Lost opportunities in foster care

Jenifer B. McKim of The Orange County Register writes about lost
opportunities to save a 10-month-old foster child who was returned to his
mother and brutally murdered. "The investigation found that nearly two dozen abused or neglected children who had been under protection of the Juvenile Court in Orange County have died over the past six years. Most died of illnesses or accidents, but some could have been saved. " The Orange County Register litigated for more
than a year in Juvenile Court to get details of 23 children under court
protection who died.

In a unique investigation built as a narrative, Lee Hancock of the Dallas Morning News reports on a troubling trend of finacial exploitation of the elderly. This series details the experiences of Mary Ellen Bendtsen. "Her crumbling mansion is now a battleground for her relatives and two art-deco antique dealers with a history of befriending elderly Dallasites - and ending up with their homes and money." While this story focuses on the experiences of an individual, it is estimated that "one in five elderly Americans will be victims of some form of financial exploitation, losing at least a third of their assests. For each case reported to authorities, 12 to 15 cases are believed to go unreported."

Lynette Clemetson and Ron Nixon of The New York Times looked at federal records and data maintained by Cornell University to identify a rise in interracial adoptions. "In 2004, 26 percent of black children adopted from foster care, about 4,200, were adopted transracially, nearly all by whites. That is up from roughly 14 percent, or 2,200, in 1998." Included in the report is a graphic which illustrates the changing trends in transracial adoptions.

In the story "Leave or Die: America's Hidden History of Racial Explusion," Elliot Jaspin of Cox News Service used Census Data and other documents to expose the systematic expulsion of blacks from counties across the U.S. "Beginning in 1864 and continuing for approximately 60 years, whites across the United States conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white. In at least a dozen of the most extreme cases, blacks were purged from entire counties that remain almost exclusively white, according to the most recent census data. The expulsions often were violent and swift, and they stretched beyond the South." The Austin American-Statesman has put together a thorough multimedia package for the story.

Mc Nelly Torres and Jeremy Milarsky of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel analyzed the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data for 2000-04 and found that "blacks and Hispanics who have applied for conventional mortgage loans in South Florida were denied more often than white applicants, even when income levels were about the same." The analysis also showed that when people of color were approved for loans they tended to pay higher interest rates than whites. Homeownership among minorities is at an all-time high nationwide, but minorities continue to struggle.

Miriam Pawel of the Los Angeles Times examines the current state of United Farm Workers to find that Cesar "Chavez's heirs run a web of tax-exempt organizations that exploit his legacy and invoke the harsh lives of farmworkers to raise millions of dollars in public and private money." Pawel's reporting finds there is little to link the UFW with the impoverished farmworkers for whom Chavez crusaded. "The UFW is the linchpin of the Farm Worker Movement, a network of a dozen tax-exempt organizations that do business with one another, enrich friends and family, and focus on projects far from the fields: They build affordable housing in San Francisco and Albuquerque, own a top-ranked radio station in Phoenix, run a political campaign in support of an Indian casino and lobby for gay marriage."

Ziva Branstetter, Curtis Killman, Nicole Marshall, Omer Gillham and Ginnie Graham of the Tulsa World report in a three-part series on Oklahoma's failure to save at least 30 children who died from abuse and neglect in the past five years. The series detailed cases in which the Oklahoma Department of Human Services had prior reports of abuse and neglect involving children yet the children were not removed from the home and ended up dying from abuse and neglect. The paper also found the state had paid out at least $1 million during that time to settle lawsuits involving child welfare workers. Branstetter notes "Many states have laws allowing release of information following a child abuse death and this is what we used in Oklahoma to get the records."

Richard D. Walton and Mark Nichols of The Indianapolis Star examined the use of Tasers by Marion County law enforcement officers. "At least 112 unarmed suspects were Tasered while fleeing IPD or sheriff's deputies. At least 87 people were shocked while handcuffed. And only one in 12 Tasered suspects was reported to have been armed." The review looked at 1,100 instances of Taser use during a 19-month period. "The Star's review also shows that blacks and Hispanics were shocked with Tasers at a far higher rate per number of residents than whites."

A nine-month investigation by Tom Knudson and Hector Amezcua of The Sacramento Bee "has found pineros [Latino forest workers in the United States] are victims of employer exploitation, government neglect and a contracting system that insulates landowners — including the U.S. government — from responsibility." The report, "based on more than 150 interviews across Mexico, Guatemala and the United States and 5,000 pages of records unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act" shows responsibility for these "guest workers" is spread among several federal agencies and private contractors with no effective oversight. Part two shows the government has been aware of problems with the program but has failed to do anything to fix it. "First in 1980 and again in 1993, Congress expressed shock at the abuse of Latino forest workers in America's woods and the hypocrisy of undocumented workers doing government work." The third part of the series focuses on "The number one cause of death among pineros" — van accidents. "They are the byproducts of fatigue, poorly maintained vehicles, ineffective state and federal laws, inexperienced drivers and poverty-stricken workers hungry for jobs."

Ruth Teichroeb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigated state records to show the flaws in a state-funded program that pays
for-profit companies to supervise dangerous developmentally
disabled adults. The program has the state paying for-profit companies to look after developmentally disabled people placed its Community Protection program. "While the program does protect the public in many cases — most of the clients are sex offenders — it has left vulnerable adults at risk of abuse and represents a loss of personal rights for those who don't seem to fit the program's guidelines." The three part series found that the placements are not court-monitored, there are no appeals, and for many families or guardians in desperate situations, the only alternative is losing all state help.