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 "Crime" ...
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Trail of the Gun
After a wave of gun violence in Seattle, KING 5 examined some of the most basic techniques that police use to solve gun crimes. By analyzing documents received through public records requests the television station learned that most large police departments in Washington state are not conducting routine ballistics tests on the so-called “crime guns” they seize from suspects and crime scenes. This means that guns, that could hold clues to unsolved crimes, are sitting right under investigators’ noses in their own evidence rooms. The investigative series "Trail of the Gun" also unearthed the results of federal firearms “traces”, which police use to determine how a gun ended up in the hands of a criminal. These trace results revealed that a large number of Seattle’s crime guns came from an unexpected place. After the stories aired, several large police departments pledged to begin ballistics testing programs for their crime guns. The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms offered to assist local police agencies to test every gun in their evidence rooms. And, the feds unveiled a warrant targeting one of the gun dealers identified in the series.
Tags: Guns; gun crimes; police
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Bad to the Bone
When four executives of a medical-device company called Synthes went to jail for illegally marketing a bone cement—five patients had died after it was injected into their spines—Mina Kimes knew there had to be a compelling saga behind a case that had generated little coverage beyond local news articles. So she began digging, first with FOIA requests for never-before-published government documents, and then assembling hundreds of pages of court transcripts and internal company e-mails and reports. She used that foundation to begin the harder challenge: persuading Synthes employees, many of them terrified by the criminal case and the company’s intimidating chairman, to talk to her. With six months of grueling, old-fashioned reporting, Kimes succeeded, and “Bad to the Bone” is the masterful result. Not only did she persuade more than 20 current and former company employees to speak, but she also revealed a story whose disturbing breadth far exceeded the case presented in court. Her tour de force reporting raises profound new questions about the culpability of a key figure who wasn’t charged: Hansjörg Wyss, the reclusive and controlling Swiss founder and chairman—one of the richest people in the world—who made crucial decisions about how to sell the bone cement. This is a classic tale of corporate malfeasance: Warned by the government not to sell its bone cement for use in the spine, Synthes ignored the admonition despite clear evidence of lethal danger—a pig had died within seconds when the cement was tested on it—and encouraged surgeons to use the cement on people, five of whom died soon afterward. But “Bad to the Bone” isn’t just an exposé. It opens a window into a broader issue: how the medical system actually runs. Readers see how salespeople with no medical training advise surgeons—inside the OR during operations—on how to use their devices. They experience the tale of one surgeon who continues using the cement even after two of his patients died. Oh, and what sort of justice does Synthes itself receive? Wyss sells it, for $20 billion, to health care giant Johnson & Johnson, which praises Synthes’s “culture” and “values.” Corporate crime. Death on the operating room table. Secret e-mails. Surgeons on the edge. An imperious multibillionaire CEO. It’s a mesmerizing article, and Kimes’s reporting takes readers on a deeply unsettling journey that ensures they’ll never look at the medical system the same way again.
Tags: Medical devices; bone cement; Synthes
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Truthout on the Border
The true intent of United States Foreign Policy in regards to the war on drugs in Mexico and Latin America is hidden behind many pantallas (screens in Spanish). In ten installments, posted in the first half of 2012, the Truthout on the Mexican Border series exposed the unofficial intentions of the US war on drugs in Latin America and its deadly impact. By connecting the dots in ten successively posted articles, the war on drugs appears to be a screen behind which goals of US military and economic hegemony can more easily be achieved in Latin American nations. Many Mexicans know that when it comes to corruption, drugs and crime in their nation, las pantallas usually prevent them from knowing the truth. The same is true of the US war on drugs, which has resulted in deaths and disappearances that are estimated to reach between 60,000 – 120,000 in the six year rule of Mexican President Felipe Calderón (ending on November 30, 2012). Truthout regularly covers US foreign policy and its impact in Latin America. The Truthout on the Mexican Border series was written to create a comprehensive understanding of what is behind the diplomatic and political screens – weaving in such seemingly diverse topics as US immigration and gun policies to understand the dark underside of US hemispheric intentions in Mexico and Latin America.
Tags: U.S.; foreign policy; Mexico; Latin America; drug war; corruption; crime
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Crime Data Investigation
The initial story in the crime data investigation found that from 2009 to early 2012 the Milwaukee Police Department misreported more than 500 aggravated assaults as lesser offenses not counted in the city’s violent crime tally. More than 800 additional cases followed the same pattern but couldn’t be verified with available records. Subsequent stories found police underreported aggravated assaults even when their own officers were severely injured; police clerks routinely changed dangerous weapon codes to generic ones in a way that allowed violent assaults to be underreported — and escape FBI scrutiny; the FBI’s crime auditing process is a fig leaf — metro police departments are rarely audited, and even then the sample sizes are too small to draw meaningful conclusions; Milwaukee police knew they misreported rapes and robberies, but didn’t mention this to city leaders or the public; high-ranking department officials raised red flags internally for years that there were problems but the public only heard a drumbeat that crime was down. In addition to these major installments, Poston and Diedrich wrote nearly two dozen follow-up stories that documented the fallout.
Tags: Crime data; police; assaults; city government
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Cyber Espionage: The Chinese Threat
It’s the biggest threat facing American business today but the least talked about by corporate executives. Experts at the highest levels of government agree, cyber espionage is threatening to steal American wealth, American jobs and ultimately America’s economic security and the biggest aggressor is China. Due to the nature of the crime, the cost to American businesses is nearly impossible to pinpoint. Experts say Chinese hackers are constantly probing corporate networks, sifting through endless amounts of data to decipher what is valuable intellectual property, chemical formulas or proprietary technology. One conservative estimate from the National Counter Intelligence Executive puts the cost of economic espionage at up to $400B annually, but the report states such estimates vary “so widely as to be meaningless,” reflecting the scarcity of data available. CNBC’s David Faber and the Investigations Inc. team spoke with many corporate executives about China’s aggressive effort to target American businesses and their most valuable assets, but many refused to comment on camera for our report, citing becoming more vulnerable to attack by speaking publicly about the issue. However, not one executive denied their company is at risk of cyber-attack on a daily basis or the possibility of losing valuable intellectual property to cyber spies. Government and industry experts we spoke with on-camera have witnessed such costly cyber-attacks during their careers and attest to the fact there are only two companies left in America today: Those who know they’ve been hacked and those who don’t. From a whistleblower claiming telecommunications giant Nortel was one of the first casualties of this all-out cyber war, to high profile and public attacks on Google and RSA, its clear defending against cyber espionage is the new normal for American business.
Tags: Chinese hackers; American businesses; cyber attacks; cyber espionage
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Tampa Bay Times: Stand Your Ground
In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting controversy, the Tampa Bay Times systematically reviewed scores of "stand your ground" cases and created the first database of its kind to bring the facts of all these cases together as a single source.
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Grim Reapers
Maricopa County, Arizona, has faced economic hurdles in paying for representation of indigent defendants charged with capital crimes. In recent years, the county supplanted other jurisdictions as the unofficial “death penalty capital” of the United States. “Grim Reaper” describes how a prominent capital criminal-defense attorney committed serious ethical and potentially criminal violations over a period of five years, during which time he collected more than $2.4 million from the county, including payment for work that he never had performed. in the wake of publication, law enforcement initiated a still-ongoing criminal investigation (as did the State Bar of Arizona), and the county's presiding judge announced sweeping and immediate changes in how criminal-defense attorneys representing indigent clients would be vetted, selected and paid.
Tags: Crimes; charges; criminal justice system; capital crimes
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Stamping Out Fraud: Uncovering Rogue Food Stamp Retailers
A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found found dozens of individuals who have been banned as food stamp merchants yet nonetheless remained in business in communities across the country because of lax governmental oversight. Scripps later identified more flaws in the program's oversight: Convicted thieves and cheats are running food-stamp stores around the nation, even though federal law is supposed to prohibit them from doing so.
Tags: Food stamp retailers; USDA; crime; criminals
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Bronx Prosecutors Drop Staggering Loads of Cases
A nine-month investigation by WNYC’s Ailsa Chang revealed that people accused of crimes in the Bronx have a greater chance of walking away without charges than anywhere else in New York City. Chang’s two-part series shows that the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office declines to prosecute thousands more cases than do the four other District Attorney offices. And the main reason is a troubling internal policy that no other prosecutors’ office in the city follows: In the Bronx, a case is dropped if a victim doesn’t cooperate within the first 24 hours after an arrest. Bronx prosecutors declined almost one quarter of all their cases in 2011. That’s nearly four times the average rate Manhattan and Brooklyn prosecutors declined cases.
Tags: Crimes; charges; prosecutors; declined cases; victim cooperation
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Deaf and Tased
A deaf crime victim calls police for help, but instead gets tased, beat-up, and thrown in jail for 60 hours over Easter weekend without access to an interpreter. KIRO 7’s investigative team proves police manipulated their reports to defend their actions. We also uncovered jail guards offered the deaf inmate a broken TTY phone as her only means of communication. We found that device still broken and in service two months later.