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 "government official" ...
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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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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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For-Profit-College Business Model Breeds Exploitative Marketing Tactics
In the first radio piece: Interviews with former recruiters, faculty, administrators and students of a small group of for-profit colleges in Minnesota paint a picture of schools that are exploiting unsophisticated students for their financial-aid money. Analysis points to a high-enrollment, high-dropout business model that earns the company millions but provides questionable return on taxpayer investment. In the second radio piece: Political differences at the federal level make it unclear how much the government will regulate for-profit colleges. At the Minnesota state level, the leading official for higher-ed says his agency doesn’t have the resources to go after problem colleges – and isn’t sure whether beefing up enforcement would be the best use of higher-education funding.
Tags: Non-profit colleges; financial aid; business models; for-profit colleges
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Dark Markets
The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of financial markets in 2012 performed a rare and extraordinary service: It exposed evidence of hidden manipulation by corporate executives and professional traders that the markets’ official government watchdogs were utterly unaware of. Reflecting potential widespread harm to millions of ordinary investors, federal prosecutors and securities regulators raced to follow the Journal stories with major investigations. A team of reporters spent six months creating a database examining how more than 20,000 corporate executives traded their own companies’ stocks over the course of eight years. What the team found was disturbing: More than 1,000 executives had generated big profits, or avoided big losses, by trading their company stock in the days ahead of corporate news announcements that led to big moves in the shares. The Journal also exposed a regulatory loophole that had helped the executives take advantage of inside knowledge ahead of other investors. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission all launched investigations the day the Journal article appeared.
Tags: Financial markets; corporate executives; stocks; Federal Bureau of Investigation
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Maywood Confidential
On the evening of Oct. 23, 2006, as a premature snow fell in parts of the Chicago area, Maywood (Illinois) Police Officer Tom Wood pulled his marked SUV to a dimly lit corner known for drug sales, rolled down his window part of the way and began talking to somebody, likely a person he knew. Within minutes gunfire exploded from the street, ripping through the car and hitting Officer Wood in the head and elsewhere, killing the 37-year-old father of five almost instantly. More than six years later, the murder is still unsolved, and an eerie pall has been cast over the official investigation, and Maywood itself. The nonprofit Better Government Association (BGA) and WFLD-TV/FOX Chicago set out to determine what happened – why Officer Wood was killed and why the official investigation into his death had failed to produce an arrest or criminal charges. In a figurative sense, our findings (which form the basis for our entry) indict not a person, but a culture of corruption and apathy in Maywood that may have contributed to Officer Wood’s death, and certainly played a role in the subsequently botched homicide probe.
Tags: Murder; police officer; corruption; homicide
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Concealing County Corruption: Anatomy of a Cover-Up
Wayne Dolcefino saves the best for last. In his final investigation for KTRK-TV, he and the 13 Undercover Unit demonstrated relentless persistence as they attempted to shake up a county government with an abysmal record of policing itself. This submission begins with four reports detailing shocking evidence of corruption inside the downtown precinct of Constable Jack Abercia. 13 Undercover spent several months doing painstaking surveillance -- catching the Constable’s deputies running his personal errands, working extra jobs on the clock and stockpiling never driven county patrol cars while lawmen were being laid off. 13 Undercover then managed to get a hidden camera inside the chief deputy’s office as he and two deputies talked openly about corruption inside the precinct. The language is often foul mouthed and always revealing. The FBI nabbed Aberica and two top commanders in a bribery sting weeks later. The veteran former constable is now awaiting trial. Eventually, 13 Undercover turned our cameras on county leaders to say “enough is enough.” Not only was action not forthcoming, it quickly became clear that many in positions of power wanted this all to go away without getting their hands dirty, without ending decades of a patronage system that made deputies feel required to give money to their boss’s campaigns and charities to keep their jobs. That was not an option. This investigation demanded accountability and we held leaders to the promises they made to the public. In late summer, 13 Undercover scored a major public records victory that revealed what one commentator dubbed "a cover-up of Nixonian proportions." The series culminated with the long awaited, and previously unimaginable, indictment of one of the county’s most popular elected officials – precinct 6 Constable Victor Trevino. New county directives now prohibit constables from soliciting money from their deputies and legislation is expected to filed in Austin to protect county employees from further shakedowns.
Tags: Corruption; county government; officials
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Social network analysis of high-ranking officials in S. Korean government
It is a social network analysis-based investigative reporting on high ranking public officials in the Lee Myung-bak administration and his presidential office. Since its launch in 2008, the Lee administration has been criticized for the dark side of spoils system or cronyism in personnel affairs. The JoongAng Ilbo investigated on the "chain of relationships" among 944 high-ranking officials and President Lee for the last four years. We also used text-mining methodology on social media, such as Internet blogs and twitter, which showed the public's sentiments toward the cronyism of the Lee government.
Tags: Social network; public officials; presidential office; cronyism
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Behind Closed Doors, Kentucky City Buys Controversial Building For $1.3 Million
Danville, Kentucky’s purchase of the former Boyle County Industrial Storage Facility, better known as the BISCO building, drew a lot of controversy along with legal battles during the second half of 2012. During its Aug. 13 meeting, Danville City Commission unanimously voted to buy the building at auction for $1,237,550. However, a bidder hired by the city had already won the property in auction three days before. Also, on the day of the auction city officials had cut a check for 10 percent of the BISCO building’s purchase price. Residents raised concerns about the secretive nature of the purchase, especially since then-Commissioner Ryan Montgomery’s father, Mike, had a long-standing business relationship with the building’s former owner Mitchell Barnes. After being publicly prodded, Mayor Bernie Hunstad also acknowledged that his wife, Susan, worked for the bidder the city hired to handle the auction process.
Tags: City officials; city government; auction
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Local officials are likely to profit from fracking in Southern Tier
Local government officials have been lobbying the state to the controversial oil and gas extraction process known as fracking. But when they spoke at public hearings and pushed in other forums, were they just representing their communities, or did they have more at stake? In a four-month investigation, SUNY New Paltz students reviewed thousands of public records in two states. The investigation found more than 30 locally elected officials who have been outspoken proponents for fracking. Public records and additional examinations identified about 20 percent of those with more than political philosophy at stake — the chance to gain personally and financially. To open government advocates such as Common Cause, these instances raise concerns about transparency and conflicts of interest among locally elected officials. About six months after publication, and after further moves by local officials to press the state to approve fracking, the state attorney general has launched inquiries into whether local officials have violated conflicts of interest.
Tags: Oil; gas; oil and gas extraction; fracking
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Benghazi: US Consulate Attack
On September 11, when a militant group overran the US consulate in Benghazi resulting in the death of the ambassador, the initial information was contradictory. Much of it got mixed up with other reports out of the Middle East about anti-American demonstrations over an inflammatory film on the Internet that was said to insult Islam. Damon arrived quickly in Benghazi to sort out the conflicting information and went to the burnt consulate ruins, which, though looted, held valuable clues to the truth. Her reporting revealed that there was not a demonstration and that it appeared to have been a planned attack that unfolded simultaneously from three sides. She discovered that U.S. diplomats had been warned by Libyan officials three days before the attack that the security situation in the city was out of their control. Though her reporting received harsh public criticism from the State Department at the time, the U.S. government’s own investigation later proved her reporting to be accurate in an episode that continues to reverberate politically. Damon also spoke to Libyans that tried to save the ambassador that night, shedding light on what happened to him during his final hours. While she was in Benghazi, demonstrations erupted against the militia believed to be responsible for the attack, and Damon further reported on the rise in extremism in the newly-liberated country. Her reporting provided additional valuable context about the milieu in which the consulate attack occurred.
Tags: Middle East; Libya; U.S. ambassador; Benghazi; militant group