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Overworked and Understaffed? How the Chicago Police Fight Gun Violence

"Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's new anti-gang strategy seems to be working, but it comes with a high price," according to an article from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has locked up more than 1,000 people using controversial sting operations that entice suspects to rob nonexistent drug stash houses. See how the stings work and who they target in this USA Today report.

Unjustified | Newsday
“Report reveals how cop shot unarmed man - and kept his job.”

Secret files reveal how pay-to-play works in N.J. | The Star-Ledger
“A special report by The Star-Ledger exposes how one politically connected engineering firm parlayed campaign donations into millions of dollars in public contracts, all the while keeping the scheme hidden from the public. An analysis of the records, meticulously kept and numbering 137 pages, found Birdsall made more than 1,000 secret campaign contributions worth in excess of $1 million to politicians of all stripes and in all corners of New Jersey. At the same time, the company cashed in on more than $84 million in public contracts.”

Welcome to IRE's roundup of the weekend’s many enterprise stories from around the country. We'll highlight the document digging, field work and data analysis that made their way into centerpieces in print, broadcast and online. Did we miss something? Email suggestions to web@ire.org


Female workers face rape, harassment in US agriculture industry | The Center for Investigative Reporting
“Hundreds of female agricultural workers have complained to the federal government about being raped and assaulted, verbally and physically harassed on the job, while law enforcement has done almost nothing to prosecute potential crimes.”

Under the Curse of Cartels | The Oregonian
“In a nine-month investigation, The Oregonian has learned that Mexican cartels, including the powerful Sinaloa and the brutal Los Zetas, have infiltrated almost every corner of Oregon. At last count, authorities were aware of no fewer than 69 drug trafficking organizations selling drugs in the state, nearly all supplied by cartels.”

Computer Industry, Unions Big Donors to Immigration Bill Supporters | OpenSecrets.org
“The 27 senators who voted against the amendment, which strengthens border security but is also a step towards passing the overall immigration package, on average received very little money from those three types of groups, but did receive heavy support from donors in the agribusiness industry.”

Top Medicare prescribers rake in spending fees from drug makers | ProPublica
“Data obtained and analyzed by ProPublica suggest another factor in the drug Bystolic's rapid success: Many of the drug's top prescribers have financial ties to Forest Laboratories, its maker.”

Sodomy Hazing Leaves 13-Year-Old Victim Outcast in Colorado Town | Bloomberg News
“High-school hazing and bullying used to involve name-calling, towel-snapping and stuffing boys into lockers. Now, boys sexually abusing other boys is part of the ritual. More than 40 high school boys were sodomized with foreign objects by their teammates in over a dozen alleged incidents reported in the past year, compared with about three incidents a decade ago, according to a Bloomberg review of court documents and news accounts.”

In Debate Over Military Sexual Assault, Men Are Overlooked Victims | The New York Times
“In a debate that has focused largely on women, this fact is often overlooked: the majority of service members who are sexually assaulted each year are men.”

Data obtained and analyzed by ProPublica suggest another factor in the drug Bystolic's rapid success: Many of the drug's top prescribers have financial ties to Forest Laboratories, its maker.

"There is nothing to prevent sex offenders and others with criminal records from becoming alcohol and drug counselors in California, even though such roles give them direct contact with people, including teens, at their most vulnerable," according to an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

In June, the new FDA-approved drug Osphena will hit the shelves. Supposedly the newest answer for painful sex, it will be targeted by the drug maker Shionogi, Inc, the more than 64 million US women who have hit menopause. But Newsweek reports that numerous troubling questions loom over Osphena: is this a real disorder affecting substantial numbers of American women? How was Osphena approved? And is the drug simply a back-door replacement for the widely discredited "hormone replacement therapy"? Critics note that the two 12-week efficacy trials that satisfied the FDA were funded by the drug's developers.

ProPublica reports that in 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced years' worth of studies from a major drug research lab were potentially worthless. Those studies were part of the bases for about 100 drugs that made it to the U.S. market. According to ProPublica, the FDA let those drugs stay on pharmacy shelves with no new testing and has refused to name the drugs, saying to do so would reveal trade secrets. Meanwhile, the FDA's European counterpart ordered several of the drugs to be pulled from shelves.

In today's follow up, reveals that the agency's slow, secretive response was not an anomaly.

"Young gymnasts battling physical discomfort to perform a sport they love is a common, almost clichéd storyline. However, more doctors and researchers now are not only paying attention to the high number of injuries gymnasts suffer but also to the increasing amounts of anti-inflammatory medication they take as a result,” according to an investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune.

 

"A trio of men, indicted last week for their role in selling and manufacturing the synthetic marijuana product, were warned about the murky legal territory of their multimillion-dollar K2 operation, as well as the potential health dangers of the substance," according to an investigation by the Lawrence Journal-World.

"ATF agents running an undercover storefront in Milwaukee used a brain-damaged man with a low IQ to set up gun and drug deals, paying him in cigarettes, merchandise and money, according to federal documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel." Read the Journal Sentinel's full investigation here.

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