radiofree.asia

Category: Crime

  • Cops on a Crime Spree

    Baltimore’s police department was already notorious.

    But this year, eight former police officers were convicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from an FBI investigation. They belonged to an elite task force charged with getting guns off the city’s streets. Instead, the plainclothes cops roamed Baltimore neighborhoods at will, robbing people on the street, breaking into homes to steal money, drugs or guns and planting evidence on their victims.

    The targets of the Gun Trace Task Force included drug dealers and ordinary citizens. One of its favorite tactics was to speed toward a group of men on a street corner, chase whoever ran and shake them down. On top of all this, the officers falsified their timesheets to almost double their salaries.

    This episode of Reveal asks if the task force was simply a rogue operation or if the officers were aided and abetted by fellow cops and even supervisors within the department.


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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Where criminals get their guns (rebroadcast)

    Across the country, criminals are arming themselves in unexpected ways. In Florida, they’re stealing guns from unlocked cars and gun stores. In other places, they’re getting them from the police themselves, as cash-strapped departments sell their used weapons to buy new ones. On this episode of Reveal, we learn where criminals get their guns and what cars can teach us about gun safety.

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    To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • My Town, Chi-Town

    Chicago is experiencing a reversal of the great migration that propelled African Americans northward in search of opportunity in the first half of the 20th century. Since 2000, a quarter-million black Chicagoans have left. The reasons include decades of bad policy and broken promises on affordable housing, education and public safety.

    On this episode of Reveal, we team up with the Data Reporting Lab in Chicago to examine how trauma care teams have done more than law enforcement to reduce the gun homicide rate and with The Chicago Reporter to describe how activists are pushing back against the shutdown of 50 public schools at once.

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    Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

    Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

    And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Dropped and dismissed: Child sex abuse lost in the system (rebroadcast)

    The scandal around USA Gymnastics and former Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar is shining a spotlight on the sexual abuse of young athletes. This week, Reveal revisits the story of a woman who decides to confront the coach she says abused her decades earlier.

    Reporter Tennessee Watson was abused by her gymnastics coach when she was a kid in the 1980s. Over 25 years later, when she learned he still was coaching children, she called the police. Her inside account of the arduous process of seeking justice in her own case exposes discrepancies in prosecutors’ responses to reports of child sexual abuse and highlights a lack of accountability.

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    Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

    Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

    And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A Revealing Year

    Reveal has had a busy year – our team has chased stories from Oklahoma to Bermuda. We exposed a rehab program that provides labor at a chicken processing plant that’s been called a slave camp and followed the money trail of the Paradise Papers, leaked documents that revealed international tax shelters for some of America’s biggest companies. We reported on the rise of hate crimes and investigated hate groups.

    In this episode, we look at some of our best reporting from 2017 and how Reveal has made an impact in our world.

    Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.

    Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.

    And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Recovering from Rehab

    In 2010, Brad McGahey was sentenced to a year in prison for buying a stolen horse trailer. But when he went before a judge, he was told he was going to carry out his sentence by working instead, through a program called CAAIR, or Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery.

    McGahey wasn’t addicted to anything at the time of his sentencing. Hundreds of men are sent to CAAIR in lieu of a prison sentence each year. The program promises recovery from addiction for participants, but most of their time is spent working at a chicken processing plant, where they pull guts and feathers from slaughtered chickens and prepare them for distribution to companies such as Walmart, KFC and PetSmart.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.