being of “dubious character,” and investigators suggested Hunter was set up. ...