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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got the Clark Mollenhoff Award for Investigative Reporting for its series of reports exposing deep flaws in the Milwaukee Police Department's crime numbers. Ben Poston and John Diedrich examined how the department underreported thousands of violent assaults, rapes, robberies, and burglaries and failed to correct the problem while presenting flawed statistics to the public.
Last week, Poston and Diedrich won top prize in the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Investigative Reporting, administered by the Chicago-based Better Government Association. Their work, along with reporting by Gina Barton on a death in police custody, also won the top public service award and Best in Show honors in the National Headliner Awards.
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Six years ago, the FBI started a review of 112 cold-case killings from the civil rights era, and civil rights activists are critical of the FBI's efforts, reports NPR. The review comes with word of the death of a man who'd been named by the Concordia, La., Sentinel, of a possible suspect the notorious death of black businessman Frank Morris in 1964. The man, who denied involvement, died last week. An FBI official said the agency had "diligently pursued the information," but "turned up no credible evidence" to link the man to the killing.
Law Prof. Paula Johnson, co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University, called on Congress to hold hearings on whether the FBI has done enough to investigate Morris' case and others. "We would want a much more accelerated pace to these cases," she says, "and that's the thing that we're calling for." The 2008 federal Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Act provided $10 million annually for the U.S. Justice Department to investigate racially motivated killings from before 1970. A proponent of the law is "disappointed overall" in its implementation. "[There] never was a very aggressive outreach effort to find evidence and witnesses," says Alvin Sykes of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign.
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When a Nassau County, N.Y., police officer confronted a gunman holding Hofstra University student Andrea Rebello hostage in her home on Friday night, he was forced, in an instant, to make a life-or-death calculation: Open fire and risk hitting the hostage, or hesitate and risk losing the hostage and being killed himself, says the New York Times.The officer’s decision to fire, killing the gunman along with the student, will be parsed as authorities investigate an episode that unfolded after the police interrupted a home invasion.
Enough details have emerged to paint a picture of a police operation that in the course of a few minutes spiraled out of control. Officers who arrived first on the scene believed they were confronting an armed robber but knew nothing about the hostages. That gap in knowledge was critical, experts said, possibly leading to missteps that inflamed an already dangerous situation and ultimately led to tragedy. Most critical, experts said, was the decision by the officer who ultimately opened fire to enter the home in the first place. That decision quite likely eliminated the opportunity to negotiate with the gunman, said Prof. Eugene O’Donnell of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a former New York City police officer. In any hostage crisis, he said, the first step for the police is to create a situation in which officers are in control.
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Felons released from California prisons are committing new crimes at about the same rate they did before Gov. Jerry Brown switched their supervision to county probation under a "realignment" plan, but a new report says repeat offenses are up, reports the Los Angeles Times. A new study from the state corrections department said there is "very little difference between the one-year arrest and conviction rates of offenders released pre- and post-realignment."
The state chose not to highlight a study finding that repeat offenses increased during the short-term study, and that offenders are much more likely than in the past to be arrested for a felony. The felony rate rose from 34.6 percent to 42.5 percent after realignment. The study of 37,000 offenders released from state prisons between October 2011 and March 2012 showed that almost 59 percent of those released from prison were arrested within a year for a new crime. That compares with 62 percent of the 52,000 offenders released from prison in the same six-month period a year before. The report demonstrates realignment's effect in reducing prison populations. The number of inmates returned to prison dropped from 21,800 before realignment to 2,780 after.
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The federal judge who oversaw a dramatic, forced transformation of the Los Angeles Police Department freed the department from the final vestiges of federal oversight, reports the Los Angeles Times. U.S. District Judge Gary Feess formally lifted the binding agreement the U.S. Justice Department imposed on the LAPD in 2001, which spelled out dozens of major reforms the police agency had to implement and frequent audits it was required to undergo by a monitor who reported to Feess.
The dismissal of the consent decree, which arose largely out of the Rampart corruption scandal and addressed basic problems of accountability that stretched back decades, delivered a largely symbolic milestone for the LAPD as it continues to disassociate itself from a past marked by abuses and turmoil. After revelations in 1999 that officers assigned to the Rampart Division were implicated in serious misconduct, including physical abuse of suspects, evidence tampering and perjury, public trust in the police plummeted and federal officials responded to calls from a growing chorus of critics for intervention. In 2006, as the decree was set to expire, Feess angrily rebuked the department for what he found to be its slow pace of reform and extended the decree for five years.
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The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is making a priority of prosecuting cases involving "vulnerable workers," reports NPR. Examples include migrant farm workers raped by supervisors in the fields, or those who are the most likely to be exploited and least able to speak out in their own defense. Four years ago, 21 men with intellectual disabilities were freed from a century-old schoolhouse in Atalissa, Ia. They ranged in age from their 40s to their 60s. For most of their adult lives they had worked for next to nothing and lived in dangerously unsanitary conditions.
This month, the EEOC won a $240 million judgment against the turkey-processing company at which the men worked. The civil suit involved severe physical and emotional abuse of men with intellectual disabilities. The judgment will be reduced because it exceeds a legal cap on jury awards. The case highlights the difficulty of preventing and identifying abuse of vulnerable workers, who are also the least likely to come forward about violations. Susan Seehase of Exceptional Persons, a support center that took in most of the men in Iowa, visited their old dwelling. Windows were boarded up, allowing little ventilation or light. The cockroaches were overwhelming. A leaky roof, mildew, accumulated grease, and mice droppings contributed to an overwhelming stench. A fire marshal condemned the building, saying it was the worst he'd seen in nearly 3,000 inspections.
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President Obama had a reputation when he took office as a liberal former constitutional lawyer who had condemned Bush-era national security policies. NPR says he has proved to be tougher than President George W. Bush on prosecuting national security leaks. The seizure of Associated Press phone records is just the latest example. The administration has prosecuted six people for giving reporters information about secret national security operations — twice as many cases as all previous presidents combined. Matt Miller, who used to advise Attorney General Eric Holder, says government officials share a sense that there are more leaks than there used to be, and they must be stopped.
"It has nothing to do with stopping the press from doing their job," he says. "The goal is to stop people who have taken an oath to protect national security from disclosing secrets that harm it." Journalists' groups say that's a distinction without a difference. To First Amendment advocates, the explanation is like saying: "We're not trying to prevent people from drilling for oil — we just want to keep the oil in the ground." Lucy Dalglish, who runs the journalism school at University of Maryland, says the only reason to do this is to send a message. "You send a message to both the media and [ ] to federal employees: You leak — we're going to get you," she says. "And I'm being told by reporters it's being pretty effective."
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In a surprising move, Texas House and Senate budget negotiators agreed to wipe out funding for the Department of Public...
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Cleveland's Ariel Castro should be named in a civil-rights charge under Ohio's law against violence "based on sex...
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Youth advocates have long argued that juveniles incarcerated in adult prisons and jails are at heightened risk for rape and other forms of sexual abuse. A Justice Department survey issued yesterday (and reported in this digest) found that juveniles did not report significantly more sexual victimization than adult inmates, says the New York Times. The survey offers the first national estimates of the prevalence of sexual abuse among juveniles housed in adult facilities.
The report’s lead author said he believed the findings “are far more reliable and representative of the experiences of such youth nationwide than the anecdotal data from the past.” Advocacy groups contested the numbers, arguing that many juveniles housed with adults are afraid to report sexual abuse and that the true figures are likely to be far higher. Allen Beck of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics said extensive precautions were taken to preserve confidentiality for inmates who participated in the survey and to ensure that the reports were as reliable as possible. Liz Ryan of the Campaign for Youth Justice, a group that aims to keep minors out of the adult criminal justice system, said, “We think that this study is inconsistent with previous studies that have been done on this topic.”
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