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The deadly shooting happened at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday on Bond Avenue.

Now that subscriber growth has slowed, streaming TV giants have taken the predictable turn of making their services shittier and more expensive to deliver Wall Street (impossibly) unlimited quarterly revenue growth. That means higher prices, annoying new surcharges, greater restrictions, more layoffs, more cut corners, worse customer service, more limited catalogs, lower quality engagement-bait content, and […]

Sarah Hannah, the former managing partner of a national consultancy premised on people-focused management, has joined Guarantee Electrical Company (GECO), a 100% employee-owned organization, as its first-ever Chief People Officer. Hannah will spearhead GECO’s comprehensive people strategy and talent development initiatives while strengthening the company’s distinctive employee-ownership culture. Hannah brings more than two decades of […]

A longtime state employee is accusing Missouri officials in a new lawsuit of subverting competitive bidding laws in order to steer lucrative technology contracts to a well-connected company, then demoting him when he raised red flags. In a lawsuit filed earlier this month in Cole County against the Missouri Office of Administration, Rodney Rice alleges “deliberate bias” toward St. Louis-based World Wide Technology in awarding state IT contracts. World Wide Technology, which is not named as…

The California company shirked its duties to have adequate cash and left customers without millions of dollars they were due, regulators say.

Century Coffee Co., the coffee shop located inside City Foundry in Midtown, will close later this month.

After a celebrated career as a St. Louis sportscaster, Brian McKenna has died at the age of 61. St. Louis police said McKenna was found Saturday morning at about 1 a.m., after officers responded to a call for a person struck by a car at Hampton Avenue and Nottingham Avenue. Police said paramedics pronounced McKenna dead at the scene. Officers said the driver remained on scene and is cooperating with the investigation. The driver was not injured. "Nobody wants it to be real," long-time friend Jeff…

From St. Louis Review:  St. Alphonsus Liguori “Rock” Church Parish has received a $500,000 grant to go toward preserving the church’s 120-plus-year-old stained-glass windows. The parish was one of 30 Black churches across the country — and the only Catholic church — to receive a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation through its […]

Police are searching for a man who fled from police in a pickup truck in Granite City and then fired shots in North St. Louis before bailing out and running away.

A longtime state employee is accusing Missouri officials in a new lawsuit of subverting competitive bidding laws in order to steer lucrative technology contracts to a well-connected company, then demoting him when he raised red flags.  In a lawsuit filed earlier this month in Cole County against the Missouri Office of Administration, Rodney Rice alleges […]

The city can only afford repairs to a few streets a year, officials said.

The Missouri House Budget Committee on Monday will debate a spending plan that eliminates one of Gov. Mike Kehoe’s major initiatives, adds dozens of new earmarked projects and dips into state general revenue reserves for about $1 billion. The annual markup session, where committee members seek changes in the revised budget unveiled March 12 by […]

The second half of the 2025 Missouri Legislative session begins today: STLPR's Sarah Kellogg has a preview of what lawmakers in Jefferson City hope to accomplish in the upcoming weeks.

From Edwardsville Intelligencer:  Construction on the state-of-the-art health science complex on the campus of SIUE has continued since the groundbreaking on Sept. 7, 2023. The health science complex will be the future home of SIUE’s School of Pharmacy and School of Nursing. In total, the complex will be 215,000 square feet. The School of Pharmacy […]

Historically, there has been the proverbial argument about whether the United States is a democracy or republic. The answer is the United States is both. But that question pales in comparison to the one looming over Americans today. Will America remain a democracy, a democratic republic? You might become indignant at the very question. Given […]

ST. LOUIS - We saw some much-needed rainfall late Saturday and early Sunday that will help with the area fire danger. We’ll also get a little break from the wind on Monday. Sunshine to start Monday with increasing clouds through the day with highs in the low 60s. Some spots of light rain will be [...]

The Mozilla Foundation says 30 companies should block web scrapers from ShadowDragon, an ICE contractor.

A contract from a controversial 1966 concert by The Beatles is one of the many pieces of Beatles memorabilia currently available at Rockaway Records, which boasts having over $1 million…

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by Beth Hundsdorfer and Molly Parker, Capitol News Illinois

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

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a wide-ranging investigation into Illinois’ treatment of people with developmental disabilities, examining whether the state provides adequate resources for community living and protects residents from harm in public institutions.

Tonya Piephoff, director of the Illinois Department of Human Services’ Division of Developmental Disabilities, informed employees of the investigation in a letter dated March 13 that was obtained by Capitol News Illinois.

“The investigation will examine whether the state unnecessarily institutionalizes, or puts at serious risk of institutionalization, adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” the letter stated. Illinois has long had one of the highest populations of people with developmental and intellectual disabilities living in state-run institutions in the nation.

The letter said the investigation also will look into abuse and neglect allegations of patients at three of the seven state-operated residential institutions run by IDHS, including the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center, in rural southern Illinois, which was the subject of an investigative series by Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica starting in 2022. The news organizations launched the series after the arrests of Choate staff members for abuse and neglect of residents; the articles documented instances of mistreatment by staff.

Gov. JB Pritzker said Friday that Illinois has already made significant changes to improve the safety of people with developmental disabilities living in state-run institutions, including installing cameras to help investigate mistreatment allegations. Pritzker said that individuals had moved to other institutions, and that the state had also enhanced the services provided to residents in those places. He did not address parts of the federal investigation focused on whether Illinois is relying too heavily on institutions to provide care instead of supporting people in community-based settings.

“The work has been done already,” Pritzker said of the DOJ investigation, speaking at an unrelated news conference. “It’s fine if there’s an investigation, but the reality is that things have moved significantly in the right direction, and I have done what I said I should do, and that I think we all agree should be done, which is keep everyone safe.”

IDHS issued a written statement on Wednesday that read: “As always, the department will cooperate in full with the independent investigation and continue, as permitted and appropriate, to keep staff and interested stakeholders updated.”

It added: “IDHS has made unprecedented investments in home and community based options to empower Illinoisans with disabilities to live in the least restrictive setting of their choosing.”

A spokesperson for the DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.

The latest investigation also promises to be far broader than a previous DOJ inquiry. The new effort will review how the state provides services to all people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, including those who live in the community or at home.

The DOJ had previously investigated Choate in 2007. In a report released two years later, it found the facility had not provided proper transition planning for those wanting to move into the community; and for those living inside the state-run facility, had failed to protect residents from abuse and neglect, and did not meet their health, education and treatment needs, in violation of constitutional and federal statutory rights. The DOJ ended its monitoring in 2013.

In its investigative series a decade later, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica detailed cases documented in internal reports and police and court records where staff had beaten, choked, whipped, sexually assaulted and humiliated residents. Those cases included the 2014 beating by staff of a man with intellectual disabilities for failing to pull up his pants. They also included the verbal abuse of a resident with developmental disabilities in 2020, including a threat by staff to break one of his fingers, captured on a recorded 911 line, according to court records, police reports and IDHS watchdog findings.

The reporting also documented a culture of covering up abuse and neglect at the facility, findings later echoed by IDHS’ Office of Inspector General — the watchdog arm that investigates abuse and neglect allegations at state-run facilities and provides agency oversight.

In the wake of the reporting, Pritzker called the abuse detailed in the stories “awful” and “deeply concerning.” The agency promised to make systemic changes to keep Choate home to the nearly 230 people with developmental disabilities who lived there at the time.

But as the news organizations continued to report on the abuse and neglect at Choate that was documented in internal and state police reports, Pritzker and his leadership team at IDHS changed course, announcing plans to move at least half of Choate’s residents to community placements or to one of the six other state-operated facilities.

“We are at a point today where all of those things weren’t working to the degree we wanted them to, so today we are making transformational changes,” he told reporters at a news conference.

In December, Equip for Equality, a legal advocacy organization monitoring the transition of Choate residents, found the state falling short of its promises, with many individuals ending up in other institutions instead of community settings, according to a report.It said the state needed to do more to help people find community group homes and prepare them for the transition.

Illinois’ reliance on institutions represents “an antiquated and oppressive model of serving people with developmental disabilities,” said Andrea Rizor, an Equip for Equality attorney, who also said the group hopes the investigation will ultimately help bring more resources to community-based care.

The U.S. Supreme Court found in 1999 that confining people with disabilities in state institutions constituted discrimination, holding that patients with mental disabilities should be placed in community settings if they are medically cleared to do so and expressed a desire to live outside a facility.

Illinois largely failed to do that and ended up under a federal consent decree, which a judge ruled just last year should stay in place until the state made more progress.

Today, accusations of abuse and neglect also have continued to grow, at Choate and across the system. A December 2024 report by the Office of Inspector General said it had received over 15,000 complaints from individuals in institutions and community-based settings, a 24% increase from the previous year and an 80% jump since fiscal year 2020. The office has struggled to keep up, even after growing from 73 to 91 employees in a year. The report said the Office of Inspector General “still lacks enough staff to handle rising caseloads efficiently, estimating it needs at least 120 workers.”

In addition, two years after Pritzker’s announcement that 123 residents with intellectual or developmental disabilities would be moved out of Choate, 81 have been relocated, with most moving to other state-operated developmental centers. Not included in the governor’s initiative are 111 patients with developmental disabilities who are living in specialized units at Choate.

There currently are nearly 1,600 people with developmental disabilities living in state-run facilities in Illinois, with 242 residents stating they want to explore living in the community.