City shooting data shows race, location similarities

Nathan Gorenstein, Barbara Boyer and Rose Ciotta of the Philadelphia Inquirer summarized shootings in the city last year: "On average, more than four people a day were struck by bullets. About one in six died. On one day alone - Oct. 22 - 19 people were shot, one fatally. It's a toll of injury and death that falls most heavily on the same few neighborhoods year after year: North Philadelphia. West Philadelphia north of Market Street. The southwestern edge of South Philadelphia." During the past four years, half of all shooting victims were under 25, and most of those were African American males. An interactive graphic displaying shooting victims per square mile is included.

Sheila McLaughlin of The Cincinnati Enquirer evaluated an Ohio program that requires drunk drivers to put special license plates on their vehicles, finding that "a year after Ohio started requiring the special tags, a sampling of more than 300 local cases and interviews with lawyers, judges, police officers and legislators indicate that the law is unevenly administered, enforced and monitored." Among the problems are that repeat offenders don't always get the plates and that police have no way to track who has them or should.

Dani Dodge of the Ventura County Star used Federal Highway Administration data to show that "twenty-eight of Ventura County's 485 bridges are considered 'structurally deficient' ... Bringing just 15 of those bridges up to standard would cost $50 million." A map shows the location of the troubled spans, and a sidebar describes the condition of bridges nationwide.

Scott Dodd, Bruce Henderson and Heather Vogell of The Charlotte Observer examine railroad safety, finding that "in the Charlotte region, nearly 800,000 people live within a mile of a major rail line," an increase of 90,000 in the past 10 years. "Yet emergency planners don't know how much hazardous material passes daily through uptown Charlotte and the region's small towns. Federal, state and local agencies told the Observer they don't keep track, and the railroads won't provide that information for security reasons." Nearly 400 schools are located within a mile of train routes, and thus within the evacuation zone for accidents involving chemical materials.

Heath Foster, Paul Nyhan and Phoung Cat Le of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have a series on the working poor in King and Snohomish counties, concluding that "nearly half a million people in King and Snohomish counties, about a quarter of them children, are surviving at no more than twice the federal poverty level