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 "Municipal courts" ...
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A Defective System
In the Kansas City Municipal Court, drivers who had committed offenses including "DUI, fleeing police, racing on city streets and speeding" were allowed to plea-bargain their offenses down to the much more minor "defective-equipment" violation. In some cases, drivers were obtaining up to five of these plea bargain deals in a year. The more serious offenses never showed up on drivers' records, and while these individuals avoided the hike in insurance rates that would have come with their violations, insurance company spokesmen informed the K.C. Star that everyone's rates were thus "being increased slightly to cover this uninsured risk created by the plea bargains."
Tags: DUI; moving violations; plea bargains; Kansas City Municipal Court; "defective-equipment" citation"; insurance rates; insurance rate hikes
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Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America
Reporter Eyall Press grew up with this story-- his father, Shalom Press, was a colleague of Dr. Barnett Slepian, the abortion provider who was murdered in Buffalo NY in 1988. Press used "newspaper articles, books, municipal reports, medical journals...videotapes, newslertters, journals, and court records" to document the abortion wars centered in western New York. His main sources were several hundred interviews with the participants in the conflict, including those with pro-life activists, some of whom had "spent years protesting outside my father's medical office in Buffalo, and, at times, outside the home where I grew up." (292 pages)
Tags: James C. Kopp; Army of God; Spring of Life; New York Christian Coalition; Operation Rescue; Paul Schenck; Project Rescue; Pro-life Alliance for Non-Violence; Pro-choice; Roe v. Wade
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Our Tax Dollars at Work
A look at how the tax money in Kansas City is spent on street maintenance, police, fire/ambulance, water, sewer, parks and recreation, municipal courts, and solid waste removal.
Tags: Utilities; tax money; city spending; taxes; streets; emergency services; municipal courts; garbage pickup; solid waste removal
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Lucky Few Get Cases Tossed
This investigation revealed that some criminal charges in the Mobile Municipal Court are dropped and erased from public records. This happens with no real legal authority. The authors focus on the arrest of one local politician to illustrate this process.
Tags: law; courts; judge; crime; charges; DUI; city government; state government
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City's Handling of Homeless is Challenged
In a series of articles, Kohler and his colleague Tim O'Neill chronicle the city's attempts to use a municipal court order to round up homeless people and require them to clear streets of trash without actually charging them with any crime. After the first article, the city reversed its policy and eventually the court order was ruled unconstitutional by state and federal courts.
Tags: Civil rights; bill of rights; constitutional law; abuse of law; human rights
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The Speeder's Secret
The Kansas state municipal court system allows drivers who have been ticketed for moving violations and reduce them to parking tickets. As this report reveals, this sanction is used by many drivers and as a result many unsafe drivers still have a licence. A part of the story also talks about a computer system that allows various counties to share moving violations which is not being used or updated by the state officials.
Tags: transportation; traffic tickets; parking tickets; Kansas State municipal court system; court system; moving violations
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Judges get a 'good gig' in KC Municipal Court
In this report, Star reporters unravel the relaxed working hours of Kansas City municipality judges by investigating the judges' entries and exits from the city garage where the judges park. They find out that on an average these judges work less than 30 hours a week. From the questionnaire, "the judges do little legal research or issue written opinions; most of their job is done from the bench". The report also shows how the judges arrive late at work and leave early by 3 p.m. And furthermore, for taking off early on Friday's and 45 days off each year, these judges are paid nearly $119,000 a year- higher than any Missouri judge except those on the State Supreme Court.
Tags: Presiding Judge John B. Williams; Judge Marcia Walsh; Judge Joseph Locascio; National Center for State Courts
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Grass-roots justice
A profile of Roxbury District Court Judge Gregory L. Philips frames this story about the turn-around of a judicial court. When Philips was appointed, Roxbury District Court was operating with a tarnished image. Philips moved to fix that image, and make one of the most smooth-running courts in the state.
Tags: Justice; Judges; Municipal courts; Gregory Philips
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Town purses grow fat at the sound of the gavel
An investigation by the Star-Ledger finds that New Jersey towns, on average, are far more dependent on revenue from municipal court fines than average. Generally, municipal court revenue count for only 2.4 percent of a town's cash flow. Ten New Jersey towns use court money to fund 10 percent of their budgets, and one town uses 17 percent. Extra stories on parking and speeding tickets add an extra dimension in this look at court revenue.
Tags: speeding; fines; parking tickets; violations; municipal courts; courts
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Arresting Developments
The American Prospect looks at the use of police powers to enforce law on private property. The story reveals that police officers - often in uniform - are hired by private developments to enforce their private parking, speeding, trespassing, loitering, etc. rules. Cops cannot give a speeding ticket to someone who is violating a private speeding limit on a private speed, but they could consider arresting the violator for 'operating to endanger,' the magazine reveals. The reporter finds that "taken together, these moves represent a qualitative, though little noted, expansion of public law enforcement into the realm of private space." A major finding is that the approximately 25,000 private communities that already pay for their own private security patrols could argue successfully that they should not have to pay to support the public police system because they are policing themselves.
Tags: Jacksonville sheriff's department; moonlighting; gated communities; business; corporations; arrests; security; courts; property taxes; municipal services