Despite alarmingly high levels of lead in the soil of a mostly poor, largely African American community in Atlanta that is now an EPA Superfund “removal action” site, there has been no effort by state or local officials to test children for contamination. An investigation by Georgia Health News, the Georgia News Lab and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution brought the story ...
Nearly one in four Detroit homeowners owes more in delinquent property taxes than they did three years ago despite being a part of a county program designed to help them get out of debt and avoid foreclosure, according to a Detroit News analysis. The payment plans, with lower interest rates and an extended five-year repayment deadline, were a solution devised by officials, including Mayor Mike Duggan, to get homeowners ...
Most police shootings in New Hampshire over the last three decades have been ruled justified by the state Attorney General’s Office perhaps because investigations were completed by the New Hampshire State Police. Nancy West of inDepthNH.org investigates how the state is now considering a civilian review board to determine whether police have acted appropriately when using lethal force against citizens. ...
The Rebuild North Bay Foundation was created in October 2017, ostensibly to provide relief to thousands of victims of wildfires in Sonoma and Napa counties in California. As Peter Byrne and Will Carruthers report in the Pacific Sun the foundation performed little or no relief work, choosing to focus on lobbying on behalf of prominent businesspeople and Pacific Gas & Electric. Photo ...
FIJ grantee Joseph Poliszuk of Armando.info, an online publication in Venezuela, finished a three-year investigation on the independence of judges in Venezuela. He and his partners at Armando.info created a website that tracks 6,000 judges throughout the country, finding evidence that 50 percent of the justices in the country were selected for those positions because of political ties to the ...
More than two decades ago, a group including the white sheriff of Limestone County, Ala., rustled and slaughtered more than 60 head of cattle owned by Michael Stovall, a black farmer. They then dumped the carcasses into graves dug up on the farmer’s land. That was the finding of a Department of Agriculture special investigation. But the culprits remained free, ...
“Holding the Thin Green Line,” a radio documentary by FIJ grantee Barbara Bernstein, tells the stories of communities fighting fossil fuel industry projects in the Pacific Northwest . The first hour follows the efforts of activists in Tacoma and Kalama, Washington, to stop construction of the world’s largest methanol refinery and delves into the saga of Puget Sound Energy’s effort ...
For years, Alaska Native women have urged officials to address a crisis of violence throughout their state: Reported rapes are twice the national average, and child sexual violence is six times the national average. Alaska’s western region has the state’s highest rate of felony sex offenses, and the overwhelming majority of victims are Alaska Native. Victoria McKenzie addresses the issue in ...
T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong’s award-winning investigation with ProPublica and the Marshall Project, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” has been made into a Netflix series, “Unbelievable.” The investigation detailed the ordeal of a young woman who was coerced by authorities into recanting a claim that she had been raped. FIJ provided Miller and Armstrong with a grant when they ...
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students across the United States. And numbers are on the rise. But you won’t hear details about these tragic deaths from Massachusetts colleges and universities. Most of them don’t release information if they track it at all. Jenifer McKim, a reporter with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, used ...