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Another year of erratic weather means cranberry farmers are facing slim margins and tough decisions.

Coal’s dependence on railways could lead to electricity shortages and sky-high prices.

A growing number of initiatives in Detroit are working to redefine outdoor activities as acts of liberation.

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.

Join us Sept. 20 for a live virtual event, “Ticketed at School.”

At Illinois’ largest high school district, Black and Latino students were suspended more often than white students, disciplined more often for subjective reasons like dress code violations, and referred more frequently to the local police, who in many cases then issued costly tickets for misbehavior, data submitted as part of a state investigation shows.

The information provided to state officials by Township High School District 211 reveals widespread disparities involving not just students of color but also those with disabilities. The Illinois attorney general’s office is in the early stages of a civil rights investigation that aims to determine if some groups of District 211 students have been unfairly disciplined at school.

The data, obtained through a public records request, shows that Black and Latino students together received about 65% of the roughly 470 tickets police have issued to high school students since the start of the 2018-19 school year. Those groups make up just 32% of district enrollment. White students, meanwhile, make up nearly 43% of enrollment but received about 28% of the tickets.

More than 22% of the tickets were issued to students whose disabilities made them eligible for an Individualized Education Plan, though those students make up only about 9% of the enrollment. The district, with 11,800 students, operates five high schools and two alternative schools in the large suburbs of Palatine, Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg.

The attorney general’s office began its investigation following publication of “The Price Kids Pay,” an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica that revealed schools across Illinois have been working with police to punish students with costly tickets for violating municipal ordinances.

The news organizations’ investigation included a first-of-its-kind database of tickets issued at Illinois public schools over three school years. The attorney general’s office has said District 211 stood out both for the number of tickets issued and for racial disparities in the ticketing. (The news database includes tickets provided by local police departments, not the school district, from the school years ending in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The data from the state investigation includes the school year ending this summer and comes from the district).

District officials deny that race factors into their disciplinary decisions. In a statement, District 211 Superintendent Lisa Small said the data on disparities reduces “individual students to simplistic statistics.”

“They are not a statistic to us, but a developing young adult,” she wrote. “Race is not and has never been a factor in our student discipline. Decisions are highly individualized and based on the specific behavior and are not well-suited to a simple numerical analysis.”

Small also said the district recently stopped alerting law enforcement when students are truant. A 2019 Illinois law made it illegal for schools to notify police when students are truant so that officers can ticket them, but the Tribune and ProPublica identified dozens of school districts that routinely failed to follow this law, including District 211.

Amy Meek, chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the Illinois attorney general’s office, said in an interview last week that an initial review of the District 211 data is revealing disparities related to students’ race and disability status, and that “those are the kinds of things that we would typically want to look more closely at.”

Meek said the next step is to try to understand, possibly through additional records and interviews, the reasons for the disparities. “You have to not just identify the disparity but also assess whether this disparity is the result of a particular policy or set of decisions and is there an alternative that would have a less disparate impact,” Meek said.

One Black parent whose son received a ticket at Palatine High School said the disparities in the data don’t surprise her. Her son’s ticket, issued by a school-based police officer, was dismissed at a hearing. Racial bias exists everywhere, she said, including at school.

“It is already inside their minds like, ‘These people are the bad people so we have to keep an extra eye out on them,’” said the woman, who attended the hearing at the village’s police station. “Of course they should be doing something about it.”

Some District 211 records show that school officials were aware of concerns about racial disparities in discipline. The district commissioned a study on race and equity at its schools that began in 2020 and became the basis for a districtwide plan to address racial equity.

“Parents and students believe that there are unfair disciplinary practices in our schools” that result in a “harsher discipline consequence” for Black and Latino students, according to early findings based on focus groups of students and parents.

The district’s data confirms that disparities exist, including in enforcement of minor disciplinary matters such as insubordination, dress code violations and student ID violations. In addition to the ticketing disparities, district records show that Black and Latino students together received 65% of the suspensions that schools imposed. About 36% of the suspensions went to students with disabilities.

But in a letter to the attorney general’s office accompanying the data, the district’s lawyer denied any bias.

“The District does not believe the data contained below reflects a disparate impact of disciplinary consequences,” the letter states. The district also told the attorney general’s office that it has prioritized training and professional development on “educational equity and trauma informed care.” It provided hundreds of pages of materials, including training for school employees on how to respond to students in crisis and on understanding equity.

The district also distanced itself from actions police take at school, stating in the letter that police, not high school employees, write the tickets. Workers also don’t call police to come to the school, according to the letter. Instead, employees refer students to “police consultants,” or police officers who are already stationed at the schools, and those officers decide what action to take.

The district also said that when it sends students to police, its “intent is not that students are issued fines or fees, but to add a layer of support.” Yet district training and handbook materials warn that misbehavior can result in fines.

Tickets issued by Palatine police carry fines and, in some cases, a $55 fee for an administrative hearing, where tickets can be disputed or penalties reduced. The hearing officer in Palatine can approve community service instead of a fine, but he also can impose up to a $750 fine if the student doesn’t show up to the hearing or complete the ordered community service.

The attorney general’s office is also examining the village of Palatine and its Police Department, which has officers stationed in three district buildings.

District 211 and Palatine sent records to the attorney general’s office in July. The school district then provided those records — more than 1,500 pages’ worth — to the Tribune and ProPublica in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The Palatine Police Department has refused to turn over its records to the news organizations.

The district’s records show that when school officials involve the police, a process known as a police referral, Latino students are more likely than other groups to receive a ticket.

The federal government considers all tickets written on campus as stemming from a police referral. Districtwide, Latino students were referred to police 400 times over the time period the attorney general is examining, and about 64% of those referrals resulted in a ticket. When white students were referred to police, tickets were written about 52% of the time. Black students referred to police received tickets about 31% of the time.

The data does not include tickets issued in the 2020-2021 school year, when buildings were closed for much of the year because of the pandemic. And though the data shows tickets were issued at all District 211 high schools, the district acknowledged that it may not have records on all tickets issued and that the three police departments serving the district could have records concerning additional tickets.

The Tribune and ProPublica previously documented the tickets issued on school property or at school events by police from Palatine, Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates and reported that the reason for the tickets was often possession of e-cigarettes, cannabis or drug paraphernalia; truancy; or disorderly conduct. So far, the attorney general’s office has requested records only from the Palatine police, but Meek said it’s typical for her office to issue subsequent requests for information and conduct interviews in the course of civil rights investigations.

Police chiefs in Palatine and Hoffman Estates, where officers issued most of the school-based tickets, which often carried hundreds of dollars in fines, did not respond to requests for comment. In Schaumburg, where students received fewer tickets, police Chief Bill Wolf said decisions to arrest or issue citations to students depend on “the seriousness of the crime, previous history, and the ability or desire of the parents or guardians to correct the behavior.”

“The race or disability status of the juvenile has absolutely no part in the determination to make an arrest or pursue a citation,” Wolf said in an email. The Schaumburg tickets often do not result in a fine, he said.

In June and July, reporters attended hearings at the Palatine police station where high school students who had received tickets appeared before a hearing officer. Students had been ticketed for truancy, possession of a vaping device and vandalism.

One student, a Palatine High School sophomore, was ticketed in April after he returned to school from a lunch break. The police officer stationed at the school accused the 16-year-old student, who is Black, of damaging a chain-link fence that students often pass through as a shortcut at lunchtime.

The school is listed as the complainant on the ticket. The student said in an interview that he told the school-based police officer he didn’t damage the fence.

Palatine High School students regularly walk through the gap in this fence that separates the school from an apartment complex. A school-based police officer issued a sophomore a ticket for vandalism earlier this year. The student denied damaging the fence. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

The ticket, which accused the student of violating Palatine’s vandalism ordinance, carried a $200 fine. At the student’s June hearing, the hearing officer suggested that the student do 16 hours of community service, which the village allows as an alternative to paying the fine. When the student started to talk about his fast-food jobs, including one at Smoothie King, the hearing officer said he thought he recognized the teen from there. “I remember your hair,” he told the student. The student was confused; he had not yet started working at that job.

A police officer based at Palatine High School issued this $200 citation to a sophomore he accused of damaging a fence. The school is listed as the complainant. At a later hearing, the ticket was dismissed after another student took responsibility for the hole in the fence. (Redactions by ProPublica. Ticket obtained by ProPublica)

The student’s mom then interjected, asking her son whether he had damaged the fence. The student said he hadn’t, that it was already damaged when he went through. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “I am saying I didn’t rip the fence. I didn’t rip the fence open.” The hearing officer responded by telling the student the police officer could have charged him with a crime instead of writing a ticket.

The hearing officer ultimately dismissed the student’s case when another student who received a similar ticket acknowledged he had damaged the fence.

But the hearing officer didn’t seem to recall the dismissal when he saw the first student at Smoothie King a couple weeks later, according to the student.

“The judge came to my job and mentioned it in front of my coworkers,” the student said. “He asked in front of them, ‘Did you get those [community service] hours done?’”

Attempts to reach the hearing officer for comment were unsuccessful.

“It was uncomfortable,” said the student, who felt forced to explain the situation to the other employees. “It’s embarrassing to do it in front of my co-workers because it could have ruined my job.”

Earlier this month, David Lee Roth debuted a new solo version of Van Halen's classic 1984 hit "Panama" recorded live in the studio and now he's premiered an updated rendition…

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Missouri Gov. Mike Parson wants lawmakers to reduce the state income tax rate.

by Andrea Bernstein

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Ever since the FBI came out of Mar-a-Lago last month with box after box of documents, some of them highly sensitive and classified, questions have wafted over the criminal investigation: Why did former President Donald Trump sneak off with the stash to begin with? Why did he keep it when he was asked to return it? And what, if anything, did he plan to do with it?

It’s true that Trump likes to collect shiny objects, like the framed Time magazine cover that was stowed, according to the U.S. Justice Department, alongside documents marked top secret. It’s true, as The Associated Press reported, that Trump has a “penchant for collecting” items that demonstrate his connection to famous people, like Shaquille O’Neal’s giant shoe, which he kept in his office in New York’s Trump Tower.

But I’ve covered Trump and his business for decades, and there’s something else people around him have told me over and over again: Trump knows the value of hoarding sensitive, secret information and wielding it regularly and precisely for his own ends. The 76-year-old former host of “The Apprentice” came up in the world of New York tabloids, where trading gossip was the coin of the realm. Certainly sometimes he just wanted to show off that he knew things about important people. But he also has used compromising information to pressure elected officials, seek a commercial advantage or blunt accountability and oversight.

A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Take a little-known episode where Trump tried to pressure former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

In 1997, Trump, then a major casino owner in Atlantic City, was furious with New Jersey elected officials for supporting a $330 million tunnel project. The tunnel would run from the Atlantic City Expressway almost to the doorstep of a casino run by then-rival Steve Wynn. “Trump didn’t want Wynn in Atlantic City,” Whitman recently told me. Trump “wanted to control the gambling there.”

As a casino owner, Trump wasn’t able to make donations in New Jersey legislative races, contributions being one of his go-to methods of attempting to exert control over government decisions. But Trump could run caustic ads and file lawsuits, which he did. When none of that worked, and the tunnel was in the final stages of approval, Whitman said, Trump called her up.

A few years before the tunnel vote, Whitman’s son, Taylor, who was in high school at the time, had gotten falling-down drunk at a private dance at Trump’s Plaza Hotel off Central Park in New York City and had to be taken to the hospital. This is something that high school students stupidly do, and Whitman said to me she was happy for Taylor to be sick “to teach him a lesson.” But in the call, Trump suddenly brought the episode up. He said it would be “too bad” if the press found out about her son’s drunken antics.

“He made the threat during the deliberations over the tunnel,” Whitman said, and it “blindsided” her because the high school dance was private and Taylor's behavior had been a family concern. She had no idea how Trump found out about it, she said, but the episode made it clear to her that people collected and delivered sensitive information to Trump about what happened in his properties. She did not buckle to Trump, and he never made good on his threat.

Many people who have found themselves, for better or worse, in Trump’s orbit over the decades — people with far less power than Whitman — told me it was obvious that Trump collected information on people, delighted in it, even. And he was not shy about deploying it. “There was always someone watching,” one former high-level Trump Organization employee told me. “What Donald would do is he would let the person know he knows, in his around-the-corner way. He let the person know he was all-imposing and he knew what was going on.” Like most other former employees, this person did not want to speak on the record for fear that Trump would still come after him all these years later.

It was helpful for Trump that people knew he collected information on others’ less glowing moments as potential ammunition down the road. One top former New Jersey lawmaker told me that he’d been warned to be on his best behavior when he traveled to Atlantic City because Trump kept an eye on important people. Even as a rumor, it furnished Trump with power.

In one infamous case involving a journalist, Trump wielded his knowledge about behavior in the casino town.

In 1990, Neil Barsky, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, came upon a scoop. He was told by a banker that “Donald Trump is driving 100 miles per hour toward a brick wall, and he has no brakes” in Atlantic City. Four large banks had hundreds of millions of dollars of debt on the line. Trump was divorcing his first wife, Ivana, and trying desperately to keep his finances from her and out of the tabloids. Unfortunately for him, Barsky kept writing about Trump’s financial difficulties.

In early 1991, one of Trump’s senior executives offered Barsky comp tickets to a company-sponsored boxing match in Atlantic City. His editor encouraged him to accept a ticket for himself to cultivate Trump Organization sources. In what he later called “an act of bad judgment,” Barsky also accepted tickets for his father and brother. Writing about the episode in 2016, Barsky said he later learned that after the match, Trump called the New York Post, asking, “How would you like to destroy the career of a Wall Street Journal reporter?” The story that ensued conjured a picture of a malevolent Barsky, extorting the tickets in exchange for keeping bad stories out of his paper.

After it appeared, the editors moved Barsky off the beat and Trump no longer had to deal with his tough financial scrutiny.

A decade later, Trump tried the same thing with another journalist, New York Times real estate reporter Charles V. Bagli. For years, Trump had offered Bagli tickets to the U.S. Open. One year, Bagli finally accepted to advance his reporting on a story. Trump had been trying to ingratiate himself with an important beat writer — but now he had a piece of potentially compromising information.

Finally the moment came. After Bagli wrote a story fact-checking the opening credits to “The Apprentice,” writing that Trump “is not the largest developer in New York, nor does he own Trump International Hotel and Tower,” Trump pounced. His lawyer sent a letter to the Times threatening a lawsuit and stating that Bagli had tried to shake Trump down for the tickets and wrote the piece when Trump refused. The accusation was false, and the Times backed its reporter.

If people’s gambling and hotel habits can be valuable, top secret intelligence has the potential to be even more so. As it was back in his casino heyday, just the knowledge that Trump may have compromising secrets, and could use them, confers continued power.

The New Jersey tunnel Trump fought so hard against was ultimately approved, though Wynn, and then Trump, left Atlantic City. But Trump and Whitman never reconciled. In 2016 she declined to support him in the Republican primary for president. Displeased, Trump forwarded a letter to her, Whitman recalled, that again referred to her son’s drunken incident at the school dance. By this time her son, who now works in health care finance, was an adult. As Whitman remembered, on the letter were these words scrawled with a Sharpie: “Too bad you don’t remember the good old days.”

Help ProPublica Investigate Threats to U.S. Democracy

The New York Times report notwithstanding, our signature poverty-fighting policy is a janky mess.

Workers must be constantly on call to work, making it impossible to live their lives.

by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, Aliyya Swaby and Annie Waldman

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This story was co-published with Gray TV/Investigate TV.

Before 1965, many Southern states forced voters to prove they could read before casting a ballot, a requirement primarily designed to keep Black people from voting. The Voting Rights Act put an end to those polling site exams. But a ProPublica investigation found that the efforts to block people who have difficulty reading from casting a ballot continue, especially in the South. In fact, today's election system remains a modern-day literacy test.

It didn’t get that way by accident. For decades, conservative politicians have passed laws to make it harder for these voters to cast a ballot and discourage anyone trying to help them.

Olivia Coley-Pearson knows this better than most. She has been criminally charged twice in the past decade for her attempts to help people navigate their ballots; she has never been found guilty of any wrongdoing. Now 60, she serves as a city commissioner in Douglas, the majority-Black seat of Coffee County, where a third of the population struggles to read. On the day of Georgia’s primary elections in May, she woke up early to rally voters and volunteer. ProPublica followed her to capture what it takes to ensure that voters who need help can get it.

To learn more, check out ProPublica’s investigation of Coley-Pearson’s fight and the persistent suppression of low-literacy voters, read our story about successful voting reforms, and see our guide on how to get help with voting.

A free flu vaccine clinic will be held Oct. 21 at St. Charles Community College.

Doug Moore of Bethalto, IL joined the Real Rock Army today

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LGBTQIA+ communities have been contributing to St. Louis’s history for centuries. Now the Gateway to Pride virtual exhibit will begin to uncover the rarely-shared or

The post Gateway to Pride Exhibit appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

An officer shot a man after he allegedly lunged at him with a knife. Organization for Black Struggle voice their outrage about his death.

Cardinals legend Albert Pujols is getting dangerously close to his goal of 700 homeruns before he calls it a career. Number 697 came Sunday.

Police are investigating a deadly crash Tuesday that led to Interstate 55 northbound shutting down.

A two-year-old’s mother would not accept that her daughter just tripped and fell. Now, daycare inspectors believe they’ve found the real culprit.

Rep. Shamed Dogan, R-Ballwin, is term-limited and is seeking work after losing the Republican nomination for St. Louis County executive in August.

Nearly a quarter of all the state's school districts are only in session four days a week this year due to a shortage of teachers.