Police misconduct is a leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Just over 2,900 people have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989 according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations. That amounts to 25,900 lost years for those stuck behind bars. Over 37% of those cases involve police misconduct, and over
The right to assemble is as American as apple pie. It is written in the First Amendment — “the right of the people to peaceably assemble.” The American Revolution followed high-spirited protests in the colonies. But legal experts say that police tactics at mass demonstrations are threatening the right to assemble. Kettling protesters, spraying them
Most of the 79 St. Louis area police officers who killed people in recent years have escaped public scrutiny, going unnamed both in media and department incident reports. Nearly half of them still are active officers today. In addition, public knowledge of police killings has significantly decreased, despite increased attention to police killings nationwide. In
Police misconduct records are either secret or difficult to access in a majority of states — 32 of them including Washington, D.C. But the breeze of openness is blowing. Seven big states have opened records in recent years — California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts and Maryland. Nineteen states now have laws that allow these
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
