Policing is an essential component of public safety, but it has become hyper-politicized and polarized to the detriment of the profession and the people it serves. If you think Black lives matter, you must think blue lives don’t, and vice versa. If you work with the police you must be a racist, and if you…
After covering the Jussie Smollett case for nearly two years for The New York Times, I had to turn down reporting from the actor’s trial in Chicago recently on charges that he faked a racist, homophobic attack in 2019. I had another assignment that week so couldn’t commit to being in court every day of…
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a police officer bill of rights into law July 14, even though other states have moved to repeal their law enforcement officer bills of rights as part of a larger effort to hold police officers accountable. Surprisingly, just over a year after the murder of George Floyd, Missouri’s leading media…
This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Illinois’ historic criminal justice reform law, hailed as a national model, contains a little-noticed loophole that seals statewide records of police misconduct and hides them from courts and the public. The new law requires the Illinois Law Enforcement and Training Standards Board to maintain…
BY TONY LAUBACH / Earlier this year after an early season severe weather event in southern Kansas, one of the Wichita-area news stations published two stories regarding storm chasers and how they were getting in the way of emergency vehicles and over-crowding roads. Another story published online by a second Wichita station interviewed a sheriff in Barber County, Kansas who is concerned with the crowding of roads. These Kansas stations that posted the stories focused heavily on the side of the law enforcement. It wasn’t until storm chasers brought to light the lack of incidents on video that the news stations gave the chasers a chance to voice their side of the story.