Some traffic violators getting off with bribes in South Africa

According to the Road Traffic Management Corporation, 65% of fatal crashes that happen on weekends, in South Africa, are because of alcohol abuse by drivers and pedestrians.

However, in a report filed by Kirsti Buick, a journalism student from Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, many drivers are getting off with paying a bribe, "some paying as little as R10 or simply handing over a cool drink to get out of traffic fines and jail time. According to Corruption Watch’s 2012 report, The Law for Sale, the practice of taking bribes “has become so common that it is, to a certain extent, not seen as such a big thing”."

The Times-Picayune reports that "as legal proceedings continue for a group accused of shooting four sheriff's deputies in St. Johns and Baptist Parish testimony in a preliminary hearing has spotlighted something deputies in the parish have known for a long time: Throughout St. John, there are areas where emergency radios cannot snag a signal from the sky."

Washington Monthly reports that "over the past five years U.S. border agents have shot across the border at least ten times, killing a total of six Mexicans on Mexican soil." According to the report, border patrol shootings were a rarity before 2009, with only a handful occurring. But after an increase in border patrol agentst between 2006 and 2009, "a disturbing pattern of excessive use of force has emerged."

"The cost of funding retirement for Arizona’s first responders has risen 500 percent during the past decade, inflated by enhanced benefits and battered by investment losses, forcing some communities to curb their hiring of police officers and firefighters, The Arizona Republic has found." Read The Republic's full investigation here.

Oakland police have been questioned for years by court-appointed watchdogs for questionable shootings and a failure to investigate them, The Bay Area News Group reports. A review by the news group finds that police can't account for all shootings since 2000 and that an alarming pattern has persisted in the face of warnings. The news group found two dozen officers involved in multiple shootings, at least 19 unarmed people shot, harmless items mistaken for women and nearly $10 million in legal settlements.

"Police track known gang members in an electronic database and, although police won’t make public exact numbers, Lt. Ed Bombrys, who oversees the gang unit, said there are an estimated 2,000 gang members in Toledo. There are, he said, anywhere from 25 to 40 'big, major gangs.' In 2012, gang-related homicides were down from 2011, said police Chief Derrick Diggs, but police and gang members themselves said it’s more dangerous now than it has been in decades," according to an investigation by the Toledo Blade. 

In its continuing series of investigative reports on gun crimes, Seattle’s KING TV found that police departments have not only been taking firearms off the streets with gun buyback events – some departments have been putting more firearms into circulation.

The Almanac looks at how binding arbitration, written into contracts with California police unions statewide, makes it nearly impossible for cities to fire problem officers. 

In this case, a Menlo Park police officer was caught with a prostitute and subject to internal investigation, but ultimately kept is badge.

According to a Washington Post analysis, during the 10-year federal ban on assault weapons, the percentage of firearms equipped with high-capacity magazines seized by police agencies in Virginia dropped, only to rise sharply once the restrictions were lifted in 2004. In Virginia, the Post found that the rate at which police recovered firearms with high-capacity magazines — mostly handguns and to a smaller extent rifles — began to drop around 1998, four years into the ban. It hit a low of 9 percent of the total number of guns recovered the year the ban expired, 2004.

In three dozen cases of developmentally disabled patients accusing caretakers of rape and molestation during the past four years, police failed to complete even the simplest tasks associated with investigating the alleged crimes, according to a California Watch investigation.