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“America’s Dangerous Trucks” is part of a collaborative investigation from FRONTLINE and ProPublica. The documentary premieres June 13, 2023, at 10 p.m. EDT on PBS stations (check local listings) and will be available to stream in the PBS Video App and on FRONTLINE’s website starting at 7 p.m. EDT.

Read Part I: How Regulators Failed to Act to Prevent Underride Crashes

An average of about 5,000 people a year are killed in crashes involving large trucks, a death toll that has soared by almost 50% since 2011, according to the most recent federal data. Tens of thousands more have been injured.

“America’s Dangerous Trucks,” a joint investigation from FRONTLINE and ProPublica, examines one particularly gruesome kind of truck accident — underride crashes — and why they keep happening. 

Underride crashes occur when a car slides beneath the trailer of a big truck. Trucks can also crush pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists. Hundreds of people die in such accidents every year.

There is a simple solution for reducing these deaths and injuries: build barriers that hang from the sides of the trucks to help prevent vehicles and people from slipping underneath.

Drawing on thousands of court records, government documents and interviews with survivors and industry insiders, the FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigation will show why regulatory agencies and the trucking industry have long refused to mandate the safety devices — and why the struggle continues today.

The news organizations will reveal explosive emails detailing how trucking industry officials pressured Department of Transportation regulators to alter a report that recommended a nationwide mandate for guards specifically designed to protect pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists. The guards are already used around the world and in several U.S. cities.

“The industry holds a lot of sway on what rules get made, and they all hate the idea of additional rules,” said Martin Walker, the recently retired chief of research at the agency that regulates trucking. “Unfortunately, the public doesn’t have much impact on what DOT does. But there’s a very close relationship with industry, there’s no doubt about that.”

Representatives of both the trucking industry and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say that their top priority is safety, with NHTSA also saying it has taken steps to reduce underride crashes. Both say that the cost of the guards outweighs any potential live-saving benefits. “America’s Dangerous Trucks” is a powerful examination of where the fight over underride safety measures stands and why it matters.

“America’s Dangerous Trucks” airs Tuesday, June 13, 2023, at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m CT on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel. It will also be available to stream starting at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT the night of its release at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS Video App.

The ProPublica and FRONTLINE stories will publish on Tuesday and June 22 on the news organizations’ websites.

Update, Tuesday, June 22: This story was updated to note a new publication date for the second installment of the series.

by Melissa Sanchez and Maryam Jameel

Leer en español.

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Local officials in Wisconsin are planning to improve how sheriff’s deputies communicate with people who don’t speak English in response to a ProPublica report that found that an investigation into the death of an 8-year-old Nicaraguan boy living on a dairy farm was mishandled due to a language barrier.

Dane County supervisors said that their goals include making language access a key part of department equity plans and creating a dedicated countywide language-access coordinator.

The efforts come as the parents of the boy, Jefferson Rodríguez, have settled a lawsuit against the farm and its insurance company over the July 2019 death in rural Dane, about a half hour north of Madison. As ProPublica reported in February, sheriff’s deputies wrongly concluded that the boy’s father, José María Rodríguez Uriarte, had accidentally run his son over with farming equipment.

But it was another worker, on his first work day at D&K Dairy, who had been driving the 6,700-pound Bobcat skid steer that crushed Jefferson, ProPublica found. The man had waited at the scene, expecting to be questioned, on the night Jefferson died. But deputies never interviewed him, in part due to a language barrier. ProPublica was able to reach him and he acknowledged he was driving the skid steer that night.

Jefferson’s death was ruled an accident and nobody was charged criminally. But Rodríguez was blamed in the official account. Rodríguez and Jefferson’s mother, María Sayra Vargas, who lives in Nicaragua, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in August 2020 against the farm and its insurer, Rural Mutual Insurance Company.

The trial was originally scheduled to begin this week in Dane County Circuit Court. But, about a month after ProPublica published its story, Jefferson’s parents reached a tentative agreement with the farm and insurance company, neither of which admitted wrongdoing. The agreement was later finalized in court and the lawsuit was dismissed in April.

Lawyers for Rural Mutual and the farm declined to comment.

Rodríguez said that the truth about his son’s death “has come to light” because of ProPublica’s reporting. He declined to share the settlement amount, but said the money will be helpful to him and his family.

“It doesn’t mean I’m happy. The sadness remains,” said Rodríguez, who now works on another dairy farm in Wisconsin. “All the money in the world wouldn’t make me the person I used to be. … I would like to be able to share this with Jefferson. That is what would fill me with joy.”

José and Jefferson Rodríguez (Courtesy of José Rodríguez)

In the weeks after our initial story was published, more than a half-dozen members of the Dane County Board of Supervisors told ProPublica they were horrified to learn of the conditions leading up to Jefferson’s death and the flawed law enforcement investigation that followed. Jefferson lived with his father above the farm’s milking parlor, the barn where hundreds of cows were brought day and night to be milked by heavy, loud machinery.

The Board of Supervisors sets the budget for and can make recommendations to the sheriff’s office. But it is limited in its ability to set policy.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s department, which was not a defendant in the wrongful death lawsuit, said there have been no changes to its language access practices. The department has no written policies on what deputies should do when they encounter people who speak a language other than English or when to bring in an interpreter. The department relies on deputies to self-report their ability to speak languages other than English.

County Supervisor Dana Pellebon said one way she and her colleagues on the county board hope to improve language access at the department is through its equity work plan, a road map that each county agency lays out for how it can become more inclusive and fair. County departments are now updating those plans, she said, and the plans are then approved by the Equal Opportunity Commission, which she chairs. “Language access is something that will be a part of all the plans,” Pellebon said.

One area she hopes the sheriff’s office can address is ensuring language access in rural parts of the county where cellphone reception is weak and phone-based interpretation services aren’t available. “We want to make sure there is a workaround,” Pellebon said. “Either get to a space where there is cellphone service or find a landline at the space they’re at.”

She and other county officials are also considering the possibility of testing deputies’ proficiency in a foreign language instead of relying on their self-assessments. The deputy who interviewed Rodríguez the night his son died had described herself as a proficient Spanish speaker. But when a ProPublica reporter interviewed her, we discovered that the phrase she had used to ask Rodríguez whether he had run over his son with the farm machinery didn’t mean what she thought it did: It lacked a verb and a subject, and the result was confusing.

Rodríguez later told ProPublica he thought the deputy had asked whether his son had been run over by the skid steer, not whether he was driving the machine.

Dane County Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner said she will prioritize creating a countywide language-access coordinator position in next year’s budget to help agencies fulfill their obligations and organize the county’s plans and resources.

“It’s a basic access-to-government civil rights issue that permeates every department,” Wegleitner said. County departments that receive federal funding are required by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to take steps to make their services accessible to people who speak limited English.

The challenges that non-English-speaking immigrants face in communicating with law enforcement officials extend beyond Dane County. ProPublica found that sheriff’s deputies and police officers across the state routinely fail to communicate directly with Spanish-speaking immigrant workers on dairy farms when responding to incidents ranging from assaults to serious accidents. Records from dozens of incidents show that law enforcement officials routinely rely on employees’ supervisors and coworkers to communicate with immigrant workers. Often they turn to Google Translate. Sometimes they don’t speak with the workers at all or ask children to interpret.

Language access is “haphazard throughout the system,” said Nancy Rodriguez, a criminology professor at the University of California, Irvine who co-authored a May supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on the issue. The report, which was based on a survey of criminal justice agencies and organizations across the country, recommended that agencies do more to understand the language needs of the people they serve and to monitor compliance with a language-access plan.

Our investigation into Jefferson’s death was the first story in our series “America’s Dairyland.”

We plan to keep reporting on issues affecting immigrant dairy workers across the Midwest. Among those issues: traffic stops of undocumented immigrants who drive without a license; difficulty accessing medical care or workers’ compensation after injuries on the job; and problems with employer-provided housing.

Do you have ideas or tips for us to look into? Please reach out to us using this form.

And if you know a Spanish speaker who might be interested in this topic, please share with them a translation of the story about Jefferson’s death — which also includes an audio version — or this note about how to get in touch with us.

Help ProPublica Journalists Investigate the Dairy Industry

by Jeremy Schwartz

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

For months, Texas lawmakers were on track to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to continue distributing child identification kits to Texas schoolchildren, a program championed by state officials.

In April, both the Texas House and Senate approved preliminary budgets that included money for the National Child Identification Program’s kits.

But less than a month after a ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found no evidence the kits have helped locate missing children, lawmakers quietly zeroed out the funding.

The news outlets also found that the Waco-based company that distributes the kits had used exaggerated statistics as it sought contracts in Texas and other states. And the investigation revealed that Kenny Hansmire, a former NFL player who leads the company, had a string of failed businesses, had millions of dollars in outstanding federal tax liens and had previously been barred from some finance-related business in Connecticut by banking regulators because of his role in an alleged scheme to defraud or mislead investors.

“After review and consideration, the House and Senate budget conferees agreed to remove this specific funding request for the upcoming biennium,” said state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Republican from Houston, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Huffman did not elaborate on the closed-door discussions of the lawmakers who had been appointed to work out differences between the two spending plans.

A 2021 law states that the Texas Education Agency, which was tasked with purchasing the kits, isn’t required to continue providing them if the Legislature stops the funding. In a statement, a spokesperson said the agency isn’t aware of any “alternative funding sources for the program.”

Hansmire, who did not respond to emailed questions for this article, has said the kits help law enforcement find missing children and save time during the early stages of a search. But none of the Texas law enforcement agencies contacted by the news outlets could recall the kits having helped to find a missing child.

Hansmire previously said that his legal disputes, including his sanction in Connecticut, had been “properly resolved, closed and are completely unrelated to the National Child ID Program.” He also claimed to have “paid debts entirely,” but did not provide details.

Texas lawmakers were among the first in the nation to enshrine into law a requirement that the state purchase the kits. The kits contain an inkpad and a piece of paper where parents can record their children’s physical attributes, fingerprints and DNA. Parents can store the form in their homes and present it to law enforcement if their child goes missing.

In April 2021, state Sen. Donna Campbell, the New Braunfels Republican who authored the law, said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Hansmire had brought her the legislation.

The Legislature allocated about $5.7 million to purchase kits despite numerous government agencies and nonprofits providing similar kits for free or at a lower cost. The envelopes contained the claim that 800,000 children go missing every year. Experts say the figure, which is based on a 1999 study, is inflated and out-of-date in part because it includes hundreds of thousands of children who were reported missing for benign reasons like coming home later than expected.

Hansmire previously told the news outlets that his company’s messaging has shifted away from what he called the “historically high” number of missing children.

Patrick did not respond to requests for comment, but he previously told the news outlets that the company’s broad base of support among the football community and its long history in Texas gave it credibility. He said he didn’t remember meeting Hansmire before the businessman pitched the kits in 2021 alongside former Chicago Bears player and NFL Man of the Year Mike Singletary, who has helped promote the company.

Patrick and Campbell were among a group of politicians honored by the company at an October 2021 Green Bay Packers game.

Working largely with state attorneys general, Hansmire has landed contracts and partnerships in at least a dozen states, including South Carolina, Iowa, Utah and Delaware. Only officials from Delaware responded to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Delaware Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, whose office announced the state’s partnership with the company, called the state’s fledgling child ID program “an effective tool” in helping families prepare for the “unimaginable.”

Asked if the state’s partnership with the company, which launched May 24, would change upon learning of Texas’ action, communications director Jen Rini said: “Just like any program we initiate, we will monitor and adjust as necessary.”

Kiah Collier contributed reporting.

by Andrea Suozzo

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

ProPublica has added more than a million new tax records for tax-exempt organizations to Nonprofit Explorer, making it easier to assess the finances of charities operating across the nation.

The update includes more than 900,000 filings published by the Internal Revenue Service from recent fiscal years, resolving a yearslong delay that had stymied regulators, journalists and donors. The filings, known as Form 990s, detail how organizations have carried out their public interest mission and disclose executive pay, as well as grantmaking and fundraising activities. Tax-exempt organizations must submit them annually.

We’ve also added more than 400,000 older tax records that had been missing from our database, primarily dating back to 2016 and 2017. This will make it easier to assess long-term financial information for nonprofit organizations.

These documents provide insight into a key sector of the U.S. economy, one that employs more than 12 million Americans.

"For charity regulators, the Form 990 series not only helps ensure transparency and accountability, but also provides vital information for state investigations into potential fraud and misuse of charitable resources," the National Association of State Charity Officials wrote in a letter to the IRS last year, urging officials to fix the agency’s backlog. "It is critical that the availability of that data be timely."

The new filings come after more than two years of limited or irregular data releases by the IRS, as the agency struggled with staffing shortages and, in January 2022, moved to a new system for releasing the forms.

Though the agency posted some new filings to its own website in early 2022, it also uploaded a batch of nonpublic forms by accident. After discovering the error in August 2022, it removed nearly two years’ worth of documents from its website and notified Congress of the mistake. Several months later, the agency reposted several batches of data, again including the nonpublic forms, an error it blamed on a contractor.

Asked about the delays in December, the agency said it was doing an end-to-end assessment of its posting processes before resuming data releases.

The new filings, which primarily cover fiscal years between 2020 and 2022, the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, are all now available on Nonprofit Explorer.

For regulators, donors, funders and researchers alike, the filings offer insights into the financial operation of nonprofits during turbulent economic years. “Now we can better understand in what ways they struggled, how they coped,” said Cinthia Schuman Ottinger of the Aspen Institute, who coordinates a group of nonprofit data practitioners. (ProPublica is a part of this group.)

“I’m hopeful that this cornucopia of 990 releases marks an improvement in the release of consistent and timely data on a regular basis.”

by Vianna Davila

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

After a week’s delay, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has forwarded to the governor legislation that aims to increase the transparency of the state’s public records law.

Patrick had been holding up the bill amid increasingly frayed political relations between him and his Republican counterparts in state leadership, House Speaker Dade Phelan and Gov. Greg Abbott.

A priority for Phelan, House Bill 30, filed by Texas Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody, was the only measure out of more than 1,300 bills that Patrick had not signed. That is a requirement before legislation can be sent to the governor.

State law allows government agencies to withhold or heavily redact law enforcement records if a person has not been convicted of a crime or received probation. If approved by Abbott, the bill would close a long-standing loophole in the law that government agencies have used to withhold information in situations in which suspects die in police custody, are killed by law enforcement or kill themselves, as ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported last month.

Phelan publicly expressed support for closing the loophole after advocates and families raised concerns that government entities might use it to keep secret information about the dead shooter in the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

On Tuesday, near the end of a news conference that Patrick mostly spent lambasting Phelan and Abbott’s plans for cutting property taxes, the lieutenant governor offered his reason for the delay.

Patrick told reporters that the Senate agreed to pass the transparency bill on the condition that the House pass a measure that would reform how complaints can be filed against Texas judges, including requiring people to make sworn statements in order to file grievances.

After learning that the judicial conduct measure failed, Patrick accused the House of “playing games.” He said he pulled Moody’s bill out of a stack that he was slated to sign. “I said: ‘What’s that bill all about? Let me see that bill.’”

Patrick said he “stuck” the legislation on his podium, where it remained for days. He told reporters Tuesday that he’d always planned to sign it. The lieutenant governor’s office did not respond to additional questions.

Phelan’s communications director, Cait Wittman, said the delay “absolutely is political.”

“The bottom line, he has a constitutional duty to sign this bill,” Wittman said. “You don’t make deals off the constitution.”

Wittman also accused Senate officials of initially lying about what happened to the bill by blaming the House. A Senate journal clerk told Austin television station KXAN last week that the House never delivered the bill to the Senate. House officials maintained the bill made it to the Senate for signature.

Moody declined to publicly comment on the bill’s status until after the legislation was en route to the governor’s office Tuesday. In a statement to ProPublica and the Tribune, Moody did not address the delay, focusing instead on the eight years he’s spent trying to close this loophole.

“I don’t mind waiting another week for the bill to come to the governor as long as Texas families don’t have to wait any longer for the answers they deserve,” Moody said in the statement. “I appreciate Speaker Phelan making it a priority to shine this light on something that should never be in the dark in a free society.”

by Nat Lash, Mark Olalde and Ash Ngu, and photography by Liz Moughon

As millions of newcomers have flocked to the Las Vegas Valley over the past 50 years, every level of government in the nation’s driest state has worked to ensure that water shortages don’t stop the growth.

Since 1999, southern Nevada has ripped out thousands of acres of turf from lawns, sports fields and roadway medians under the West’s most ambitious grass-removal program. These efforts helped halve the amount of water each resident consumed and freed up enough for Clark County to add nearly 1 million people.

Now, the valley is again looking to grass removal to continue growing without increasing its overall water use. In 2021, the Nevada Legislature passed a first-of-its-kind law mandating the elimination of “nonfunctional turf,” defined as grass that is decorative and rarely used. The Southern Nevada Water Authority promised this would do away with 3,900 acres of grass (roughly 3,000 football fields) within six years.

But by analyzing the water authority’s own aerial imagery, ProPublica found that the agency grossly overestimated how much of that grass could be removed: That number could actually be as low as 1,100 acres. That error, combined with pushback to the ban — especially from homeowners associations looking to avoid turf removal costs and preserve their communities’ aesthetic — could leave the region short of the water savings it needs.

See more in our interactive story.

by Abrahm Lustgarten

Climate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life. By late this century, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Sustainability, 3 to 6 billion people, or between a third and a half of humanity, could be trapped outside of that zone, facing extreme heat, food scarcity and higher death rates, unless emissions are sharply curtailed or mass migration is accommodated.

The research, which adds novel detail about who will be most affected and where, suggests that climate-driven migration could easily eclipse even the largest estimates as enormous segments of the earth’s population seek safe havens. It also makes a moral case for immediate and aggressive policies to prevent such a change from occurring, in part by showing how unequal the distribution of pain will be and how great the improvements could be with even small achievements in slowing the pace of warming.

“There are clear, profound ethical consequences in the numbers,” Timothy Lenton, one of the study’s lead authors and the director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in the U.K., said in an interview. “If we can’t level with that injustice and be honest about it, then we’ll never progress the international action on this issue.”

The notion of a climate niche is based on work the researchers first published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, which established that for the past 6,000 years humans have gravitated toward a narrow range of temperatures and precipitation levels that supported agriculture and, later, economic growth. That study warned that warming would make those conditions elusive for growing segments of humankind and found that while just 1% of the earth’s surface is now intolerably hot, nearly 20% could be by 2070.

The new study reconsiders population growth and policy options and explores scenarios that dramatically increase earlier estimates, demonstrating that the world’s environment has already changed significantly. It focuses more heavily on temperature than precipitation, finding that most people have thrived in mean annual temperatures of 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Should the world continue on its present pathway — making gestures toward moderate reductions in emissions but not meaningfully reducing global carbon levels (a scenario close to what the United Nations refers to as SSP2-4.5) — the planet will likely surpass the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting average warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and instead warm approximately 2.7 degrees. That pathway, which accounts for population growth in hot places, could lead to 2 billion people falling outside of the climate niche within just the next eight years, and 3.7 billion doing so by 2090. But the study’s authors, who have argued in other papers that the most extreme warming scenarios are well within the realm of possibility, warn that the worst cases should also be considered. With 3.6 degrees of warming and a pessimistic climate scenario that includes ongoing fossil fuel use, resistance to international migration and much more rapid population growth (a scenario referred to by the U.N. as SSP3-7), the shifting climate niche could pose what the authors call “an existential risk,” directly affecting half the projected total population, or, in this case, as many as 6.5 billion people.

The data suggests the world is fast approaching a tipping point, after which even small increases in average global temperature will begin to have dramatic effects. The world has already warmed by about 1.2 degree Celsius, pushing 9% of the earth’s population out of the climate niche. At 1.3 degrees, the study estimates that the pace would pick up considerably, and for every tenth of a degree of additional warming, according to Lenton, 140 million more people will be pushed outside of the niche. “There’s a real nonlinearity lurking in there that we hadn’t seen before,” he said.

Slowing global emissions would dramatically reduce the number of people displaced or grappling with conditions outside the niche. If warming were limited to the 1.5 degrees Celsius targeted by the Paris accords, according to a calculation that isolates the effect of warming, half as many people would be left outside of the optimal zone. The population suffering from extreme heat would be reduced fivefold, from 22% to just 5% of the people on the planet.

Climate research often frames the implications of warming in terms of its economic impacts, couching damages in monetary terms that are sometimes used to suggest that small increases in average temperature can be managed. The study disavows this traditional economic framework, which Lenton says is “unethical” because it prioritizes rich people who are alive today, and instead puts the climate crisis in moral terms. The findings show that climate change will pummel poorer parts of the world disproportionately, effectively sentencing the people who live in developing nations and small island states to extreme temperatures, failing crops, conflict, water and food scarcity, and rising mortality. The final option for many people will be migration. The estimated size of the affected populations, whether they’re 2 billion or 6 billion, suggests an era of global upheaval.

According to the study, India will have, by far, the greatest population outside of the climate niche. At current rates of warming, the researchers estimate that more than 600 million Indians will be affected, six times more than if the Paris targets were achieved. In Nigeria, more than 300 million citizens will be exposed, seven times more than if emissions were steeply cut. Indonesia could see 100 million people fall out of a secure and predictable environment, the Philippines and Pakistan 80 million people each, and so on. Brazil, Australia and India would see the greatest area of land become less habitable. But in many smaller countries, all or nearly all the land would become nearly unlivable by traditional measures: Burkina Faso, Mali, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Niger. Although facing far more modest impacts, even the United States will see its South and Southwest fall toward the hottest end of the niche, leading to higher mortality and driving internal migration northward.

Throughout the world, the researchers estimate, the average person who is going to be exposed to unprecedented heat comes from a place that emitted roughly half the per capita emissions as those in wealthy countries. American per capita emissions are more than twice those of Europeans, who still live a prosperous and modern existence, the authors point out, so there is ample room for comfortable change short of substantial sacrifice. “The idea that you need the level of wasteful consumption ... that happens on average in the U.S. to be part of a happy, flourishing, rich, democratic society is obviously nonsense,” Lenton said.

Each American today emits nearly enough emissions over their lifetime to push one Indian or Nigerian of the future outside of their climate niche, the study found, showing exactly how much harm Americans’ individual actions can cause (1.2 Americans to 1 future person, to be exact). The lifestyle and policy implications are obvious: Reducing consumption today reduces the number of people elsewhere who will suffer the consequences tomorrow and can prevent much of the instability that would otherwise result. “I can’t — as a citizen of a planet with this level of risk opening up — not also have some kind of human and moral response to the figures,” Lenton said. We’ve all got to deal with that, he added, “in our own way.”

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by Cassandra Jaramillo

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Conservative activists Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips used the nonprofit True the Vote to enrich themselves, according to a complaint filed to the IRS.

On Monday, the nonprofit watchdog group Campaign for Accountability called for an investigation into True the Vote, which has made repeated false claims about voter fraud in elections. The complaint said True the Vote may have violated state and federal law when the charity used donations to issue loans to Engelbrecht, its founder, and lucrative contracts to Gregg Phillips, a longtime director. The organization also failed to disclose the payments to insiders in its tax returns, including excessive legal bills paid to its general counsel at the time, who filed election-related lawsuits in four states, the complaint said.

“Such disclosure lapses heighten suspicion regarding whether True the Vote and or its current or former officers and directors intended to conceal the payments from the public or IRS,” the complaint said. The self-dealing contracts and loans were first reported by Reveal.

Engelbrecht started Texas-based True the Vote in 2010 after getting involved in Tea Party activism in the Houston area. Over the years, she and Phillips have promoted probes into voter fraud in their fundraising efforts, but they have failed to deliver evidence of such activity for years. The pair catapulted to national prominence when conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza featured the nonprofit’s discredited work in the film “2,000 Mules,” which played in theaters across the country.

Engelbrecht and Phillips have defended their voting work, and their attorney has previously said there was nothing wrong about the loans and contracts. Engelbrecht and Phillips did not respond to requests for comment.

“The so-called Campaign for Accountability filed this IRS complaint as a form of harassment,” a True the Vote spokesperson wrote in response to questions. “The complaint is without merit and we believe it will be terminated in due course.”

The federal government allows nonprofit organizations to operate tax-free, and in return they are required to disclose substantial information about their finances to make sure donor funds are used appropriately. Charities like True the Vote are also not allowed to engage in certain political activity.

“I hope that the IRS and other applicable authorities take seriously what appears to be a pattern of bad behavior by Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, and that makes the pursuit of accountability that much more important,” said Michelle Kuppersmith, executive director of Campaign for Accountability. The organization previously filed a separate complaint in 2020 about True the Vote engaging in political activity with Georgia’s Republican Party. The IRS did not respond to that complaint.

The group’s legal woes have mounted following the D’Souza movie. A Georgia voter sued the pair and D’Souza for defamation because he said he was wrongfully accused of committing voter fraud. The case is pending. A state investigation found the voter was dropping off ballots for himself and family members, which is legal. Former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office asked federal authorities to investigate True the Vote’s finances after Engelbrecht and Phillips did not produce purported evidence on voter fraud to investigators in 2022.

James Bopp Jr., the former general counsel, is now suing True the Vote in federal court for breach of contract for nearly $1 million in unpaid legal bills dating back several years, according to court records obtained by ProPublica. True the Vote has countersued Bopp’s law firm, denying the unpaid invoices and accusing it of engaging in fraud and substandard lawyering, the records show.

In an interview with ProPublica, Bopp said that True the Vote’s counterclaim has no merits. “We were shocked they responded this way. They did nothing but praise our work,” he said. “This is what unscrupulous people will do when they try to avoid the repayment of debt.”

In January, ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News reported Engelbrecht and Phillips created another charity, the Freedom Hospital. It aimed to help children and elderly people affected by the war in Ukraine with medical care. Its website, which has since been taken down, said it raised halfway to $25 million for a mobile hospital. ProPublica and the News found the effort never materialized. Attorneys for Engelbrecht and Phillips said that it was a good-faith effort and that his clients only raised $268 for the project through PayPal. Lawyers said donations were returned “at Mr. Phillips’ direction.”

In its most recently available tax return, True the Vote in 2021 raised about $1.7 million but fell $289,157 into the red. The 2021 return no longer includes Phillips as a director. In 2020, the organization raised $5 million. For 2019, the organization had given a reporter and the IRS two widely different tax returns that were riddled with inconsistencies over key questions about governance and Engelbrecht’s $113,000 loan. At the time, True the Vote said it planned to file an amended return. It does not appear to have been filed with the IRS.

Despite Texas law stating directors of nonprofits can’t receive loans from their own organizations, Engelbrecht — who was a director and an employee at the time — regularly received loans from the nonprofit, ranging from about $40,000 to $113,000, according to tax filings. She also earned a salary.

Phillips first joined True the Vote as a board member in 2014. Phillips received at least $750,000 related to a research analysis contract. The Campaign for Accountability, in its complaint, raised questions about what, if any, services were actually rendered.

Bopp was paid approximately $280,000 over a seven day period related to filing and supervising attorneys on election-related lawsuits to challenge the results in key states, according to court records. Originally, there were seven lawsuits planned to be filed, but Bopp filed only four. He quickly withdrew them. Bopp previously justified the costs to file the complaints as legitimate because each state had different laws.

“Such legal fees seem excessive for a few days of work in lawsuits that never proceeded past an initial complaint and which The Bopp Law Firm voluntarily dismissed shortly after filing,” the complaint said.

In 2020, True the Vote did not report those contracts in its tax returns, which are required for contracts above $100,000. “Ms. Engelbrecht, as President of True the Vote, appears to have voluntarily and intentionally filed a false, incorrect, and incomplete Form 990,” the complaint said.

Do you have tips on any other voting groups with questionable arrangements? Cassandra Jaramillo can be reached by email at cassandra.jaramillo@propublica.org or by Signal at 469-606-9665.

Update, June 5, 2023: This story was updated with comment from a True the Vote spokesperson provided after publication.

by Eli Hager

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The New York State Legislature could by the end of this week pass groundbreaking legislation requiring child protective services agents to read people their constitutional rights, just like the police have to do.

But New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, despite publicly claiming to support the “family Miranda warning,” has in recent weeks quietly proposed gutting the measure, according to eight lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists involved in the negotiations.

The agency even lobbied for the removal of the word “rights” from the bill text.

And the state Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, has repeatedly blocked the popular proposal (it has dozens of co-sponsors), throwing into question whether it will get a full vote before the legislative session ends on Friday.

Last fall, a ProPublica investigation found that ACS caseworkers — without a warrant — conduct full home searches of more than 50,000 households every year across New York City, disproportionately affecting Black or Hispanic and low-income families. Despite the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, these government officers rifle through families’ refrigerators and medicine cabinets and inspect children’s unclothed bodies without informed consent.

They conduct these warrantless searches even if the allegation of potential child neglect they are investigating has nothing to do with the condition of the home, such as a kid missing too many days of school. They also sometimes use manipulative tactics, including threatening child removal or calling the police, to get inside residences, according to dozens of interviews with caseworkers, families and attorneys.

The agency ultimately finds a safety situation requiring removal of a child from the home less than 4% of the time.

Lawmakers in Albany repeatedly cited ProPublica’s reporting this spring as they reintroduced legislation, which had failed in the past, creating a Miranda-style warning to be read aloud by child protective services agents like cops do on “Law & Order.” Caseworkers would have to notify parents of their right to deny entry to their home, to have a lawyer present, to be told what they’re being accused of, and to say no to releases of their family’s personal information and to drug or alcohol tests without a court order, while also specifying that anything they say can and will be used against them.

The bill had been gaining momentum in the Assembly, passing unanimously out of that chamber’s children and families committee as its chair, Andrew Hevesi, flanked by grassroots activists, asked, “When in life do you want Americans not to know their rights?”

He continued, “The only time you need them not to know their rights is when their rights are about to be violated.”

The proposed law would not create any new rights, but rather inform families with less education or ones without a lawyer of the rights they already have. It also would not affect the ability of caseworkers to enter a home without a warrant if a child is in danger or if there are other exigent circumstances.

But then ACS sent Senate leadership staff revisions to the legislation that would have removed mention of several of the rights, neutering the proposal to such an extent that advocates could no longer support it, many said in interviews.

Maddy Zimmerman, spokesperson for Democratic state Sen. Jabari Brisport, the bill’s lead sponsor in the Senate and chair of its children and families committee, said that accepting ACS’ version would have been the same as passing nothing at all. She and a half-dozen others who saw the agency’s suggestions said the edits included not only removing the word “rights” but also cutting the sections about informing parents that what they say can be used against them, that they don’t have to agree to body searches of their children without an order from a judge, and more.

Brisport said in interviews with ProPublica that he tried to put the bill, without the ACS changes, on his committee’s agenda — three times. But on each attempt, he said, Stewart-Cousins, the Senate’s majority leader and president pro tempore, removed it from consideration without telling him why.

Stewart-Cousins could still revive the measure and give it a chance of passing this week, provided that the Assembly continues to move it as well.

It is not clear whether ACS has effectively lobbied her or if she has a philosophical objection to the proposal.

Stewart-Cousins’ staff did not respond to calls and emailed questions about her position on the matter.

In recent years, she has highlighted her achievements on affordable housing, pre-K, the sealing of criminal records, bail reform and not criminalizing poverty — all issues that affect many of the same constituents who would be protected by the family Miranda warning.

But advocates say that progressive politicians, not just in New York but across the country, have so far failed to understand how fighting against child welfare agents’ abuses of power is part of the same agenda.

Protesters, including many parents of color who plan to drive up from New York City, said they will be at the state Capitol this week demanding that the bill get a vote.

In a series of emails, an ACS spokesperson did not deny that ACS wanted to remove the word “rights” from the bill.

She did say that it would be “a major and important change to the law” to notify parents of their right to “not let us in” and that they can call an attorney.

The spokesperson added that the agency “has been supportive of legislation that would require child protective specialists to provide oral and written information to parents, about their rights, at the initial point of contact,” but that the measure should account for “the need for child welfare agencies to assess the safety of children who have been reported as possibly abused or neglected.

“ACS has been participating, in good faith, in discussions about pending legislation,” she said of the administration’s lobbying in Albany. “To be clear: ACS does not get a vote on the bill.”

It had appeared to family law professors and activists in New York that ACS was becoming more progressive under its new commissioner, Jess Dannhauser, who was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams last year. At public appearances and conferences, Dannhauser has expressed respect for low-income families of color and their rights.

“I’ve been struck by how Dannhauser is willing to say that these are rights — that the Constitution applies here,” said Anna Arons, a professor at the St. John’s University School of Law and an expert on search and seizure protections in the child welfare context. But, she said, there’s a “disconnect” between “what he’s willing to say and what position he’s willing to stake ACS to. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

The ACS spokesperson did not respond to a question about this characterization of the commissioner.

If ACS agents were to regularly read these rights and it caused some parents to refuse to let them in, then the agency could still go to court and get a warrant like police do, experts said. Or if a child is in danger, agents can already enter under existing law.

Brisport pointed out that the Texas Legislature recently passed a bill creating a similar family Miranda warning — and Texas is not a state known for its protections of poor nonwhite families.

No matter what happens, he said, the New York measure has gotten further than it ever has before.

Hevesi, the Assembly member, said in an interview that he also saw ACS’ proposed changes. The bottom line, he said, is that denying families knowledge of their rights while threatening family separation, in the name of investigating alleged child neglect, is “essentially fighting a childhood trauma with a childhood trauma.”

by Vianna Davila

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas lawmakers passed more than 1,300 bills before the end of this year’s contentious legislative session, quickly sending them to the governor for consideration.

All of them but one.

House Bill 30, a priority of state Democratic Rep. Joe Moody to increase transparency in Texas’ public records law, still hasn’t been signed in the Senate, leaving it in legislative limbo and raising concerns about the fate of the measure, which was lauded by First Amendment advocates as a major victory.

If signed by the governor, the bill would close a long-standing loophole in state law that allows government agencies to withhold or heavily redact law enforcement records if a person has not been convicted or has received probation. The law was designed to protect people who are accused of unsubstantiated criminal activity, but some government agencies have instead used it to withhold information in situations where suspects die in police custody or are killed by law enforcement.

Agencies have also used what is known as the “dead suspect loophole” to withhold records in cases such as that of Logan Castello, an Army private first class, who died by suicide in his Central Texas apartment in November 2019. Last month, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune highlighted his parents’ yearslong fight for information about his death.

Both the state House and the Senate passed Moody’s bill after hammering out a compromise in the waning days of the session, which ended Monday. The measure received the necessary signatures in the state House, including that of Speaker Dade Phelan, who publicly voiced support for the bill last year after the Uvalde massacre raised concerns that government entities might use the loophole to withhold information about the dead shooter. (They have cited other reasons for keeping information from the public.) The bill was then sent to the Senate so that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick could sign off.

That hasn’t happened.

Because the bill hasn’t been signed, it hasn’t been sent to the governor to either veto or approve.

The Texas Constitution requires the presiding officer of each house to sign all bills and joint resolutions.

“It is a mandatory provision,” said Randy Erben, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law who previously was Gov. Greg Abbott’s legislative director. “And the bill is invalid if it’s not signed by both presiding officers.”

Neither Patrick’s nor Abbott’s offices responded to a request for comment. Moody also did not respond to a request for comment. The bizarre predicament was first reported by the Austin TV station KXAN.

Asked whether the bill ultimately needs the lieutenant governor’s signature to have a chance to become law, Phelan’s communications director, Cait Wittman, said it was not clear.

“Because we are unaware of any similar situation in modern history, this is an open legal question,” she said.

Missing Bill

Moody was elated when he finally got the bill over the finish line last month, calling it possibly the most consequential legislation he’d ever sent to the governor.

“Ultimately, the way this is written now, it cuts to the core of how people were abusing this exception to the Public Information Act,” Moody told ProPublica and the Tribune. “So if anyone’s going to hide information, now, they’re going to have to work a lot harder and find a new way to do it.”

The Senate and the House adopted the final version of Moody’s bill on May 28. The last step in both chambers was for Phelan and Patrick to sign it by the following day, which is considered a pro forma step after legislative bodies approve bills even if the officials personally oppose them.

Video from the House floor on Monday, the last day of the regular session, shows a clerk reading off enrolled bills to be signed that day, including HB 30.

In the video, the reading clerk can be seen handing a stack of bills that includes HB 30 to Mark Cervantes, the assistant chief clerk in the House. He told ProPublica and the Tribune he then handed the bills to staff from the Texas Legislative Council. Bills are printed out, and legislative council staffers are responsible for distributing those documents.

After the reading in the House, council staffers delivered a stack of bills that should have included Moody’s to the Senate.

But a video from the Senate on the same day shows the bill was never read.

Legislative council staffers discovered Moody’s bill was missing Tuesday morning, the day after the session ended.

KXAN reported Friday that a Senate journal clerk said the bill was never delivered to the chamber and that “it seems” the bill was left in the possession of the House.

A list of House measures ProPublica and the Tribune obtained through an open records request shows HB 30 among a batch of bills delivered to the Senate that day. Wittman, Phelan’s communications director, said it is “inconceivable” the bill went missing before it was delivered to the Senate because every other bill in the same batch was signed and returned to the House.

Still in Limbo

On Tuesday, the chief clerk of the House sent a certified duplicate of the bill to Patsy Spaw, the secretary of the senate. Spaw signed for the copy, acknowledging she had received it, according to documents ProPublica and the Tribune received through an open records request.

Patrick did not sign the bill on Friday, when the Senate briefly convened for a special session.

Phelan’s office would not speculate on what happened to the bill or why the lieutenant governor still has not signed the measure.

“The Texas House and Senate voted overwhelmingly in support of House Bill 30, one of Speaker Phelan’s many legislative priorities, and on May 29th, he was proud to fulfill his constitutional obligation of signing this legislation in the presence of the House,” read a statement his communications director provided to the news organizations. “There are several administrative tasks that need to take place after a bill’s passage before it can be signed into law, and House Bill 30 has cleared all of those necessary procedures in the House.”

The bill’s disappearance comes amid a blistering war of words between Phelan, Patrick and Abbott, as the three Republicans have publicly squabbled over their dueling property tax reform proposals. Abbott publicly sided with Phelan’s House proposal this week.

It is unclear if any of the back-and-forth affected the bill’s path to the governor. But Erben said he could not identify any part of state law that addresses what would happen if Patrick declines to sign a measure.

“It would be a very interesting case,” Erben said. “Let’s just put it that way.”

by Jodi S. Cohen, ProPublica, and Jennifer Smith Richards, Chicago Tribune

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with the Chicago Tribune.

Each time he stood before a Chicago traffic court judge and told his story, the judge asked his name.

“Jeffrey Kriv,” he’d say. That was true.

Then he’d raise his right hand and get sworn in. What came next was also consistent.

“Well, that morning, I broke up with my girlfriend and she stole my car,” Kriv, who had been ticketed for running a red light, testified in January 2021.

“Yeah, I broke up with my girlfriend earlier that morning, had a knock-down, drag-out fight, verbally, of course. She took my car without my knowledge,” he told a different judge when fighting a speeding ticket in August 2021.

“I broke up with my girlfriend that day and she took my car without my knowledge. … I didn’t get my car back for like three days. But it was her driving the car,” he said while contesting a speeding ticket, once again under oath, in May 2022.

The excuse worked, just as it had many times before.

At the ticket hearings, Kriv often provided what he said were legitimate police incident reports as evidence of the car thefts; they had officer names and badge numbers, and he explained that he got the reports at police headquarters.

But Kriv did not let on that he, himself, was a Chicago cop.

As bold as he was when fighting his tickets, he was equally brazen in his professional life. He attracted a remarkable number of complaints from citizens he encountered — and even from other officers. And just as he did in his personal life, he defended himself vigorously against the allegations.

Kriv doesn’t register as one of Chicago’s most notorious corrupt cops — those who tortured suspects for confessions or shook down drug dealers. But his on-duty conduct regularly flouted rules and disrupted lives. Once, he punched a handcuffed man in the back of his patrol car, records show.

But given Chicago’s long-standing and dramatic shortcomings in police discipline, none of his on-duty misconduct cost him his badge and gun.

It took a tip to an outside agency and questions about Kriv’s testimony as a private citizen in traffic court to unravel his career.

A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department would not comment for this story or answer any questions.

A lawyer for Kriv, informed of the reporting by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune, said “many of the facts you compose are incomplete or not true,” though he did not say what was inaccurate. The lawyer, Tim Grace, said that Kriv had received nearly 150 commendations and recognitions and had earned two awards for saving lives.

“Officer Kriv has served his city with honor for over 25-plus years,” Grace said.

Listen to Former Chicago Police Officer Jeffrey Kriv Try to Avoid Traffic Fines by Repeatedly Claiming His Ex-Girlfriend Stole His Car

Kriv used the alibi to get out of paying for 44 traffic tickets since 2013, Cook County prosecutors allege.

(Lucas Waldron, ProPublica) His Troubles Began Almost Immediately

In 1996, Kriv was sworn in as a Chicago police officer. The first complaint about him came about eight months later, while Kriv was still a probationary hire. A man said Kriv broke his car window with a flashlight while directing traffic; Kriv was not disciplined in that incident.

Supervisors reprimanded him a few months later, however, after Kriv failed to notice there was a marijuana cigarette on the back seat of his squad car.

But there was more to come, records show: being rude, offensive or physically abusive; flipping someone off; and writing in a police report that one woman was “white trash” and a “raving lunatic.”

He was held in contempt of court and arrested after he flung papers into the air and called the judge’s ruling “a joke.” He apologized in court the next day, and the contempt charge was vacated. An assistant deputy superintendent recommended against removing his police powers after the incident, records show. In another case, a different judge ordered him removed from a courtroom after he wouldn’t stop talking.

Most officers face only a handful of complaints over the course of their careers. But at least 92 misconduct complaints were filed against Kriv, according to city and police disciplinary records compiled and analyzed by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica. Even more exceptional: About 28% of complaints against Kriv were found to have merit, compared with about 4% of complaints against all Chicago police officers going back decades.

In 2005, after a city Streets and Sanitation Department employee towed his illegally parked personal car, Kriv sent a letter via the city’s interoffice mail system threatening to ticket the cars of Streets and Sanitation workers in retaliation. He was suspended for 20 days. In 2006, he left the scene of a vehicle fire he had responded to, removed the numbers that identified his squad car and went into a strip club to visit a waitress, according to internal police investigation records. He was issued a 90-day suspension that was later knocked down to 45 days.

In 2009, Kriv was accused of punching a woman whom he’d arrested after seeing her arguing with her husband on the street. The woman was found not guilty at trial on charges of domestic battery and resisting arrest.

“I had to have surgery. I had to have plastic implanted under my eye because of this,” said Jessie Wangeman, who lives in Indianapolis. “My face is not symmetrical anymore. He really messed me up on the outside. And inside it was a really traumatic experience.”

Wangeman sued Kriv and the city of Chicago over the encounter; the city paid her $100,000 to settle in 2011. Wangeman declined to talk with investigators looking into Kriv’s alleged misconduct, and Kriv wasn’t disciplined.

Meanwhile, Kriv’s personal vehicles — a BMW sedan and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle — were ticketed 22 times between 2008 and 2013. He paid some of those tickets, records show.

At a traffic court hearing in December 2013, Kriv used the girlfriend alibi for the first time, authorities now allege.

“May I ask you why you’re contesting this ticket, Mr. Kriv?” the judge asked.

“Yes, my ex-girlfriend, well, took my car two days prior after I broke up with her. I filed a police report that it was stolen and they recovered it approximately a week after the fact,” he testified. “Here’s the police report that was done. I did have her arrested approximately three weeks ago and I got a court date coming up in January.”

The judge reviewed the report and dismissed the ticket.

False Statements and False Arrests

Kriv was investigated at least 26 times over allegations of dishonesty as a police officer. That included accusations of falsifying records, writing unwarranted tickets, performing improper searches, making false arrests.

One man accused Kriv of writing him false parking citations. A woman complained that Kriv issued her eight baseless citations in two weeks while her vehicle was parked in an assigned space on private property. And another man made two other complaints accusing Kriv of repeatedly writing tickets to him at his business as a way to harass him. Department investigators concluded that Kriv wrote unwarranted tickets to that man; investigations into the other allegations could not be pursued because the accusers did not sign formal complaints.

As a cop, Kriv’s specialty was DUI enforcement. He made more DUI arrests in Chicago than any other officer in 2021, and he topped the list statewide the same year, according to one anti-drunken-driving group.

But one woman sued him over her 2015 drunken driving arrest after she was acquitted at trial. The lawsuit alleged that Kriv falsely arrested her and made false statements against her. Kriv denied the allegations.

“He would lie under oath for a piece of bubble gum,” the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from Kriv, told a reporter.

The woman later dropped the lawsuit because she said Kriv was disparaging and intimidating her.

Even outside of his job and his chutzpah in traffic court, Kriv’s history is notable.

While Kriv was growing up in Highland Park, his father, an attorney, funded a messy fraud scheme, survived an assassination attempt meant to silence him about it, and was sent to federal prison for a second fraud racket that involved sending falsified accident claims through the mail, according to court records at the National Archives. Kriv’s father testified at trial in the first fraud case and did not face charges for his role in that scheme.

Kriv then attended the University of Iowa for six years. A university spokesperson said he never graduated — though he claimed that he had in an application for another city job in 2013. Kriv’s attorney did not respond to a question about his educational history.

When Kriv was in his late 20s, the unemployment insurance division of the Illinois attorney general’s office sued him to recoup about $3,800 in benefits for which the government claimed he wasn’t eligible, records show. Details about what led to the attorney general’s claim are missing from court files, and there’s no public record of how it was resolved.

Neither the Police Department nor the city’s human resources division could locate Kriv’s initial application to the Police Department, so it’s unclear how much hiring officials knew about his background.

It’s also unclear whether the department knew how often Kriv was being ticketed for traffic violations — nine times in 2014 alone, records show. He got all of those tickets dismissed, including a speeding ticket issued in the fall for going 21 miles an hour over the speed limit near a school.

“My ex-girlfriend stole my car,” Kriv told the judge. “There is this police report over here that was done and, a matter of fact, I had another ticket I contested last week … another speed camera.

“They only charged her with trespassing because it was my girlfriend. She stole my key and racked up all these tickets here.”

The judge reviewed the report and dismissed the ticket.

When Other Cops Complained

Kriv’s conduct as a cop stands out in yet another way: Even other cops complained about him.

Internal affairs records show that a police lieutenant filed a complaint against Kriv in 2016 accusing Kriv of failing to arrest an off-duty sergeant who was involved in a crash, even though the sergeant was unsteady, was slurring his speech and had urinated in his pants — “wasted,” according to a police report. Kriv was suspended for 15 days for violating five department rules in that incident.

His police partner once reported that he made her get out of their squad car after an argument, forcing her to walk more than a half-mile back to their station. Investigators concluded there wasn’t enough evidence in that case to discipline Kriv.

In 2014, supervisors — including the head of the DUI task force that Kriv was on — filed a complaint against Kriv alleging that he disobeyed commands from a higher-ranking officer and impounded a car without justification after a traffic crash.

Over the other officers’ objections, Kriv declared that the driver of the car involved in the crash was drunk, handcuffed him, and put him in the back of his squad car, according to accounts from the driver, Jaime Garcia, and other officers. He also ordered Garcia’s Nissan Altima towed and impounded.

“He kept telling me, ‘I know you’re drunk, I know you’re drunk.’ I didn’t know what to do, I was in shock, I was scared,” Garcia said in an interview.

The officers on the scene filed the complaint against Kriv.

“For some reason, he was trying to put a false arrest on this guy. I apologized to him, said, ‘Sorry you had to go through this.’ I told him about filing a complaint,” said retired Lt. David Blanco, the supervisor that night. After its investigation, the department acknowledged Kriv was wrong to have impounded Garcia’s car, knowing there would be no DUI charges against him.

Kriv ultimately wasn’t disciplined for his behavior that night, once again benefiting from the Police Department’s feeble accountability system, which has long been marked by delays, red tape and lax punishment.

Though he regularly escaped punishment altogether for alleged misconduct on the job, in some cases, he was reprimanded or received suspensions of between one and 45 days. The department suspended Kriv at least 20 times for 170 days total, according to a Tribune-ProPublica analysis of his disciplinary records.

One citizen told the investigating agency that Kriv was unconcerned when he threatened to file a complaint. Kriv, the man said, told him that complaints “are not going to go anywhere,” no matter how many an officer was facing. The man’s complaint was closed after he declined to participate in the investigation.

Kriv appealed disciplinary decisions at least eight times over his career, including through the department’s grievance system. A 2017 investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica found that 85% of disciplinary cases handled through the department’s grievance process since 2010 had led to officers receiving shorter suspensions or, in many cases, having their punishments overturned entirely.

“It doesn’t hurt to grieve it. Why wouldn’t I?” Kriv told the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica for that story.

Kriv got a five-day suspension reduced to a reprimand, another five-day suspension reduced to two days, and a 90-day suspension — for going to the strip club while on duty — cut in half.

“It sounds to me like several of these cases — each of them standing on its own, independently — should have triggered a discharge case,” said Mark Iris, who until 2004 was the executive director of the Chicago Police Board, the civilian body that decides disciplinary cases involving Chicago officers. He also studied the use of mathematical analysis to prevent police misconduct and taught at Northwestern University.

“The unit commanders had to have known this guy was a headache,” Iris said in an interview.

Records show the department never tried to fire Kriv.

Blanco, like many of the people Kriv encountered, said he doesn’t get how Kriv remained on the force.

“That’s what I couldn’t understand — with all the suspensions, why they didn’t get rid of this guy. There’s obviously a red light flashing over this guy’s head,” Blanco told ProPublica and the Tribune.

During Kriv’s career, the Chicago Police Department had eight superintendents, three iterations of an independent police investigation body and at least two versions of an internal affairs division. The Police Department has stalled on at least two attempts to implement an early-warning system to spot problem behavior.

In its 2019 consent decree with the Justice Department, the Police Department agreed to develop a system to identify officers at risk of misconduct, alert their supervisors and provide training. That system still has not been implemented, according to the latest consent decree update.

In addition, for most of Kriv’s career, the police union’s contract with the department allowed investigators to consider only the most recent five years of an officer’s disciplinary history. (The current union contract eliminates that requirement). That meant that even officers with extensive histories of misconduct could have looked problem-free when department leaders weighed discipline options.

As a result, when investigators in 2013 looked into a complaint against Kriv, his recent disciplinary history was clean, so they proceeded as if he’d never been disciplined. The truth was that, by then, he had been suspended or reprimanded for at least 15 different incidents, but the most recent complaints were more than five years old or didn’t appear on his record yet because they were still under investigation.

As Kriv successfully appealed Police Department discipline, he also was successfully beating more and more traffic tickets.

From 2015 through mid-2022, Kriv got 51 tickets but paid only two.

(Obtained by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune)

Other tickets — issued for reasons including exceeding the speed limit by at least 11 miles an hour, running red lights, blocking an area and parking where he shouldn’t — were dismissed.

He got some tickets dismissed by making technical arguments — claiming a ticket wasn’t filled out properly, for example — but most were dismissed after he blamed his girlfriend, records show.

Kriv contested tickets using that defense before at least 23 different judges. Sometimes he went before the same judge with the same story, but those appearances were typically years apart.

At a hearing in 2018, he tried to get out of a speeding ticket issued in a school zone.

“My girlfriend and I got in an argument that morning,” he told the judge. “We broke up. She took my fob and she took my car and I do have a police report.”

“I didn’t get it back until later that night around 9 o’clock. And I did have her arrested about a week later. We went to her workplace, but here’s a copy of the police report.”

The judge reviewed the report and dismissed the ticket.

“The System’s Like a Joke”

Citywide, it’s rare for people to succeed in getting their tickets dismissed. In a typical year, the city issues about 1 million automated-camera tickets for speeding and red-light violations. People contest about 4% of those tickets, and about 1 in 10 win, according to an analysis of city ticket data.

There’s no indication the Police Department knew how often Kriv was contesting his tickets in court. There’s also no indication in records that the girlfriend he used as his alibi was real.

Last year, the city’s Office of Inspector General received a tip to look at Kriv — not for his work in uniform, but for a potentially fraudulent defense of a parking ticket he had received, records show.

The OIG followed that tip and concluded that Kriv had provided false testimony and fraudulent documentation related to parking and traffic violations since 2009, according to prosecutors. Since 2013, he had contested 44 tickets by saying his girlfriend had stolen his car. All 44 had been dismissed.

The office notified the Police Department that it was investigating Kriv.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office in October barred Kriv from testifying in court as a witness, placing him on a list of police officers whose truthfulness is in question. Nonetheless, the police department kept him on the streets and he continued to write tickets and make DUI arrests.

The final time Kriv took an oath to tell the truth and then blamed his girlfriend for a speeding ticket was in September of 2022, records show. Once again, the story worked.

“Well, I had her arrested,” Kriv said when the judge asked what happened to the woman. “They charged her with a misdemeanor trespassing to a vehicle. That pretty much went nowhere.

“She got, like, three months’ supervision or something like that. It’s kind of a, I don’t want to say the system’s like a joke, but it didn’t really do anything.”

As Kriv, who is 56, was defending himself in traffic court last year, he also was eyeing retirement, going back and forth with the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago to sort out his pension benefits. He was told he’d gain another year of seniority — and a larger pension — if he stayed on the force until Jan. 15.

On Jan. 12, the department collected his badge and stripped him of police powers.

On Jan. 14, Kriv got another speeding ticket.

On Jan. 17, Kriv retired.

The next day, Kriv’s car was ticketed again for speeding.

On Jan. 31, Cook County prosecutors charged Kriv with four counts of perjury and five counts of forgery, all of them felonies, for allegedly lying to judges under oath and providing fictitious police reports in four traffic ticket cases.

The girlfriend story, prosecutors allege, was fake. Prosecutors calculated that, by getting out of 44 tickets, Kriv saved himself $3,665.

Excerpt of a police report that Kriv provided to a judge, which says that Kriv’s girlfriend took his car. (Obtained by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune)

The state’s attorney’s office declined to comment about its case against Kriv.

Kriv emailed the pension board the day after he was charged and released on $10,000 bond, writing: “When do I start getting my pension checks and does it come bi-weekly or once a month?” His pension started at about $6,000 a month, according to the board.

Deborah Witzburg, the inspector general whose office helped build the case against Kriv, declined to comment for this story. In a news release about the charges, she said: “The truthfulness and credibility of police officers is foundational to the fair administration of justice, and to CPD’s effectiveness as a law enforcement agency.”

Grace, Kriv’s attorney, noted that the criminal charges are not related to his duties as a police officer. “He understands the importance of accountability by all citizens when it comes to paying his outstanding tickets and looks forward to resolving this matter by making good on any oversights he may have,” Grace said.

In late March, a Cook County judge called out, “Jeffrey Kriv,” and the former officer stepped forward to be arraigned. He pleaded not guilty. Each offense is punishable by up to five years in prison.

When reached by phone, Kriv said he didn’t want to talk because “nobody gets a fair shake with the media” and his attorney had advised him not to say anything.

“When it is all said and done, this will be dismissed,” he said. “There is nothing to it.”

Kriv got three more speeding tickets soon after he retired in mid-January. He didn’t contest any of them, and he paid the fines.

Then he got three more speeding tickets.

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Melissa Sanchez contributed reporting.

by Corey G. Johnson

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

From the movie theater to the shopping mall, inside a church and a synagogue, through the grocery aisle and into the classroom, gun violence has invaded every corner of American life. It is a social epidemic no vaccine can stem, a crisis with no apparent end. Visual evidence of the carnage spills with numbing frequency onto TV shows and floods the internet. Each new shooting brings the lists of loved ones lost, the galleries of their smiling photos and the videos of the police response. And each mass shooting brings another surge of national outrage.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, guns became the leading killer of children and teens in 2020, overtaking car crashes, drug overdoses and disease for the first time in the nation’s history. Yet as the one-year anniversary of the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, passes, nagging questions loom.

Why haven’t lawmakers acted with forceful correctives? What will it take to regain a sense of safety? When will change happen? And how, exactly, did America end up here?

Ryan Busse, former executive at Kimber America, a major gun manufacturer, recently shared his thoughts on these questions with ProPublica. He was vice president of sales at Kimber America from 1995 to 2020 but broke with the industry and has become a gun safety advocate. He testified about mass shootings and irresponsible marketing last July in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and authored the book “Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America.”

In June 2021, he became a senior adviser for Giffords, a gun violence prevention group led by Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman gravely injured in 2011 during a mass shooting. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where are we, as a nation, on guns? And where do you think we need to go?

I think we might be on the precipice of things getting much worse. I think this Bruen decision, the Supreme Court ruling, quite possibly will unleash so many lawsuits against so many counted-upon regulations that citizens may wake up to the equivalent of, like, no stop signs in their town anymore, except for it’ll be on gun regulation. [The Bruen decision has been called one of the court’s most significant rulings on guns in decades. It struck down New York’s concealed carry law as unconstitutional, saying it conflicted with the Second Amendment.]

What do you attribute this trend to?

As I write in my book, there was a time not that long ago, maybe about 15 to 20 years ago, when the industry understood a sort of fragile social contract needed to be maintained on something as immensely powerful as the freedom to own guns. And so the industry didn’t do certain things. It didn’t advertise in egregiously irresponsible ways. It didn’t put, you know, growth, company growth, above all other things. There were just these unspoken codes of conduct the industry knew not to violate. And those seem to have broken down. And now it’s kind of a victory at all costs. And sadly, I think there’s a lot of cost.

What do you say to people who make the argument that guns are protected by the Second Amendment and that yes, a deranged person here or there may do something bad, but is it fair to punish or penalize law-abiding gun owners with unnecessary or extra government intervention?

I am a gun owner. I hunt and shoot with my boys. I want to continue doing that. I believe and I think that I have a right to do those things. On the other hand, I do not believe that right can exist without a commensurate amount of responsibility. And that responsibility either has to be voluntary or it has to be legislated.

I don't think universal background checks are an infringement. I just don’t buy that. I think it’s part of the responsibility of exercising this right. I don’t think strengthened red flag laws are in any way an infringement. I think that’s what we must do as responsible citizens. I don’t think that controlling irresponsible marketing is an infringement on our Second Amendment rights. In fact, I think it’s our responsibility to do it. I think there’s a small thread of truth in the position you portray, but democracies function in a sort of carefully balanced gray area. And I think our balance in the country right now is way, way off.

Are there others in the gun industry who share your view?

There were people who agreed with everything I said before the sort of radical shifts started to happen in about 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. But, you know, as with most things, when you earn a paycheck from something, you’re likely to be greatly influenced by it. And so, over time, most of the people in the industry have either converted to a true belief in the sort of radicalized Second Amendment absolutism that now I think is very dangerous, or they have just left the industry. There is only a place for complete, 100% devotion.

What caused the radicalization?

It was a combination of factors. After Columbine in 1999, the National Rifle Association in very well-publicized meetings now, thanks to sleuthing and digging by reporters at NPR, we now have tapes of the meetings where they literally said, are we going to be part of the solution here? Or maybe we can use these things to drum up hate and fear in our members? We might even be able to use them to drive membership. And they chose the latter. They perfected that system for about seven or eight years, getting their feet underneath them. They figured out it can drive politics. And then an explosion hit. That explosion was the future Black president leading in the polls in 2007. And then Barack Obama won in 2008. So you have this sort of uncapping of hate and conspiracy, much of it racially driven, that the NRA was tapping into. Prior to 2007, people in the United States never purchased more than 7 million guns in a single year. By the time Barack Obama left office, the United States was purchasing almost 17 million guns a year. And so I think it’s impossible to discount the degree to which Obama’s presidency lit this whole thing on fire.

When Trump was elected, there was what was called in the industry the “Trump Slump,” meaning since a Republican was elected, the fear of Obama was gone, and Hillary Clinton didn’t get elected. The sort of fear and conspiracy subsided, and sales stagnated for a little while because the industry and gun owners believed that the threat had passed. But with Trump, we experienced a whole new, never seen before level of fear, racism, hatred and conspiracy that culminated in 2020. In that year, you had George Floyd, COVID lockdowns, Black Lives Matter, Antifa protests and Kyle Rittenhouse. I mean, it’s the most tumultuous year any of us can remember with the most hatred and conspiracy and nastiness. None of us can remember a year like that. In that year, the United States consumers bought almost 23 million guns in a single year, more than three times as much as before Barack Obama took office.

Last year there was a rash of youth-related mass shootings. Uvalde comes to mind. The tragedy at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket comes to mind. How do race, conspiracy and these political headwinds you mention result in young people committing these massacres?

When those things happen, they’re not products of one particular event or series of events. They are the culmination of lots of turmoil in our society. And we’ve always had turmoil in our society, and every society has always had turmoil in it. What no other society has had is 425 million guns and this culture, on the right, that tells young men that to be real young men, they must purchase an AR-15 and go out and solve their problems. The industry 15 years ago would not even allow the AR-15 to be used or displayed at its own trade shows. I mean, they were locked up in a corner. You had to have military or police credentials to even go in there. Now, they’re spread around like crazy, and the marketing campaigns are so aimed at young men that in some ways, it’s not shocking that Uvalde or Buffalo or [the July 4 shooting at a parade in the Chicago suburb of] Highland Park, all three heinous crimes, all three committed with AR-15s, all by very young men. It’s not shocking to me that those happen; it’s shocking to me that they don’t happen every day.

What is more powerful in this country right now than social media advertising? And if it’s not so powerful, why do all the gun companies and the tactical gear companies maintain such polished social media accounts? Advertising is something that happens over time, and creates a perception and creates brands, and creates ways of thinking. And I think that certainly happened with the Buffalo shooter.

The Buffalo shooter wrote in his manifesto about perusing YouTube videos, social media accounts, all the places where tactical gear — which are some of the most egregiously advertised items in the firearms industry right now, bulletproof vests, helmets, gloves, all things that weren’t marketed at all 20 years ago. He studied very carefully what bulletproof vest to wear, what tactical gear to wear, he used the exact same gun that was used in Sandy Hook, the Bushmaster XM-15, the same gun that was advertised in [Remington Arms’] man card campaign that told young men: “You don’t have a man card if you don’t have one of these rifles. And you do have a man card if you do have one of them.”

Now, can you draw a direct line from that ad to those two shooters? I don’t know that you can draw a direct line, but I think you could damn sure draw an obtuse line. I mean, two young men who, obviously, I mean, come on, like, that’s not a mistake. And if advertising doesn’t matter, then why are they doing it?

What are the fixes? Are there any fixes?

What did Winston Churchill say? “Americans will eventually do the right thing.” And I think we may be in for more ugliness before we do the right thing. Some of that will be demanding that the Supreme Court not apply foolish originalist reasoning to instances like this. So part of that will be demanding that either through public pressure or through eventually, in the long game, replacing those justices with ones who don’t believe that way.

The other thing is, we’re going to have to, as a society, just rise up and demand responsibility, the same kind of responsibility that the industry that I worked in once imposed on itself.

You know, I tell the story that 15, 20 years ago, the industry named guns like the Smith & Wesson 629 or the Remington 870 because you had [industry] attorneys that knew that even the names of guns could be important. They could encourage people to do irresponsible things. And so you’d never wanted to even name things that might encourage bad things to happen. Now we have a gun called the Wilson Urban Super Sniper. I mean, what are you supposed to do with that? We now have a gun called the Ultimate Arms Warmonger. What are you supposed to do with that? We now have an AR-15 company called Rooftop Arms, as in when you don’t get what you want, you vote from the rooftops. And what happened in Highland Park? A kid got up and killed people from a rooftop. You see the old self-imposed responsibility; those old norms of behavior have been just completely trashed.

So we can, as a society, demand reinstatement of those norms. Those have nothing to do with laws. They don’t require legislation. They don’t require two-thirds of the vote in the Senate. We can demand that. And we may have to.

Justin Cooper, chief of operations at Rooftop Arms, told ProPublica the business name stems from the origins of founders and is in no way related to “voting from the rooftops,” past events or political causes, or views.

ProPublica contacted Remington Arms and Bushmaster for comment but didn’t receive a response.

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Clarification, June 5, 2023: This article has been updated to clarify that guns have become the leader cause of death for teens as well as children.

by Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Mountain State Spotlight. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Federal authorities sued West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s business empire on Wednesday, seeking $7.6 million in unpaid environmental fines and overdue fees. The move adds to Justice’s growing legal and debt problems and comes just a month into his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Justice Department lawyers filed the suit to collect fines assessed by the Interior Department against 13 companies for strip mining violations that “pose health and safety risks or threaten environmental harm” to neighboring communities.

For years, Justice has been dogged by allegations that his family businesses haven’t paid their business and regulatory debts. In 2020, an investigation by ProPublica and Mountain State Spotlight found that the total judgments and settlements owed by Justice family businesses had reached $140 million. The review found hundreds of lawsuits that dated back more than 30 years, with many filed by workers, vendors, business partners and government agencies, alleging they hadn’t been paid.

This week’s lawsuit is the third time in the last two months that either federal agencies have pursued legal action against the Justice companies or a court has ruled against them over fines for environmental and worker safety violations. In April, a federal appeals court ruled that Justice companies must pay $2.5 million in fines assessed by the Environmental Protection Agency. In mid-May, the Labor Department sought a judge’s help in collecting millions of dollars in fines, alleging Justice companies are habitually late making payments related to violations that could have endangered the health and safety of coal miners.

The new suit cites more than 130 violations and more than 40 more serious enforcement orders issued between 2018 and 2022. The Justice companies previously argued that the government had reneged on a deal to resolve some of these violations for a $250,000 fine. But a federal judge threw out their case.

In response to this week’s suit, Justice sought to divert attention from the substance of the case by implying that the White House was using regulatory agencies for political purposes. “Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and the Democrats have seen the polling that show me winning this U.S. Senate race. Now the Biden Administration has started their political games to beat me,” the governor said in a tweet.

Justice, a hugely popular Republican, is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is often the swing vote on key legislation.

Government lawyers said the underlying violations included the failure to maintain and ensure the stability of a dam, violating pollution limits and not controlling erosion or sediment from mine sites.

Christopher R. Kavanaugh, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said in a statement that the companies “failed to remedy those violations and were ordered over 50 times to cease mining activities until their violations were abated.”

Kavanaugh continued, “The filing of this complaint continues the process of holding defendants accountable for jeopardizing the health and safety of the public and our environment.”

In addition to unpaid environmental penalties, the case also seeks nearly $200,000 in unpaid Abandoned Mine Land fees, which fund the federal cleanup of coal mines abandoned prior to 1977. West Virginia has more than 175,000 acres of abandoned mine sites awaiting cleanup, the second-highest total in the country. According to one estimate, the Interior Department program for cleanups is projected to have a shortfall of more than $25 billion nationwide by 2050.

As the mining industry continues a downward economic spiral, reclamation of abandoned mines is an increasing concern in coalfield communities, especially in the wake of corporate bankruptcies that threaten to shift the costs to taxpayers.

The total amount sought by the government also includes interest and administrative expenses.

Justice has said that he and his family’s companies always pay their debts. The governor was not named as a defendant in the Interior Department suit, but 12 of the 13 companies involved were listed among his business holdings on his most recent financial disclosure filed with the West Virginia Ethics Commission.

The new lawsuit does name the governor’s son, James C. “Jay” Justice III, as a defendant. The suit states that Jay Justice is a “controller” of 12 of the companies named in the complaint and that he was previously assessed fines as a corporate owner, as allowed by the federal strip mine law.

Representatives for Jim Justice’s businesses and for Jay Justice did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

Four years ago, Jay Justice issued a news release after the family’s coal firms sued the Interior Department over what was then $4.2 million in unpaid strip mining penalties and fees. The companies alleged that they had a verbal deal to resolve the matter for $250,000. But, they said, the agency backed out. Fearing a government collection action like this one, the Justices sued to try to enforce that verbal deal.

“We don’t want to have to go to court to get the government to do the right thing and live up to its end of the bargain,” Jay Justice said at the time, “but we can’t sit back and let the government take advantage of our good faith efforts to resolve this matter.”

Five months after that case was filed, a federal judge in Virginia dismissed it.

by Ian MacDougall and Sergio Hernandez

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, raising concerns about the future of other rights rooted in Supreme Court rulings. Although most rights are secured by statutes and regulations, others are guarantees extrapolated by the court from the often abstract language of the Constitution. Some of these are recent rights, like the right to carry a handgun in public. But many are longstanding, like the right to be read a Miranda warning by police before being interrogated, and trace their origins to the liberal majorities that presided on the court from the 1950s through the 1970s, an era often called the “rights revolution.” Because these rights were established by the court, the court alone gets to decide whether to preserve, shrink or unmake them.

To get a better sense of which rights may be at risk — in whole or in part — ProPublica scoured judicial opinions, academic articles and public remarks by sitting justices. Some justices, like Clarence Thomas, have had decadeslong careers and lengthy paper trails. By contrast, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest justice, has almost no prior record. We found dozens of rights that at least one sitting justice has questioned.

Check out our interactive, which allows you to explore these rights and the objections levied against them. We include federal legislation that’s been introduced to protect a given right, as well as lawsuits active in lower courts that could become vehicles for the justices to revisit existing rights in the future.

by Ian MacDougall and Sergio Hernandez

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, raising concerns about the future of other rights rooted in Supreme Court rulings. Although most rights are secured by statutes and regulations, others are guarantees extrapolated by the court from the often abstract language of the Constitution. Some of these are recent rights, like the right to carry a handgun in public. But many are longstanding, like the right to be read a Miranda warning by police before being interrogated, and trace their origins to the liberal majorities that presided on the court from the 1950s through the 1970s, an era often called the “rights revolution.” Because these rights were established by the court, the court alone gets to decide whether to preserve, shrink or unmake them.

To get a better sense of which rights may be at risk — in whole or in part — ProPublica scoured judicial opinions, academic articles and public remarks by sitting justices. Some justices, like Clarence Thomas, have had decadeslong careers and lengthy paper trails. By contrast, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest justice, has almost no prior record. We found dozens of rights that at least one sitting justice has questioned.

Check out our interactive, which allows you to explore these rights and the objections levied against them. We include federal legislation that’s been introduced to protect a given right, as well as lawsuits active in lower courts that could become vehicles for the justices to revisit existing rights in the future.

by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Anchorage Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Two years ago, in May 2021, the Anchorage Assembly gave $1.6 million to a little-known charity that said it would help people find homes and addiction treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the time, local governments across the country were awash in money from a federal program known as the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. Anchorage city leaders had $50 million to hand out to local applicants, and the money moved fast. The nonprofit House of Transformations received one of the largest awards.

Left unsaid in the appropriations talks was that the state of Alaska had permanently banned the founder of the nonprofit, Rosalina Mavaega, from serving as a Medicaid provider in 2015. The punishment resulted from a medical assistance fraud investigation and remains in effect. Mavaega’s husband, Esau Fualema, who is a co-founder of House of Transformations, separately pleaded no contest to criminally negligent homicide in 2008 and failed a background check to work at Mavaega’s prior company.

Mavaega is at least the second grant applicant with a public record of fraud allegations to receive COVID-19-related money from the city. In the other case, Revive Alaska Community Services received $750,000 from the Assembly, also in 2021, despite its president, Prince Nwankudu, pleading guilty in 2012 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. (Nwankudu did not respond to interview requests and emailed questions; Revive Alaska has not been asked to return the funds.)

Mavaega is a political supporter of embattled Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, though the grant she received came before he took office. Bronson later appointed her to serve on the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, which is tasked with investigating allegations of discrimination, and to serve as the business representative on the city housing and homelessness committee.

Bronson kept Mavaega on the city commissions even after the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica first asked about her Medicaid ban in March. The newsrooms have subsequently learned that federal investigators are looking into the city commissioner and her businesses.

The IRS is seeking information about city grants awarded to Mavaega and her affiliated businesses since 2021. One Anchorage business owner contacted by investigators said officials representing the Department of Treasury and the Small Business Administration asked for information about House of Transformations, “their business dealings” and bitcoin investments.

When a reporter visited Mavaega’s office on May 18, an employee said she was not available but was scheduled to talk with investigators that afternoon. She did not respond to subsequent emails and phone calls seeking comment.

Fualema also did not respond to emails, phone messages or an interview request delivered to his home.

The mayor’s office confirmed the existence of the federal investigation on Thursday, in response to renewed questions from the news outlets.

Bronson spokesperson Corey Allen Young said investigators contacted the city in February and have requested information about Mavaega and at least six of her affiliated businesses and nonprofits. Young said the city could not provide a copy of any subpoenas under city and federal law. A spokesperson for the IRS said federal law forbids the agency from discussing any potential investigation.

Asked if the mayor has removed Mavaega from the two city commissions, Young said no. “The Mayor doesn’t have the unilateral ability to remove members from commissions,” he wrote in an email.

Bronson’s administration has been rocked by a slew of investigations and resignations since the former municipal manager he appointed wrote a letter in January saying she had been fired for “attempting to convince (Bronson) to cease unlawful and unethical activities using municipal resources.” Bronson has declined to talk about the accusations, citing potential litigation.

Since then, the acting city attorney, Bronson’s deputy chief of staff, the city’s human resources director, the mayor’s chief of staff, the Solid Waste Services director, the library’s deputy director, the city’s chief fiscal officer and the maintenance and operations director have all resigned.

One of the last of Bronson’s original team, Chief Equity Officer Uluao “Junior” Aumavae, is the brother of House of Transformation director Elizabeth Aumavae. Junior Aumavae and Elizabeth Aumavae did not respond to interview requests or emailed questions.

House of Transformations and various limited liability companies that use the same office address and same name, or similar names, are among a constellation of new nonprofits and businesses Mavaega created in recent years.

Some of the entities nest within a pyramid of holding companies. For example, Mavaega and Fualema created a business called 3XB Holdings Group LLC in August 2016. That business, in turn, owns at least 10 other businesses, including Signet Ring Bible College LLC. The Bible College LLC in turn owns Signet Ring Vocational Center, which in turn owns House of Transformation Beauty Center.

The news agencies found that Mavaega successfully applied for at least 29 separate business licenses since January 2020. According to business registration paperwork, the new entities are intended to provide services including temporary shelter, trade school classes, “community housing services,” beauty salons and substance abuse treatment.

At least 10 of the businesses are based in a Midtown Anchorage office building.

A woman there who identified herself as Lynda and said she is a member of the House of Transformation board of directors said witnesses had appeared before a grand jury on May 16.

“There’s an investigation going on, it’s just a matter of we don’t know what’s next,” she said.

The Alaska Medicaid Fraud Control Unit charged Mavaega and her business at the time, A Loving Care PCA, with two counts of medical assistance fraud in 2014. According to the state Law Department, prosecutors dropped the criminal charges and referred the case to the Alaska Health Department for “administrative enforcement action.”

The state Division of Senior and Disability Services subsequently moved to permanently bar Loving Care and Mavaega from being Medicaid providers based on the same allegations laid out in the criminal filing. The division gave four reasons for the ban: violating background check requirements, submitting billing claims without adequate documentation, offering a rebate for Medicaid referrals and submitting claims without supporting documentation.

As a result, Maveaga’s business can no longer bill any federal health care program, including Medicare, Medicaid and Denali KidCare for its services.

Mavaega requested an administrative hearing to challenge the suspension, but an administrative law judge upheld the ban Nov. 27, 2015. According to that decision, “These violations consisted of ongoing billing errors and allowing individuals to be involved/employed at Loving Care, who had either been barred from participation in the Medicaid program due to the results of the required criminal history background check, or who had not undergone the required criminal history background check.”

Mavaega appealed the ban in 2016, arguing the penalty was too severe and relied on hearsay evidence, but a state Superior Court judge upheld the punishment.

Mavaega and Fualema incorporated a nonprofit called House of Transformation in July 2019. In February 2020, they incorporated another nonprofit, House of Transformations, with an “s.”

Also in 2020, Mavaega started a business with Juan Carlos Reed, a former client of House of Transformations who had been sued the prior year by the state of Alaska for unfair trade practices. Reed had falsely claimed to be a licensed contractor and falsely claimed to be a military veteran, the state said. A judge in 2021 ordered him to pay the state $75,000 in civil penalties. (Reed has not paid the fine, according to the state Department of Law.)

On Tuesday, Reed said he did not lie about being a military veteran and said he was unaware of the judgment against him. Paperwork that the House of Transformations filed with the state in January 2021 listed Reed as secretary for the nonprofit. Reed said he was not involved in any grants received by House of Transformations and did not know he had been listed as an officer for the nonprofit. He said he was not in Alaska in 2021.

“The only thing I know about this situation is because I was subpoenaed to testify as a witness,” Reed said. He would not say when he received the subpoena or who sent it.

The business created by Mavaega and Reed, called Alaska Executive Independent Paralegals, is listed as “involuntarily dissolved” on the Alaska Division of Corporations, Business and Professional Licensing website. Reed said that the business never got off the ground and he intentionally let the license lapse.

In 2021, Mavaega asked the city for more than $1.6 million under the name of the House of Transformations and another of her businesses, Signet Ring. The Assembly awarded the money in May 2021 to “provide housing, addiction treatment, vocational and apprenticeship training, and other wrap around services for persons experiencing homelessness.”

Mavaega said at the time that House of Transformations had 50 clients living in three locations.

The grant included $496,660 for House of Transformations “general operating expenses,” $454,260 for Signet Ring “general operating expenses,” $326,345 for employment and addiction treatment services and $345,900 for “Signet Ring vocational and apprenticeship funds for students.”

The money made Mavaega’s nonprofit one of the biggest recipients in the first round of ARPA grant awards from the city. House of Transformations received more than city agencies such as the fire and police departments, and it received the 13th overall largest grant out of the 64 awarded.

The chairperson of the Assembly at the time, Felix Rivera, said no one on the panel back then was aware of Mavaega’s ban by the state Health Department. He said the Assembly does not have the resources to investigate all grant applicants.

“They were relatively new, so we didn’t know too much about them,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that ARPA funds didn’t go to just established nonprofits.”

Bronson took office July 1, 2021.

When a second round of ARPA grants became available in 2022, Mavaega applied again. This time she requested an additional $1.4 million.

The Assembly did not approve the second round of funding. Rivera said the Assembly wanted to spread the funding among new recipients.

In September, Bronson also appointed Mavaega to represent business interests on the city’s Housing, Homeless and Neighborhood Development Commission.

Anchorage’s vulnerable and highly visible homeless population is a major concern among residents and policymakers. The city’s largest sports arena has served as a mass shelter for most of the past three years. Twenty-four people who were believed to be homeless died outdoors in the city in 2022, and an additional eight died outdoors in April of this year — the most ever recorded in a month since the Daily News began tracking outdoor deaths in 2017.

The Daily News and ProPublica found that one of the mayor’s top advisers in 2021 worked to prevent a city-owned hotel from being used to house the homeless. Bronson appointed the adviser’s business partner in a commercial real estate company to a city commission even though the partner was awaiting trial in a felony stalking case. The commissioner resigned after the newsrooms asked about the appointment.

Bronson named Mavaega to the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission in November. The newsrooms first asked Bronson in March why Mavaega was appointed to city commissions despite being banned from serving as a Medicaid provider. At the time, the newsrooms were reporting on the Equal Rights Commission, which has been hobbled by a backlog of open cases and investigator resignations.

A Bronson spokesperson did not answer the question directly; Young said the office was “reviewing this information.”

Bronson has referred to Mavaega as the pastor for Alaska Revival Center A.R.C. According to its Facebook page, the revival center is a church that is based in the same Tudor Road office as House of Transformation.

She also advertises her services as a real estate agent and lists one of the House of Transformation client housing locations among the properties she recently sold.

On Thursday, the mayor responded to questions asking about the federal investigation.

According to the mayor’s office, investigators are seeking for information about Mavaega, House of Transformation, Signet Ring, a business called PIMHA that lists Mavaega as one of its officers, and limited liability companies known as HOT, HOT1, HOT2 and HOT3.

The city has not yet provided copies of public records, including House of Transformations grant applications and awarded grants requested by the Daily News.

by Topher Sanders, Dan Schwartz and Ruth Baron

ProPublica has been reporting on railroad safety for more than a year. We recently published investigations on the safety issues posed by longer trains and blocked railroad crossings. Now, we’re investigating the challenges that confront railroad employees who are injured on the job, railroaders who report a safety concern and the pressure on managers to reduce reports of unsafe conditions and injury numbers. We’ve heard from many railroad employees that being injured or reporting a safety concern can be fraught with consequences. We’re taking those concerns seriously and working on several stories that will investigate these themes.

To do this right, we need to hear from as many people who work in the system as possible. This means railroaders in all positions, managers and people familiar with the Federal Railroad Administration.

by Richard A. Webster, Verite

This article was produced for Verite by Richard A. Webster, who was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana may have violated the civil rights of a 16-year-old autistic boy when deputies pinned him to the pavement, handcuffed and shackled, as officers sat on his back for more than nine minutes, according to a “statement of interest” filed this month by the Department of Justice as part of a civil rights lawsuit against JPSO.

The teen, Eric Parsa, died on the scene in January 2020. The sheriff’s office has also recently faced a number of other lawsuits alleging wrongful death, excessive force and racial discrimination by deputies. The sheriff’s office was the subject of a yearlong investigation by ProPublica and WRKF and WWNO starting in 2021, which disclosed evidence of racial discrimination and violence by deputies; after the first story ran, the American Civil Liberties Union called on federal prosecutors to investigate the department.

Regarding the DOJ filing, the sheriff’s office maintains that its deputies did not discriminate against Parsa based on his disability — and thus did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act — because Parsa posed a threat to himself, the public and law enforcement officers.

But the DOJ said that evidence submitted in the case appears to show that Parsa posed no danger, and that deputies were aware of the teenager’s disability and did nothing to modify their procedures or actions to ensure his safety, as required by law.

“A reasonable jury could thus find that Defendants discriminated against E.P. based on disability,” DOJ attorneys said in their May 12 statement about the Parsa case, noting the only word Parsa uttered throughout the deadly ordeal was “firetruck.”

The coroner ruled the teen’s death an accident as a result of “excited delirium,” a controversial diagnosis that is listed as a cause of death for a number of people who died in police custody. The coroner also cited “prone positioning” as a contributing factor. But Parsa’s family disputes the finding that his death was accidental, saying it should be classified as a homicide. In January 2021, they sued Sheriff Joe Lopinto and seven deputies, claiming the sheriff’s office violated Parsa’s constitutional and civil rights, as well as his rights under the ADA.

The Justice Department files statements of interest in civil lawsuits to “explain to the court the interests of the United States in litigation between private parties,” according to a 2017 article in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Since January 2020, the DOJ has filed at least 18 other statements of interest in disability rights cases. In this case, the department’s interest is its responsibility to enforce Title II of the ADA, which prohibits law enforcement agencies from denying individuals with disabilities the “opportunity to participate in or benefit from their services.”

The department’s May 12 statement followed a motion from the sheriff’s office for federal Judge Wendy Vitter to issue a partial summary judgment, which would toss out the ADA claims without taking them to trial. The motion is pending.

On Jan. 19, 2020, Parsa’s parents took him to play laser tag at the Westgate Shopping Center in Metairie. As they were leaving, he experienced a disability-related meltdown, according to the family’s lawsuit. Surveillance footage shows the boy repeatedly slapping his own head in the parking lot, then slapping and wrestling his father for several minutes.

A nearby business manager contacted JPSO Deputy Chad Pitfield and informed him that a child with special needs was having a violent episode, Pitfield testified in a September 2022 deposition. When Pitfield arrived in his patrol car with the lights flashing, Parsa became even more agitated. He once again began slapping his own head, then slapped Pitfield, who took him to the ground, the video shows.

At least six more deputies arrived in four patrol cars and two unmarked vehicles. They handcuffed and shackled the teen as three deputies took turns sitting on his back, with one putting him in a chokehold. About 10 minutes later, deputies noticed Parsa had gone “limp” and had urinated, according to the lawsuit. His mother screamed that they were choking him. Only then did they roll him into a “recovery position,” as filings describe it. But it was too late. He died on the scene.

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement agencies make “reasonable modifications” to their policies, practices and procedures to ensure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against or denied services.

In Parsa’s case, the DOJ said deputies could have dispatched crisis intervention officers, used de-escalation strategies, or given the teenager time and space to calm down as he didn’t pose a significant safety threat. Instead of sitting on him as he lay facedown on the pavement, deputies could have rolled Parsa onto his side, stood him up or sat him in a vehicle.

The sheriff’s office maintained in court documents that such policy modifications are only required once two factors are in place: the scene is secured and there is no longer a threat to public safety or life. JPSO maintains that neither condition had been met in Parsa’s case, and therefore the deputies’ actions did not violate the ADA.

“The video speaks for itself and clearly shows that the scene was never secure prior to E.P.’s demise,” the sheriff’s office’s attorneys wrote in a May 1 motion for partial summary judgment, referring to surveillance footage taken from the scene.

Video of Eric Parsa’s restraint and death was captured by a nearby security camera.

The video shows that at about 1:29 p.m, Pitfield pinned Parsa to the ground by sitting on his back. From that point forward, Parsa did not move from that spot. At one point, he was surrounded by seven deputies and seven JPSO vehicles. An ambulance arrived at 1:39 p.m. and a few minutes later paramedics took Parsa’s lifeless body away on a stretcher.

In reviewing the video, the DOJ reached different conclusions from those put forward by the sheriff’s office.

“Critically, nothing … suggests that E.P. had a weapon, that officers ever reasonably suspected he had a weapon, or that there was a threat to human life,” the DOJ said in its statement. “The record contains no evidence that any bystanders were at risk.”

There is evidence, however, that deputies “could have provided any number of reasonable accommodations once the scene was secure, and thereby afforded the child a safe and effective law enforcement response,” DOJ attorneys concluded.

Statements provided by deputies who were present — and who acknowledged that they knew or assumed Parsa was autistic or had special needs — also seem to contradict the sheriff’s statement that the scene was not secure. They said that while he was on the ground, he was “calm” or “under control” and was not resisting.

“Everything was fine,” two deputies said.

by Hannah Dreyfus

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

A bill signed into law this week in Colorado prohibits family courts from ordering children to participate in reunification programs that isolate them from a trusted caregiver. Many of these programs purport to offer treatments for parental alienation, a psychological disorder that has been rejected by mainstream scientific circles but continues to influence custody decisions.

The new law, which takes effect immediately, also requires experts who advise the court on custody cases to have training in working with victims of domestic violence and child abuse.

“We have to keep pushing the boundaries of our constitutional power to hold courts accountable for the safety of our kids,” Rep. Meg Froelich, who co-sponsored the bill, told ProPublica.

State lawmakers have credited ProPublica’s reporting for exposing the need for reforms. A ProPublica investigation last year found that Colorado custody evaluators who had themselves been accused of domestic violence were advising the court on disputes involving allegations of domestic violence and child abuse. ProPublica has also reported on court-ordered reunification camps and found that certain programs use physical restraint, threats and the removal of personal items — including food, clothing and shower supplies — to force children to comply with treatment protocols.

The legislation makes Colorado the first state to pass a law based on the federal Keeping Children Safe From Family Violence Act, also known as Kayden’s Law. The federal law, enacted in 2022, is named after a 7-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was murdered by her father during court ordered custody time.

Advocates say they hope other states will follow Colorado’s lead and enact similar legislation.

For Valarie Underwood, a Colorado mother who attended a ceremony for the bill’s signing, the issue is personal. She had full custody of her children until August, when a magistrate in Weld County, Colorado, ordered the children to attend Turning Points for Families, a reunification program directed by New York-based social worker Linda Gottlieb.

Magistrate Annette Kundelius had concluded the children were victims of “severe parental alienation” and the reunification program was needed to repair their relationship with their father. Kundelius was not available to comment, according to her clerk.

They’ve not been allowed to return home or regularly communicate with or see Underwood since then.

Before the magistrate’s order, an arbitrator had, based on testimony from the children’s therapists, restricted the father’s parenting time, saying not doing so would “endanger” their health and “significantly” impair their emotional development. Both children were resisting visitation with their father, according to court documents.

The father asked the court to reevaluate the parenting plan, arguing Underwood had launched a campaign of parental alienation against him in order to undermine his relationship with the children.

In an email to ProPublica, the father declined to comment, saying it would take “a great deal of time” to explain his family's case.

The magistrate agreed with the father and ordered the children to attend Turning Points, after which they would be prohibited from having contact with their mother. Underwood was ordered to cover the program's cost, which is $15,000 for a four-day intervention.

Such orders effectively supersede the court’s parenting arrangement by transfering to the person running the program the power to decide if and when a parent can contact their child, regardless of the court’s previous custody rulings. The “no-contact” period lasts a minimum of 90-days, according to the program’s protocol, though courts frequently give Turning Points counselors the power to prolong treatment indefinitely — until the program counselor determines the treatment has been successful.

Jennifer Harman, an associate professor of psychology at Colorado State University who defends parental alienation as a genuine disorder, testified on behalf of the father and advised the court to send the children to Turning Points. Despite never having met the children before her court testimony, she said they had been severely alienated by their mother, according to court documents. In 2021, Harman published an evaluation of the Turning Points program in which she found it to be safe and effective; she later clarified that the program's high success rate was self-reported by Gottlieb, who also helped design and execute the evaluation of her own program.

Harman did not respond to a request for comment.

Underwood’s daughter, then 15, kept a handwritten journal documenting her time in New York and experience in Gottlieb’s program. (ProPublica is quoting from the journal with her permission.) She described the day she had to leave her mom at the airport as “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” “It felt like a death in the family, tortured with no contact,” she journaled on Aug. 19.

The sessions with Gottlieb, which were recorded “for the court,” took place in her “sketchy apartment,” the teenager wrote. “The plan is just to go with what Linda says so that we can see mom as soon as possible.”

In response to a request for comment, Gottlieb told ProPublica to “keep the publicity coming.” Gottlieb has previously defended her methods and called ProPublica's reporting libelous but not identified any inaccuracies in the reporting. She has told ProPublica that Turning Points only accepts cases by court order, and that demand for her program has prompted her to add new locations in Texas and California.

After they returned to Colorado, both children moved in with their father and the no-contact order with their mother began. During this time, both children ran away from their father’s house and reported that their father was verbally and physically aggressive toward them, sometimes resulting in injuries, according to police reports. Police did not charge the father but reported the incident to the Colorado Department of Human Services, which closed the case with no findings against the father.

The father did not deny the claims. In October, he told police that he had to “physically grab and hold” his daughter when he said she would not give him back his cellphone, according to the police report. He told police he was trying to “manage and control his children” because of “behavior issues.”

After 90 days, the court granted the father’s request to extend the no-contact period. The family was ordered to continue the Turning Points treatment with Sharon Feder, an unlicensed psychotherapist who a court spokesperson said was removed from Colorado’s roster of approved custody evaluators for violating the role’s required standards. Last month, Feder authorized Underwood to resume weekly supervised visits with her now-14-year-old son but not with her daughter.

Feder did not respond to a request for comment.

Underwood was one of many parents who attended Thursday’s bill signing ceremony. Because Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is traveling abroad, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera signed the bill during the ceremony as well as a second bill creating a task force to study training requirements for judges on domestic violence and sexual assault, among other forms of abuse.

Froelich said current court orders to attend reunification programs will not immediately be overturned, but the protective parent will be able to appeal the order based on the passage of the law.

“I’m grateful for this new law and hope future families won’t have to go through what my kids and I have gone through,” Underwood said. “But I’ve also missed out — I’m still missing out — on a critical time in my kids' lives.”

She wasn’t able to attend her son’s eighth grade graduation or her daughter’s golf tournaments. If she’s caught communicating with her kids in violation of court orders, the no-contact order could be extended. When her daughter went to prom in April, she wasn’t allowed to help her get ready or take pictures of her with her date. She stared for hours at social media posts showing her daughter in her powder blue dress, flowers on her wrist, hair pulled back from her face.

“You just don’t get those moments back.”

by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, Photography by Caleb Alvarado

Leer en español.

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Spanish-speaking dairy farm workers in Wisconsin, many of them undocumented immigrants, are not regular readers of our website. Most have never heard of ProPublica, let alone formed a trusting relationship with us. Some have low levels of literacy and poor internet connections because the farms they work on are remote. Connecting with them, both to conduct our reporting and to share our findings, is a challenge.

For months, Melissa Sanchez and Maryam Jameel have been reporting on conditions at these farms. But one of their earliest missions was crucial. They needed to find out how the workers got their news and make sure ProPublica’s reporting reached them and their communities. The reporters’ process underscores one of our central beliefs at ProPublica: Publishing a story about injustice isn’t enough if we don’t reach the people who are directly affected.

Back in February, when we released the tragic story of a child’s death on a Wisconsin dairy farm, we knew we had to do more than translate it into Spanish.

Sanchez and Jameel are both fluent Spanish speakers; they are both the daughters of immigrants and grew up speaking the language. Sanchez works out of our Midwest office in Chicago, and Jameel is an engagement reporter based in Washington, D.C. Early on in their reporting, they learned that dairy farm workers regularly use TikTok, sometimes making humorous videos of themselves dancing in dairy milking parlors. So the reporters, too, became active on the platform, chronicling their reporting trips to Wisconsin and documenting what they saw.

Sanchez and Jameel also developed relationships with hosts at several of the Spanish-language radio stations across the state. They knew that dairy farm workers have long hours and few days off. The radio shows serve as a public square. Workers get their news from the stations and call the hosts when they have been injured, gotten fired or had their wages withheld. Months before the story on Jefferson, the boy who died, was published, Sanchez appeared on one DJ’s show and spoke for nearly an hour in Spanish about the reporting she and Jameel were hoping to do.

The team also identified businesses in these rural communities that serve Spanish-speaking customers — the spots where immigrants wire money to their families, buy groceries or do their laundry. They visited more than 60 businesses across the state and hung up flyers seeking sources. At one business, a small store a few miles from where Jefferson died, Sanchez and Jameel connected with community members and learned how the official version of the child’s death did not match the account the community knew to be true.

The story we published after months of reporting showed how the sheriff’s deputy who responded to the scene mistranslated a key phrase and blamed Jefferson’s father for running him over with a piece of farm equipment rather than understanding that another worker had been driving the machine. Their search for the truth prompted local and state officials to call for police to use more effective translation practices when responding to scenes at which people only spoke a language other than English.

The story appeared on our website and on the front pages of nearly a dozen Gannett-owned newspapers in Wisconsin. We translated the story into Spanish and developed relationships with several Spanish-language publishing partners in Wisconsin and Central America, where many of the immigrant workers are from. These outlets included Mi Wisconsin and El Faro. We also commissioned an audio version of the story in Spanish. Jefferson’s father, who has a first-grade education, said he listened to the audio version several times. Hearing our story, he told the reporters, helped him finally understand how his son died, and how law enforcement so completely failed to understand what happened.

ProPublica had “Death on a Dairy Farm,” Jameel and Sanchez’s story about the death of a young boy named Jefferson, translated into Spanish and turned into booklets.

Sanchez and Jameel also worked with ProPublica interactive story designer Anna Donlan to design large postcards and a booklet that they could hand out at Latino stores and restaurants across the state. The materials included a QR code that took people to the audio version of the story. ProPublica paid to print thousands of the postcards and hundreds of the booklets and covered the cost of the written and audio translations.

The team mailed copies of the booklet to key sources, including Jefferson’s father and workers who had helped them and who wanted a physical copy of the story. And last week, Sanchez and Jameel hit the road to distribute them more widely.

Their first stop was a strip mall just outside Madison that has a Mexican bakery, La Concha, and Latino grocery stores. Dairy workers go there to send home remittances and buy familiar foods like nopales and plantain chips. The bakery manager’s eyes welled up with tears when she saw the booklet. She gently caressed a copy and told Sanchez and Jameel that she knew Jefferson and his father. She’d already read our story, but it clearly made an impact to see the physical copy of the booklet, and she asked if she could keep one for herself.

They spoke with maybe a dozen people in the store parking lot. When they approached people — in Spanish, of course — they introduced themselves, explained that they are reporting on a variety of issues affecting dairy workers, and said they are looking to talk to more people who work or have worked in the industry. Sometimes they conducted interviews on the spot; more often they tried to get a phone number and find a good time to reach the person to schedule an interview. They’re also receiving lots of tips for other stories.

In Sauk City, a village on the Wisconsin River not far from Madison, they visited a grocery store called La Bombita, where they spoke with the store owner, who’d been in the back butchering meat, and his son, who handled the counter. As they chatted, dairy worker customers came in and out. Jameel talked at length to one who, a few weeks after Jefferson’s death, had worked on the same farm.

Jameel and Sanchez taped up flyers and distributed booklets at Supermercado Guerrero in Sparta, Wisconsin, first image, and at La Bombita in Sauk City, Wisconsin, second image.

In Sparta, near the Mississippi River, the team spent about an hour at the Supermercado Guerrero. They watched a young Nicaraguan woman take a booklet and tuck it into her purse. They asked her if she’d heard of the story, and she said she had read it in Mi Wisconsin, one of the websites that republished the article. What’s more, her mother lives in El Rosario, the Nicaraguan community where Jefferson was buried. She happened to be visiting her mother when the boy’s body had just arrived from the U.S. and she learned of his death. She was clearly moved and agreed to be interviewed later about her experiences working on a dairy farm.

Sanchez gave the booklet and postcard to a worker she met who lived near a farm in Clark County. The documents served as calling cards and proof to skeptical workers that she and Jameel were legitimate reporters. A roommate of the worker called Sanchez soon after and recounted his experiences working on a farm. Then he shared the postcard with his aunt, who works on another dairy farm, and the aunt called Sanchez. That woman’s son had been crushed by farm machinery and nearly lost his leg a year earlier.

We have more stories planned about dairy farms in Wisconsin. If you would like to share your insight into or experiences with the dairy industry with us, you can get in touch with our reporters in English or contact them in Spanish. If you or someone you know reads news in Spanish, we have a newsletter that will deliver all our translated stories directly to your inbox.

Reaching diverse audiences, like dairy farm workers in Wisconsin, is part of a broader challenge facing ProPublica and journalism more generally. The question of how to reach audiences that are increasingly fragmented by age, political outlook, ethnicity, gender and other factors is central to what we’re trying to accomplish at ProPublica. As with the story of Jefferson’s death, we plan to do more than simply expect that readers will find the story and find us. We plan to take the story to them.