Story Search Results

Advanced Search

There are so many ways to search the solutions journalism stories in this database. Explore our searchable fields:

Search Results

You searched for: -

There are 785 results for your search. View and Refine Your Search Terms

Giving Police Departments Money to Buy Body Cameras Will Never End Brutality

Tyler Hicks

July 26, 2020 |

Truthout |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Milford, Delaware

Body-worn cameras gained popularity as a potential check on police brutality, but for them to fulfill that purpose, numerous changes in typical public policies are needed, starting with public access to videos and independent oversight of camera policies. Research is inconclusive about whether cameras have changed police conduct, but they have discouraged citizen complaints about police. Other changes that could improve the use of cameras as a police-reform tool include constraining officers' discretion to record and better automated review of reams of stored data.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Baltimore's Violence Interrupters Confront Shootings, the Coronavirus, and Corrupt Cops

Brandon Soderberg Baynard Woods

July 26, 2020 |

The Intercept |

Text |

Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Baltimore, Maryland

Baltimore’s Safe Streets program, which uses a public-health approach to stopping the spread of community gun violence, mediated more than 1,800 conflicts in 2019 and is credited with preventing homicides altogether in one neighborhood, despite the city’s overall violent year. Since the program’s launch in 2007, studies have shown it to be effective in its use of “credible messengers” whose street savvy can be deployed to “interrupt” retaliatory violence. But the Baltimore program also illustrates tensions between such community-based programs and the police, especially when the police are corrupt.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Śmierć na polskich drogach. Jesteśmy w europejskiej czołówce pod względem liczby ofiar, Litwa dała radę

Kacper Sulowski

July 25, 2020 |

Gazeta Wyborcza |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Lithuania

Liczba śmiertelnych wypadków drogowych na Litwie spadła w wyniku szeregu systematycznych i szeroko upublicznionych rozwiązań mających na celu poprawę bezpieczeństwa ruchu drogowego. Gdy prawie dekadę temu na Litwie nastąpił bezprecedensowy wzrost śmiertelności w wypadkach drogowych, zaczęto tam podwyższać kary za wykroczenia, wzmacniać egzekwowanie prawa oraz poprawiać stan dróg. Każdemu etapowi towarzyszyła kampania edukacji publicznej. Uważa się, że za stosunkowo wysoki wskaźnik śmiertelności na drogach w Polsce odpowiadają zbyt łagodne przepisy oraz zbyt liberalne ich egzekwowanie.

Read More
Go to Original Story
This City Stopped Sending Police to Every 911 Call

Christie Thompson

July 24, 2020 |

The Marshall Project |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Olympia, Washington

Since April 2019, Olympia’s Crisis Response Unit has sent civilian first-responders instead of police officers to hundreds of “quality of life” calls such as a mental health crisis or problems related to addiction or homelessness. Providing services while doing outreach on the streets, following up on previous calls, or dispatched by 911 operators or police, these responders connect people with the services they need to be safe and healthy, freeing police to handle more serious calls and avoiding police interactions that can lead to violence or needless jail stays.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Your Zoom Interrogation Is About To Start

Eli Hager

July 20, 2020 |

The Marshall Project |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Traditional police interrogation tactics that emphasize invading someone’s personal space to increase anxiety, read body language, and prompt confessions have had to undergo changes during the pandemic, some of which offer new advantages. While police say they lose some needed leverage to do their jobs when interviews are conducted through masks, outdoors in public, or via teleconferencing screens, the workarounds encourage taping of all interviews and more transparency when the public can observe how police work.

Read More
Go to Original Story
The hidden hand that uses money to reform troubled police departments

Kit Ramgopal Brenda Breslauer

July 19, 2020 |

NBC News |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Smaller cities that cannot afford costly payouts for civil settlements in police misconduct cases rely on liability insurance, which can act as a regulator when insurers demand reforms up to and including disbanding troubled departments. While police killings have decreased in large cities over the past six years, they have increased in the suburban and rural areas served by the vast majority of police departments. “Loss prevention” measures that require policy and personnel changes have been proven to work, but insurance that fails to police the police can also shield cities from accountability.

Read More
Go to Original Story
How a Coalition of New York Activists Revealed Police-Department Secrets

Tom Robbins

July 17, 2020 |

The New Yorker |

Text |

Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, New York

When New York legislators abolished a state law that had long shielded police officers’ disciplinary records from public scrutiny, they were not just responding to recent protests but also to activism over many years by reform advocates and families of victims of police violence. Long-running legal challenges had failed to pry the records loose. But activists – opposed by police unions and their allies – had used public testimony, publicity, and their families’ stories to lay the groundwork for changes that then came quickly after George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests of police brutality.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Reducing harm in Santa Cruz County law enforcement

Stephen Baxter

July 15, 2020 |

Santa Cruz Local |

Podcast |

Over 15 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Santa Cruz, California

The city of Santa Cruz is considering adopting a crisis-intervention strategy used in Eugene, Oregon, after two fatal police shootings of people suffering a mental health crises prompted questions about how an alternative to police-only responses would work. To follow the model pioneered by Eugene's CAHOOTS agency, where unarmed professionals respond first, Santa Cruz authorities would have many safety, budget, training, and other logistical concerns to address. But Santa Cruz seems primed to try the CAHOOTS approach, which rarely requires police involvement when 911 calls are screened properly.

Read More
Go to Original Story
What Philly can learn about smarter policing from Volusia County, Florida

Jessica Blatt Press

July 15, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Daytona Beach, Florida

Since he took over the Volusia County, Florida, Sheriff's Office in 2016, Philadelphia police veteran Mike Chitwood changed many of his department's personnel and put the entire 1,000-employee department through de-escalation training. By 2019, the reforms were credited with cutting deputies' use of force in half, all while crime dropped by 40% and arrests by 30%. A core piece of the training, inspired by Scottish police, is the Police Executive Research Forum's ICAT program, which emphasizes critical thinking and communication skills over the threat of deadly force.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Community peacemakers in Chicago offer a proven alternative to policing

Loretta Graceffo

July 14, 2020 |

Waging Nonviolence |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

Nonviolence Chicago uses street-outreach workers to mediate disputes and connect residents of violence-prone neighborhoods to needed services. Its work, amounting to tens of thousands of contacts per year with people involved in violence, has contributed to efforts that reduced homicides and nonfatal shootings in the Austin neighborhood by nearly half from 2016 to 2019. By replacing the police with former gang members and others with street credibility, and working with both victims and shooters, Nonviolence Chicago wins the trust of residents.

Read More
Go to Original Story