Parolees clustered in a handful of communities in Utah

An investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune found clustering of probationers and parolees "in specific neighborhoods and even apartment buildings, despite rules prohibiting people on supervision from associating with one another. Law enforcement and scholars say offenders are more likely to succeed if they are dispersed, but a lack of halfway houses and city ordinances passed in recent years have limited where many offenders can live."

The Tennessean's three-part series on gangs reveals a growing problem across the state, particularly in suburbia and small towns. Law enforcement is overwhelmed and schools are ripe recruiting grounds in what's part of a national trend of gangs expanding their influence to areas outside the urban core to sell drugs. The newspaper gained access to gangs, taking readers inside their world, while providing the most complete public accounting to date of gang activity across the state. Included in the online presentation is an interactive map of known gangs that operate in each of Tennessee's 95 counties. Relying on a confidential report, interviews, police records and court records, the newspaper's series found there's no consistent system to track gang activity. The lack of information leaves the public, and sometimes even law enforcement, in the dark about the scope of the problem. The paper also found some homicides with links to gangs never get reported as such by police.

An investigation by Randy Ludlow of The Columbus Dispatch revealed that the top two lawyers to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland intervened in an active criminal investigation by the Ohio State Highway Patrol into "an alleged scheme to cover up the use of illegal immigrants to remodel a state-leased office building." A lobbyist who is close friends with Strickland met with the governor’s chief legal counsel after the lobbyist was hired by the company under criminal scrutiny. The governor’s lawyers argued that patrol investigators lacked jurisdiction to pursue the case, a notion rejected by the county prosecutor.

An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found dozens of police officers across the country have died in car crashes while unbuckled — at least 64 between 2004 and 2008 alone. It also discovered a widespread culture in police agencies of officers refusing to wear seat belts. "Some officers worry that their belts could hinder them if they have to exit quickly to confront a suspect — a seat belt can easily get tangled on a holster. Others fret they'll be unable to control violent prisoners while buckled up."

An investigation by Bryan Christy for National Geographic reveals that Anson Wong of Malaysia, "the Pablo Escobar of Illegal Wildlife Trade" is out of U.S. prison and has plans to specialize in a new tiger operation with help from his government.

The Education Department is charged with enforcing laws on how schools deal with sexual assault, but its Office of Civil Rights rarely investigates student allegations of botched proceedings. When cases do go forward, the civil rights office rarely rules against the schools, and virtually never issues any sanctions against institutions, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.

A package of stories by The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.)  reveals that a Louisville Metro police detective has been accusing people of crimes they did not commit.  Many of the accused have been juveniles. "Detective Crystal Marlowe has pursued charges against some defendants for crimes they could not have committed because they were already in jail. And in other cases, she charged people based on identifications that the victims later said they never made...The newspaper’s review of the roughly 130 felony cases in which Marlowe made arrests during 2008 and 2009 found that 40 percent ultimately were dismissed, often at prosecutors’ request."

"Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunken drivers," according to a report by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley and California Watch.  It is estimated that in 2009 such checkpoints generated $40 million in towing fees and police fines.  The California Office of Traffic Safety also funded approximately $30 million in overtime pay for the officers working the sobriety checkpoints.

Times-Picayune reporters Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi and ProPublica's A.C. Thompson report that "a former New Orleans police officer is under investigation for shooting Henry Glover" four days after Hurricane Katrina.  Weeks after the storm, Glover's remains were found in a burned out car on the Algiers levee.  Investigators now believe that he was shot by David Warren who was an officer with the New Orleans Police Department at the time.  This story is part of "Law & Disorder", a continuing series looking at police shootings in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

A joint investigation by the Chicago Tribune and journalism students at Columbia College Chicago casts doubts on a 2004 Chicago police shooting in which the officers were cleared just 10 hours after seriously wounding a man and a 13-year-old girl. Students dissected the crime scene and discovered that one of the shooters couldn’t have possibly seen what he claimed to see.