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 "phone calls" ...
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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.
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Grandma can’t accept your call: Inmates disconnected by phone costs
This series of stories started with a simple question. Why does it cost so much for inmates to make calls from the Cook County Jail? In the course of my reporting on criminal and legal affairs for WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago, I had heard numerous people complain about the high cost of phone calls. Some digging confirmed that the price could be as high as $15.00 for 15 minute calls. Three or four calls a week at that price gets expensive even for financially stable middle class folks, but the people paying these fees were mostly the poorest residents in Chicago. That’s because most of the people in the Cook County Jail are there because they and their families couldn’t afford to post bond of a couple thousand, or sometimes even just hundreds of dollars to secure their freedom while awaiting trial. They are the people who are least able to afford such expensive phone calls. A few FOIA requests revealed the scheme (and scheme is the right word… I just looked it up: a crafty or secret plan of action). Cook County gave an exclusive phone contract to a company called Securus Technologies. Securus charged inflated phone rates and their exclusive deal in the jail meant inmates wanting to talk to their families or arrange their defense had no choice but to pay the rates. Securus then paid back to the county 57½ percent of the revenue from the calls. It netted the county about $4 million a year. Securus wouldn’t tell us their take but I imagine they did alright too. All of the money was coming out of the pockets of the poorest residents in Cook County, people who couldn’t even afford to post bond for their freedom. (As an aside, this isn’t just an issue in Cook County. According to its website Securus provides the phone systems for 850,000 inmates in 2,200 jails and prisons across the country.) Our reporting shed public light on a hugely profitable contract that no one was paying attention to. We documented the lives of the impoverished people getting hammered by the policy and then turned the hammer on the local elected officials to ask them to explain how this was a good policy. The public officials responded in a way that once again proved the genius of democracy. Our efforts and the results are detailed in subsequent answers below.
Tags: prison inmates; phone calls; fees
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The Nightmare
The story of how Swedish authorities took two small children in protective custody after a single phone call. The children's father was charged with sexual abuse of the children and the mother of complicity in the crimes. Although both parents were totally innocent, their lives, and the lives of the children, turned into a nightmare.
Tags: Sweden; authorities; protective custody; sexual abuse; wrongful accusation
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The Fall of Ohio's Attorney General
While top state officials from Elliot Spitzer to Rod Blagojevich fell from grace in 2008, no one was pushed out the door through dogged reporting by the press -- in this case, The Columbus Dispatch -- quite like Ohio's attorney general, Marc Dann. Information from a variety of sources and examination of voluminous e-mails and documents led to stories detailing sexual harassment and a shockingly unprofessional, party-like atmosphere of high-ranking Dann officials, including ribald festivities at the so-called "Dannimal House," the condo where he lived along with a pair of top aides. The Dispatch also broke stories about other misdeeds ranging from questionable campaign expenditures, shaky hiring practices and suspect purchases, as well as a proposed trip by Dann to a "law enforcement conference" in Turkey with his female scheduler. Although her trip, bankrolled by homeland security money, was nixed, the paper documented how Dann called her (on the taxpayers' dime via satellite phone) more often than his wife. Dann, 45, later admitted an affair with the scheduler, 28.
Tags: misconduct; attorney general; Ohio; Marc Dann; resignation; sexual harassment; campaign finance
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Raid in Svaneti
"A phone call at 3 a.m. to a celebrity woman becomes grounds for a high-ranking policeman (who has a personal relationship with the woman) to use his power and staff to fabricate a criminal case and arrest innocent men who, he suspects, could be the caller." The policeman fabricated a gang and planted evidence to create a case against the three men. This report was banned by all Georgian TV companies because it exposed a high-ranking policeman in fabricating a criminal case against innocents.
Tags: Georgia; EurAsia; fraud; fabrication; criminal gang; evidence; drugs; arms; weapons;
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Your Cell Phone Records Are For Sale
Spurred by a report "buried in the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police newsletter," the Sun-Times looks into the fact that anyone - including criminals - could purchase police officers' cell phone records on the Internet. Reporter Frank Main tested this by purchasing his own cell records for $110 from an online broker. "The records detailed the time and date of each call, and the telephone number called." The broker who sold these records turned out to be a convicted felon. Experts note that the easy access to such records "puts women at risk from stalkers; undercover officers at risk of having confidential informants exposed by criminal targets; and business people at risk of being spied on by corporate rivals."
Tags: Cell phones; wireless phones; cell phone records; stalking; undercover officers; corporate espionage
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A 911 Emergency
A WISH-TV (Indianapolis, IN) investigation exposed a public safety crisis resulting from a shortage of 911 operators. Inadequate staffing led to emergency calls being placed "on hold." Delays in answering led to delays in responding to emergencies. In addition, use of cell phones and computer-based phones adds to the response time as they do not provide dispatchers with the caller's location. Without this information, dispatchers are unable to determine where to send help. Reporters also looked at the historical problem of agencies not being able to "talk" to each other directly.
Tags: emergency dispatch systems; emergency dispatch response times; cell phone; 911; emergency dispatcher burnout; public-safety communications; Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, APCO; enhanced wireless 911; Voice over Internet Protocol; VoIP; TTY; public safety answering point; PSAP; telecommunications; multiple line telephone system; MLTS; PBX-MLTS; National Association of State 911 Administrators; NASNA; Metropolitan Emergency Communication Agency; MECA; failsoft; Motorola
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Secret Surveillance
This story uncovered the fact that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on some domestic phone calls and email.
Tags: surveillance; national security; domestic surveillance; NSA warrantless wiretapping
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Lost to India
This investigation took KNXV-TV to India to uncover the outsourcing of Arizona government jobs. It was revealed that Arizona government and businesses were training people in India to get jobs in call centers. Hundreds of thousands of tax dollars were used to run job programs to train people to sound more like Americans on the phone. As a result of this investigation, Arizona closed down the call center in India.
Tags: India; jobs; tax dollars; outsourcing of jobs; Arizona
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911 Test
What's unique about the 911 emergency system in Rhode Island is that it allows operators to trace a persons location using a GPS system. As this story explains, this system can be useful only if the cell phones have a GPS chip in it, which is present only in newer models.
Tags: 911; emergency calls; GPS technology; cell phones; mobile phones; GPS mapping