The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "California law" ...
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America's Great State Payroll Giveaway
A state-employed psychiatrist in California made $822,000 by clocking in 17 hours every day last year, including Sundays and holidays. An employee cashed out with $609,000 for unused vacation when she retired, claiming she never took vacations in a 30-year career. A highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in salary, pension and leave payments. The chief money manager at a Texas pension fund got $1 million in salary and bonuses while posting investment returns that trailed those of peers who earned a quarter as much. Bloomberg News used freedom-of-information laws to obtain 1.4 million payroll records from the 12 largest states and show how taxpayers funded these out-of-control expenses and more, while at the same time states cut funding for universities, public safety, health care, schools and services aimed at the neediest residents.
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Wage Theft In the Fields
American farmworkers have often experienced egregious abuses, but nothing is more pervasive, nor harder to ferret out, than the wage theft that results from a practice called farm-labor contracting. Found in the fields of every handpicked crop in the country, farm-labor contractors not only provide growers with crews, but also handle wages and manage everything from verifying immigration status to providing workers' compensation. The problem is, the contractors systematically underpay the workers. “Farm labor contractors,” says writer Tracie McMillan, “give American produce growers what companies like China's Foxconn offer to Apple: a way to outsource a costly and complicated part of the business, often saving money in the process and creating a firewall between the brand and the working conditions under which its products are made.” And yet McMillan — a fellow with both the Knight-Wallace program at University of Michigan, and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University — found that enforcement is rare: In 2008, inspectors visited only 1,499 of the more than 2 million farms nationwide; in 2011, California inspectors found just seven minimum wage violations on the state’s 86,000 farms. Fines are minimal: “It's cheaper to violate the law than to follow the law,” says one farmworker advocate. And wage theft is tedious to prove, requiring inspectors to interview workers, analyze time cards, and collect payroll records. That's why workers and their advocates in California are counting on a lawsuit brought earlier this year on behalf of two farmworkers against the contractors who hired them—as well as the growers who outsourced the work. The suit alleges that the contractors routinely undercounted the hours worked, failed to pay minimum wage or overtime, failed to provide safe or sanitary working conditions, and housed the workers in unsafe and unsanitary living quarters. The “collective action” suit—open to anyone who can prove he or she experienced the same treatment—may cover thousands of workers and deliver awards substantial enough to deter other employers from the same practices.
Tags: Labor; farms; working conditions; wage
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Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper
Scapegoat is the true story of the horrific Chino Hills murders -- the highest profile crime in San Bernardino County history. It shows how law enforcement ignored eyewitness information implicating three white men as the perpetrators in order to pin the crime on Kevin Cooper, a recently escaped black prisoner from the nearby prison in Chino, California. It shows how his public defender lost the case before the trial even began and how the justice system has failed Cooper at almost every turn. It also shows the heroic work of an international law firm headquartered in San Francisco that adopted Cooper's case pro bono just three months before his scheduled execution in 2004 and won him a stay and how lawyers from this firm continue to appeal his wrongful conviction.
Tags: Murders; crime; law enforcement; police; prison; justice system; wrongful conviction
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Catch and Release
California, using the term "realignment", chose to lessen the overcrowded prison population by paroling what corrections officials said were the least violent offenders on parole. Yet parole officers told KCRA that even sex offenders were now breaking the law - living with kids, near schools, even cutting off their GPS anklets - and facing no time in prison. Our investigation reviewed more than 8,000 parolees and their re-offenses over the last year. We also used internal sources to find that the state was preparing to review nearly ten thousand absconders in order to wipe them off the prison books.
Tags: Prison realignment; parole; sex offenders; parolees
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Off Track: Clandestine Racing in California
This story delved into an unknown world of illegal and clandestine horse racing happening on private tracks throughout the state of California. The straight-track races occur on properties throughout the state. KCRA uncovered a world where drug deals, prostitution, illegal gambling and animal cruelty are the norm. KCRA got the point of view of investigators and a veterinary scientist who found that horses were being dosed with mixtures of cocaine and methamphetamine. Added to this was the fact that few local law enforcement know it's happening and state investigators don't have the resources to stop the racing from happening.
Tags: Horse racing; drug deals; prostituion; gambling; animal abuse; veterinary science; cocaine; methamphetamine
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Broken Shield: Police force fails to protect state’s most vulnerable residents
Decades ago, California created a special police force to investigate crimes and unexplained injuries inflicted upon some of society’s most vulnerable citizens – men and women with severe autism and cerebral palsy living in taxpayer-funded institutions. This police force, the Office of Protective Services, works exclusively at state developmental centers that have been the scene of horrific abuses. We sought to bring this story to readers in many forms, from working on all platforms, distributing condensed versions and delivering broadcast video stories to our partners, to creating a graphic novel video on one particularly human story -- a woman who was raped, apparently by a janitor. We also created an ebook of the series of stories and an interactive tracker that detailed key milestones of legislation drafted and signed into law. Producing this work on every platform helped to maximize audience reach and heighten the impact.
Tags: Autism; cerebral palsy; taxes; taxpayers; Office of Protective Services; abuse
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Broken Shield
Decades ago, California created a special police force to patrol exclusively at its five state developmental centers – taxpayer-funded institutions where patients with severe autism and cerebral palsy have been beaten, tortured and raped by staff members. But California Watch found that this state force, the Office of Protective Services, does an abysmal job bringing perpetrators to justice. Reporter Ryan Gabrielson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, exposed the depths of the abuse inside these developmental centers while showing how sworn officers and detectives wait too long to start investigations, fail to collect evidence and ignore key witnesses – leading to an alarming inability to solve crimes inflicted upon some of society’s most vulnerable citizens. Dozens of women were sexually assaulted inside state centers, but police investigators didn’t order “rape kits” to collect evidence, a standard law enforcement tool. Police waited so long to investigate one sexual assault that the staff janitor accused of rape fled the country, leaving behind a pregnant patient incapable of caring for a child. The police force’s inaction also allowed abusive caregivers to continue molesting patients – even after the department had evidence that could have stopped future assaults. Many of the victims chronicled by California Watch are so disabled they cannot utter a word. Gabrielson gave them a resounding voice. Our Broken Shield series prompted far-reaching change, including a criminal investigation, staff retraining and new laws – all intended to bring greater safeguards and accountability.
Tags: California; police; autism; cerebral palsy; abuse; children
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"Urban League Gets Mixed Grades On Crenshaw Area Overhaul"
This series attempts to provide a "midway progress report" for a major, $25 million effort by the Los Angeles Urban League to "address academic problems at Crenshaw High School," and several other "social ills" that bother the neighborhood that surrounds the campus. Reporters interviewed members of the community, school and local law enforcement in an effort to report on the progress of the program. They found the Urban League's Neighborhoods@Work program "met some goals and fell short of others."
Tags: Los Angeles Urban League; Crenshaw High; LAPD; L.A. Unified School District; L.A. City Attorney's Office; California Public Records Act; records request
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Trafficked
Youth Radio covered the issue of human trafficking into the sex trade, a problem prevalent in Oakland. Their coverage focused on the perspectives of the trafficked teenagers.The story "pieces together what life is like for girls who are kidnapped or ensnared by pimps -- and how law enforcement criminalizes juvenile victims, arresting them three times as often as the traffickers who exploit them."
Tags: prostitution; human trafficking; kidnapping; Youth and Family Services; Oakland, California; sex trade
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Car seizures at DUI checkpoints prove profitable for cities, raise legal questions
California law enforcement officials running sobriety checkpoints are more likely to seize cars from unlicensed sober drivers than from drunk drivers. Most of the drivers losing their cars are illegal immigrants.
Tags: driving; DUI; checkpoint; immigrant; sobriety