Criminal Justice Reporter
"The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering Room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."
Transparency advocates say police could invoke a notorious loophole that allows them to hide records of deaths in custody and police killings.
M. Chris Fabricant's new book details how flawed techniques have led to numerous wrongful convictions.
South Carolina's NAACP and ACLU are challenging the state's ban on automated data collection.
"When those charges are brought, these people are guilty," Lightfoot said.
An Americans for Prosperity Foundation report found that less than a quarter of people who had property seized through asset forfeiture by Kansas police were ever convicted of a crime.
The order restricts chokeholds and no-knock warrants at the federal level, but the White House has little power over the state and local departments where the majority of policing occurs.
Civil liberties groups argue that debt-based license suspensions are unfair and illogical since they deprive people of transportation, preventing them from earning money to pay off debts.
"Extortion, there's no other way to explain it," the couple's attorney says.
ICE has spent $2.8 billion since 2008 developing surveillance and facial-recognition capabilities, mostly in secrecy and without real oversight.
A plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit says he had to declare bankruptcy after Chicago dumped $20,000 of ticket debts on him.
Caught stealing from motorists, these towns disbanded their police forces or even disbanded their governments altogether.
Adults declared "incapacitated" by the courts can lose everything—their homes, their savings, their freedom—to Florida's sprawling guardianship system.
The lawsuit says there have been multiple deaths from neglect and poor suicide prevention policies at the Louisiana prison where Javon Kennerson died.
The damage caused by election lies is not worth abandoning free speech traditions.
A 2018 Reason investigation showed that the zones covered wide swaths of cities and turned minor drug crimes into prison sentences that rivaled those for murder or rape.
Juan Guzman spent nearly six weeks in jail based on unreliable field tests that have resulted in hundreds of other wrongful arrests.
The Iranian metal band Confess was charged with blasphemy and anti-government propaganda in 2015, before fleeing to Norway. Their latest album documents this experience.
After Rochester police took her cash, Cristal Starling found out just how hard it is to challenge civil asset forfeiture in court.
By smearing public defenders, the Texas senator shows what he thinks of constitutional rights.
"This is gonna be so fun," one officer says.
Irvington Township says it's being bullied by 82-year-old Elouise McDaniel and is asking a court to block her from filing public records requests.
Lack of participation from police departments has stymied the FBI's national use-of-force database for the past three years, but FBI Director Christopher Wray said a required threshold has finally been met.
Bradley Brock says his dog Moose was walking toward a police officer wagging its tail when the officer gunned his pet down.
When you plug your phone into your car to listen to your favorite band or podcast, you give police a way to rummage around in your personal data without a warrant.
Mariah Herefored says police in Hemet, California, smacked cell phone cameras out of her and her mother's hands and violently arrested them.
Three years since it launched, an FBI data collection program on police use-of-force incidents has yet to gain enough participation to release any statistics.
More than a year into the Biden administration, promises to expand clemency, decriminalize marijuana, and end solitary confinement and the federal death penalty remain unfulfilled.
Reason reported last year on how minors are particularly susceptible to being coerced into false confessions.
The Pensacola Police Department has launched an internal investigation into how a 1-year-old boy was injured in police custody following the pre-dawn raid.
It should not matter whether would-be ayahuasca drinkers sincerely believe in shamanism or simply believe they will derive mental health benefits from the experience.
The sheriff's deputies are also not entitled to qualified immunity because the First Amendment right to offend police has been repeatedly upheld.
New administrations usually issue memos on transparency. The Biden administration has ignored calls to do so.
Miyares' office says the conviction integrity unit is being expanded. Time will tell if it will have the independence and resources to succeed.
In an August ruling, Washington's Supreme Court found that a homeless plaintiff's truck qualified as his homestead.
The NYPD declined to punish nine other officers, despite recommendations from the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board.
The best thing you could say about Bill de Blasio was that he was good for a laugh.
A New York state judge found video of guards ceding control of Rikers to gang leaders more than enough evidence to order the release of a pretrial inmate.
Civil liberties advocates say the law is just a reheated version of flawed state anti-gang law.
Following a 2017 Reason investigation, Tennessee reformed its harsh drug-free school zone laws. But hundreds were left in prison.
Despite civil asset forfeiture reforms in Florida, police are still finding ways to take people's stuff.
In 2021, the institutional rot and dysfunction at Rikers Island cascaded into a full-blown catastrophe.
Although the tests are used by prison systems and police departments across the country, a judge found they have an error rate "only marginally better than a coin-flip."
The officers admit there's nothing illegal about carrying large amounts of cash, then take almost $90,000 from him anyway.
And now an appeals court has ruled the cops who arrested her aren't entitled to qualified immunity from her lawsuit.
"A system that allows this level of sustained incompetence and cruelty... is morally bankrupt," a doctor wrote after investigating medical neglect in Arizona prisons.
A 2016 Reason story detailed the D.C. Jail's long history of failure. Now the federal government is finally paying attention.
Federal prosecutors agreed to drop a civil asset forfeiture case against Kermit Warren's $28,000 in cash, which he said he was trying to buy a tow truck with.
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