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 "racial profiling" ...
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The Henry Louis Gates Jr. Case: Racial Profiling or Stifling Free Speech
When police arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct in his own home, Gates claimed he was a victim of racial profiling. NECIR analyzed five years of arrest records from the Cambridge Police Department for disorderly conduct which did not seem to indicate a pattern of racial profiling. The results showed that more white people than black people had been arrested for disorderly conduct by the department.
Tags: racial profiling; disorderly conduct, police; Henry Gates; Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Cambridge Police Department
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Racial Profiling
The two day series attempted to determine if the practice of targeting citizens based on their race was being used by area law enforcement. Their findings included: Black drivers in Sheveport and nearby Bossier City were cited for traffic violations more than twice as often as white drivers, based on traffic citation data over nearly five years. Although black divers were a minority of each city's licensed drivers, they were disproportionally cited for lower-level violations, such as window tint or loud music. Several officers from each city police department routinely issued more tickets to black drivers and issued more tickets for lower-level violations that for serious infractions, such as speeding or running a red light.
Tags: racial profiling; driving violations; law enforcement; low-level citations; black drivers; citation records; FOIA; police behavior
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Too Tough? Tactics in Suburban Policing
Some police departments in the Philadelphia area have been recording some of the highest arrest rates in American for minor offenses. These towns are mostly white, and the high number of arrests are made up overwhelmingly of African Americans. Legal experts say some of the arrests are unconstitutional. Furthermore, the towns with the highest arrest rates have actually seen crime go up, not down.
Tags: police; arrest; demographic; racial profiling; public records
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Small Town Justice
A Haitian truck driver, Jean Claude Meus, was convicted of vehicular homicide after a semi he was driving turned over and fell on a minivan, killing a mother and daughter. While no drugs or alcohol were present in his system at the time of the accident, prosecutors were able to push a conviction based on their assertion that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, and was thus driving recklessly. But WTVT-TV investigators "found convincing evidence that (he) did not fall asleep, and in fact, was trying to avoid an accident." An off-duty firefighter was a witness at the scene, and asserted that Meus was "alert and helpful immediately after the crash." Yet the lead investigator, who attended high school with victim Nona Moore, never interview Juan Otero, the off-duty firefighter. With the help of experts, WTVT reconstructed the crash, and the conclusion drawn was that Meus had turned off the road to avoid an obstruction. Further, WTVT spoke with jurors who said that with that new evidence, they would not have voted to convict.
Tags: Unfair trials; Florida Highway Patrol; quick convictions; crash reconstruction; juror bias; investigator bias; racial profiling; all-white jury
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Crackpot Crackdown
Police and the DA in Jackson County, Texas, ran a series of drug busts for minor infractions. All of the suspects were African-Americans and were intimidated into pleading guilty rather than face much harsher sentences. The entire sting operation was based on the testimony of a single confidential police informant. Civil rights lawyers are now involved in trying to remedy some of the most flagrant miscarriages of justice.
Tags: Minorities; selective prosecution; racism; drug arrests; racial profiling
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Striking Differences
This team of reporters spent two years gathering and analyzing jury data from felony court trials to see if racial discrimination still played a key role in jury selection. The investigation found that prosecutors tend to reject African-American jurors, while defense attorneys tended to retain them. Consequently, the number of African-Americans serving on juries in Dallas more or less mirrored the breakdown of the population.
Tags: juries; jurors; courts; law; jury selection; racial discrimination; racism; racial profiling; murder trials; felony conviction; criminal courts
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Police Force Under Surveillance
The Bakersfield Californian goes beyond the legal mumbo jumbo to find out what really goes on in the force. Reporters talk to former and current officers and members of the community to contribute to their article. The result is an unbiased, honest review of what role racism plays in the Bakersfield Police Department.
Tags: police; cops; brutality; racism; department of justice; doj; racial profiling; bias; civil rights; false charges; harassment; misconduct
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Boxed In
In 1959, a 12 year old white boy is raped, murdered, and stuffed into an icebox in Houston, Texas. For this crime, six black teenagers were arrested. Some served life, one was executed. The Icebox Murder is considered Houston's most infamous race crime, which was forgotten until now. 45 years after the murder, investigative reporter at Dallas Observer tells the story from the eyes of one of the accused murderer and the victim's mother.
Tags: murder; sex abuse; rape; Houston Texas; racism; racial profiling; crime
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The Color of Justice
The Columbia Daily Tribune investigated arrest rates among juveniles in Columbia, MO, and found that black children were being arrested at much higher rates than white children, even though black children only made up about 18 percent of Columbia's juvenile population. They also found that the city of Columbia had not taken any kind of action to fix the racial imbalance in arrest rates.
Tags: FOIA; unfair arrest rates; Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; Columbia Police Department; racial profiling
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Racial Profiling Problems
San Antonio Police Department paid $54,000 to analyze SAPD's racial profiling data. SAPD reported that the numbers is one of the best in the country. But WOAI found that SAPD listed motorists the wrong race. Out of 154,000 tickets, 26 percent of them were listed under the wrong race.It was also revealed that the same motorist showed up dozens of times in the records when they should have only be counted once.
Tags: racial profiling; police; discrimination; motorists; minority; traffic tickets