Toy Guns
Dec. 19, 2016
Police across the country say that they are increasingly facing off against people with ultra-real-looking pellet guns, toy weapons and non-functioning replicas. Such encounters have led police to shoot and kill at least 86 people over the past two years, according to a Washington Post database of fatal police shootings nationwide. So far this year police have fatally shot 43 people wielding the guns. In 2015, police also killed 43.
Drug-lobby
Oct. 18, 2016
When the Republican-controlled Congress approved a landmark program in 2003 to help seniors buy prescription drugs, it slapped on an unusual restriction: The federal government was barred from negotiating cheaper prices for those medicines. Instead, the job of holding down costs was outsourced to the insurance companies delivering the subsidized new coverage, known as Medicare Part D.
The ban on government price bargaining, justified by supporters on free market grounds, has been derided by critics as a giant gift to the drug industry. Democratic lawmakers began introducing bills to free the government to use its vast purchasing power to negotiate better deals, but all of those measures over the last 13 years have failed.
Evictions
Aug. 26, 2016
D.C. tenants face eviction as "drug nuisances" even when no one is charged with a crime. During the past three years, city officials sent out about 450 nuisance-abatement letters to landlords and property owners, the vast majority aimed at ousting tenants accused of felony gun or drug crimes, including many bona fide drug dealers. But in doing so the District has also ensnared about three dozen people who were charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession or faced no charges at all, a Washington Post review of the letters has found.
Voting Wars
Aug. 20, 2016
With the presidential election less than three months away, millions of Americans will be navigating new requirements for voting — if they can vote at all — as state leaders implement dozens of new restrictions that could make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Since the last presidential election in 2012, politicians in 20 states passed 37 different new voting requirements that they said were needed to prevent voter fraud, a News21 analysis found. More than a third of those changes require voters to show specified government-issued photo IDs at the polls or reduce the number of acceptable IDs required by pre-existing laws. A News21 project.
Making a Case
Aug. 11, 2016
Tennessee Watson takes us on her journey from victim to survivor to reporter, investigating her own story of sexual abuse as a young girl. She documents her decision to report her coach years after the abuse and shows us what happened when a police detective and a prosecutor took on her case.
It’s an intensely personal story, but also one that looks at how the system handles cases like hers, and the consequences for victims of sexual abuse everywhere.
Cuba's Media Evolution
Aug. 9, 2016
While it’s too soon to tell if a true sea change is in the works, here are seven relatively recent shifts in the Cuban mediasphere. Many of them would have seemed inconceivable just a few years ago and bear watching in the future.
Fatal Force_WP
July 8, 2016
Two years after a white police officer fatally shot a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, the pace of fatal shootings has risen slightly, while the grim encounters are increasingly being captured on video and stoking outrage. The toll for the first half of the year was nearly 500. The Washington Post has expanded the effort to track every case, and in 2016, culled media reports and filed hundreds of public-records requests to obtain the names and work histories of officers involved in fatal shootings — information that is not tracked by any federal agency.
The New Newsrooms
June 14, 2016
Nonprofit centers for investigative reporting have continued to grow outside of the United States over the past 10 years. The reporters who founded these centers followed the example of their colleagues in the U.S., where this model has thrived for the past two decades.
BankTracker: Analysis
June 9, 2016
The country lost 2,350 banks in the last eight years, but big banks grew bigger and richer, especially those in the top tier. Banks now have more assets, capital, deposits, profits, reserves and fewer losses and troubled assets than they did in 2007. But the Investigative Reporting Workshop's in-depth analysis shows every state was hit hard and lost at least one bank because of the Great Recession, with six states losing more than 100 financial institutions. The impact is still being felt, and some experts remain wary of improving financial data.
The Merger
June 1, 2016
The Pepco-Exelon merger was hotly debated because of concerns over competition, potential rate hikes and questions over commitments to green energy goals from opponents. Advocates for the deal argued Pepco needed a parent company with significant resources to improve the District's aging power grid. Pepco spent large amounts on lobbying and ads in an effort to shape public opinion, outflank opponents and give their shareholders big returns.
