The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. Add to that more than 3,000 tipsheets from our national conferences on how to cover specific beats or do specific stories and you have a resource that no reporter or editor should be without. These stories and tipsheets 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. Logged-in members can view the tipsheets free online:
Search results for "law enforcement" ...
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Investigating forensics
Mejia comprehensively explains crime lab investigations. She suggests what questions to start with, what types of tests to examine, online resources, sources to interview, and documents to find.
Tags: crime labs; law enforcement; forensics; science; criminal justice system; courts; FBI; police
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Policing the Police
Sward explains how she and other colleagues at the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the unnecessary force used by some members of the San Francisco Police Department. They ultimately exposed that one of the officers, the son of an assistant chief of police, was still on probation and had amassed a long string of incidents in which he used force on suspects, when he was accused of getting into a brawl with two civilians over a bag of steak fajitas. She explains what records they obtained, how their database was built and what they would do differently next time.
Tags: law enforcement; crime; police officers; FOI; public records; criminal justice system
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Policing the Police
Goldman explains how law enforcement officers are regulated by an agency typically called peace officer standards and training boards, or POSTs. This agency licenses law enforcement professionals and can revoke their licenses when necessary. He provides other standards, laws and grounds for revocation, suggests topics for journalists to consider when reporting on the subject, and also gives examples of some great news stories that have addressed the performance of the state POSTs agencies.
Tags: law enforcement; POSTs; peace officer standards and training boards; corrections officers; certification of law enforcement
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Walking the graveyards: caring about victims and the powerless so that we drive closer to the truth
This succinct tipsheet offers advice on conducting investigations of unsolved murders. Suggestions range from interview techniques to coping skills for the emotional weight that comes with immersion in murder stories to motivational techniques.
Tags: murder; justice; crime; victims; investigations; criminal justice system; killings; law enforcement; interviewing; immersion journalism
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Investigating the past with results in the present
Mitchell summarizes methods for constructing investigations that probe beyond the recent past. He suggests research methods, useful records and human sourcing techniques that he employed in his IRE Award-winning investigation of unresolved murder cases during the civil rights era in Mississippi.
Tags: open records; courts; law enforcement; justice; criminal justice system; crime; public records; history; historical investigations; law
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Policing the Police
Eiserer gives 10 tips to reporters who are investigating the "health" of their police department. She explains how to examine the quality of a department by taking a look at the people they hire. En espanol: #2906
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Frequent Fire
This is a story Doug Smith and his colleagues did for the LA Times on the small group of officers who were involved in multiple shootings in the line of duty. The story outlines the methods Smith, Lait and Glover used to uncover a pattern of violence among a relatively small number of police officers.
Tags: CAR; LAPD; officer-involved shootings; IAD; urban crime
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CAR and COPS
Olsen lists some documents and databases to look into issues relating to law enforcement. These include such documents as police shootings indices, racial profiling data, staffing and jail data and so on.
Tags: CAR; police; internal affairs; medical examiner; uniform crime reporting; UCR; sex offenders.
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Growing Pains: Digging Up the Dirt
This tipsheet offers some good story ideas for reporters in cities with a lot of development. Spears suggests looking into how construction companies contribute to pollution, and whether or not the city enforces regulations to limit their pollution. Other suggested topics include looking at how urban sprawl affects highways and water shortages.
Tags: urban sprawl; construction; development; city politics; city laws
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The crime beat: The data & stats of injustice
Milliron's tipsheet highlights what type of data is kept by the criminal justice system, how it is used by law enforcement, and how to get it. It also notes tips on creating your own database and summarizes the crime databases kept by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Additional material, saved as a separate pdf, includes copies of uniform crime reports and a specific listing of the various law enforcement forms and records that are available.
Tags: crime; criminal justice; courts; criminals; records; data; police; law enforcement