Sex offenders live close to children

Tony Rizzo and Laura Bauer of The Kansas City Star studied court records and found that "roughly three in 10 sex offenders did not live where they were supposed to." Additionally, "Many of the missing were the kinds of sex offenders parents most fear. Rapists. Child molesters. Repeat offenders. " There are offenders who readily and repeatedly ignore registration laws and evade authorities. The investigation also found that children remain vulnerable in Missouri, where 1,000-foot residency restrictions became law nearly two years ago. "Hundreds of offenders in Jackson County alone live closer than that to a school or day care." In Kansas, sex offenders can live wherever they want — even if that's right next door to a school.

Michael J. Goodman and William C. Rempel of the Los Angeles Times analyzed court and campaign records and found that in Las Vegas, "some judges routinely rule in cases involving friends, former clients and business associates — and in favor of lawyers who fill their campaign coffers." Federal and Nevada judicial canons say judges should withdraw from cases where their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. Some lawyers even "spoke openly about its pernicious effects — particularly about how lawyers and their clients sometimes must pay to play on a level field."

Carolyn Tuft and Joe Mahr of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reviewed thousands of paper and electronic records from the Department of Mental Health and found that "mentally retarded and mentally ill people in Missouri have been sexually assaulted, beaten, injured and left to die by abusive and neglectful caregivers in a system that for years has failed at every level to safeguard them." The investigation uncovered widespread mistreatment in 19 large state institutions and hundreds of smaller group homes supervised by the state across Missouri. There were 2,287 confirmed cases of abuse and neglect of residents since 2000. Of those, 665 resulted in injuries with 21 deaths.

Thomas J. Dolan of The Buffalo News analyzed police contracts and 2005 payrolls for seven towns and the City of Buffalo and found that "47 officers from Buffalo and the near suburbs broke the $100,000 mark in 2005, the last year for which complete figures were available. And nearly three dozen more are poised to do so, with gross pay in the high five figures." The investigation showed police receive a wide variety of "perks," from allowing them to cash in their unused sick time, to a contract provision that allows Cheektowaga officers to claim time and half pay if their lunch is interrupted by police work.

Nancy Martinez and Sarah Viren of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reviewed a database from the state Attorney General of in-custody deaths and found a lack of records of excessive force complaints and inconsistencies in the records that did exist. "No reports are sent outside the department unless someone dies, no agency collects comparable data on excessive force complaints, and a statewide database of deaths that occurred in law enforcement custody contains data-entry glitches and missing information." In one of the in-custody deaths, the investigation found that city officials said the video of the in-custody death proved officers followed policy, but they didn't share that.

Karen Eschbacher of The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger found that most school districts on the South Shore hire private contractors to provide bus service for students. "Several South Shore communities fail to run background checks on school bus drivers, and others can't even produce the names of people allowed behind the wheel."
"While state laws are supposed to ensure bus drivers can be trusted around kids, the arrest this week of a convicted sex offender whose job was to drive special needs students has sparked concern among parents and raised questions about whether enough is being done to keep children safe."

Robert Patrick of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch used court records and Department of Corrections data to show that prisoners who were sentenced to prison terms of double their lifetimes or more have been quietly released after doing only a fraction of their time in Missouri and Illinois. "In all, at least 189 murderers and 40 people convicted of sexual assault, rape or sodomy in Missouri are among roughly 400 of the state's inmates originally sentenced to at least 25 years in prison and paroled in the past 10 years, according to the Department of Corrections." They are prisoners who were convicted before legislators and prosecutors tightened the rules and began chipping away at the discretion of the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole.

Mike Tolson of the Houston Chronicle examined lawsuits related to silicosis, an occupational lung disease caused by exposure to silica which is used by industry in dozens of ways. He found that "To attorneys who had earned millions from asbestos settlements, it represented the next potential windfall." The lawyers did not need sick people, only doctors who would issue diagnoses. In 2002, "one of the smallest states in the country went from 76 new silicosis suits to 10,642. By the end of 2004, the state's total topped 20,000." Tolson also writes about the role of radiologists in the lawsuits.

Steve Kemme and Gregory Korte of The Cincinnati Enquirer analyzed real-estate sales records and found that those who sold their homes for an urban renewal project in suburban Norwood made more than twice what their homes were worth — while those who had their properties taken by eminent domain made three times their appraised value. The reporters analyzed every eminent domain case in Hamilton County in the past eight years to show that when government moves to take private property, owners can rarely — if ever — stop it." The investigation found that owners do get 85 percent more in court than the government was willing to pay when it filed the condemnation action.

In a continuation of the "Conduct Unbecoming" series, Lewis Kamb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer examined "state pension and payroll records of eight King County sheriff's deputies and found example after example of how such problem officers continued drawing salaries and earning service credits for years." The investigation also found that "taxpayers have paid hundreds of thousands more in settlements of legal claims brought by alleged victims of four of the deputies" along with millions in work and retirement pay.