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 "drug courts" ...
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The Deadliest Place in Mexico
The Juarez Valley, a narrow corridor of green farmland carved from the Chihuahuan desert along the Rio Grande, was once known for its cotton, which rivaled Egypt’s. But that was before the Juarez cartel moved in to set up a lucrative drug smuggling trade. “The Deadliest Place in Mexico” explores untold aspects of Mexico’s drug war as it has played out in the small farming communities of this valley. The violence began in 2008, when the Sinaloa cartel moved in to take over the Juarez cartel’s turf. The Mexican government sent in the military to quell the violence — but instead the murder rate exploded. While the bloodshed in the nearby City of Juarez attracted widespread media attention, the violence spilling into the rural Juarez Valley received far less, eve as the killings began to escalate in brutal ways. Community advocates, elected officials, even police officers were shot down in the streets. Several residents were stabbed in the face with ice picks. By 2009, the valley, with a population of 20,000, had a murder rate six times higher than Juarez itself. Newspapers began to call the rural farming region the “Valley of Death.” This investigation uses extensive Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents, and difficult-to-obtain interviews in Spanish and English with current and former Juarez Valley residents, Mexican officials, narcotraffickers and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials, to reveal that many of these shocking deaths were perpetrated with the participation of Mexican authorities. It shows scenes of devastation — households where six members of a single family were killed, without a single police investigation. It uncovers targeted killings by masked gunmen of community activists and innocent residents for speaking out against violence and repression facilitated by corrupt military and government officials. And it gathers multiple witnesses who describe soldiers themselves, working in league with the Sinaloa cartel, perpetrating violence against civilians. "The cemeteries are all full. There isn't anywhere left to bury the bodies," one former resident said. "You'll find nothing there but ghost towns and soldiers."
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Detroit Free Press: Free to Kill
“Free to Kill,” a seven-month Detroit Free Press investigation, found the Michigan Department of Corrections failed to properly supervise some of the most violent of the state’s roughly 70,000 offenders under its watch. A total of 88 parolees and probationers were suspected, arrested or convicted in 95 murders between Jan. 1, 2010, and Aug. 31, 2011. The number nearly doubled from 2010 to 2011 -- from 21 to 38. The series also revealed that dozens of offenders weren't outfitted with court-ordered electronic tethers, and others weren't sent back to prison for new crimes or failed drug tests.
Tags: Department of Corrections; violence; criminals; drug tests
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Baumgartner
At the start of 2011, the best known and probably most respected judge in Knoxville, Tenn., was Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner, founder of Knox County's successful Drug Court and the judge who recently had presided over trials involving the most shocking crime in local memory, the carjacking, torture and murder of a young couple named Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. The trials of four suspects led to a death sentence, two life sentences and one very long prison term. But soon after the new year began, Baumgartner took an abrupt leave of absence, ostensible for health reasons.
Tags: judge; Knoxville; trials; criminal court
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Cuban Pot Rings
“Cuban-run drug rings dominate Florida’s indoor marijuana-cultivation trade, which supplies the Eastern seaboard state with some of the most potent and expensive marijuana in the US. Court records and interviews with drug agents showed that up to 90 percent of the hundreds of suspects busted each year running illegal grow houses are recently arrived Cuban refugees”.
Tags: cops; police; law enforcement; crime; arrests; drugs; court; Central Florida
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Side Effects
Side Effects tells the story of a court case and the personal story that surrounded the making and unmasking of a bestselling drug, Paxil. "It chronicles the lives of two women - a prosecutor and a whistleblower - who exposes the pattern of deception in the research and marketing of Paxil, an antidepressant prescribed to millions of children and adults."
Tags: Paxil; FDA; side-effects; GlaxoSmithKline; drug regulators; drug regulation; depression in children; clinical trials; misappropriation;
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The Grim Sleeper
Pelisek's story details a secret the Los Angeles police were shielding from the public: "that a serial murderer had begun killing Angelenos since 1985, taking a 13-year hiatus before recently resuming his bloody assaults almost exclusively in a poor, black sector of the city." DNA evidence linked a single killer to several murders of mostly young women, drug users and prostitutes. It was Pelisek that informed families of some of the victims that their daughters' murder was the work of a serial killer.
Tags: police; serial killer; Los Angeles; body dump; murder; cold case; public records; police documents; court documents
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Degrees of Justice
Higgins told the story of Charles Plinton, a graduate student at the University of Akron. The story begins when Plinton was suspended for selling marijuana to a police informant just weeks after being acquitted of felony drug trafficking charges. The story ends with his suicide a year later on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Tags: drugs; education; graduate school; drug dealing; courts; trial; public records
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Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids scandal that Rocked Professional Sports
San Francisco Chronicle reporters broke the story that some elite athletes used drugs to "run faster, hit harder, and cash in on the fame that comes only to those at the very top of their games." Fainaru-Wada and Williams used"Federal Grand Jury transcripts and federal investigative reports... court records and state health department records," among other documents. (332 pages)
Tags: steroids; drugs; BALCO; Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative; San Francisco Chronicle; Victor Conte; Major League Baseball; football; track and field; California Public Records Act; Federal Grand Jury; sports agents; trainers; sports doping; Olympics; Justice Department; IRS; U.S. Anti-Doping Agency; USADA
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Steroids and the NFL
This investigation exposed steroid and human growth hormone abuse by several professional football players who received prescriptions from a doctor who was subsequently indicted for prescribing them. The NFL drug testing program failed to detect the players' steroid use. This failure exposed loopholes in the NFL's substance abuse policies.
Tags: football; NFL; steroids; drug testing; performance enhancing drugs; human growth hormone
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Generation Meth
"Generation Meth tackled the skyrocketing use of meth among Utah women and exposed the state's inadequate response to this epidemic...The series examined how meth addiction burdens Utah's courts, prisons, police agencies and child welfare systems.
Tags: drug use; narcotics; methamphetamine; child welfare; child abuse; health and human services