Invisible Institute

Join us on Tuesday, November 19th from 6:00 - 8:00pm for our annual supporters convening at Chicago Athletic Association's Stagg Court. This gathering will be a chance to celebrate and reflect on our work over the past year and share a glimpse of what is to come.? Register here: https://lnkd.in/gnFk6VXp

Missing in Chicago, our seven-part investigative reporting on Chicago police handling of cases of missing Black women and girls, published in partnership with City Bureau recently won two awards! We're thankful to the Institute for Nonprofit News for selecting our reporting for their 'Breaking Barriers' Awards and to the Online Journalism Awards for recognizing our reporting in their 'Excellence in Social Justice Reporting' category. ?? Read and explore our full reporting, and hear from families of loved ones, at chicagomissingpersons.com

We were thrilled to be part of a conversation and newsroom tour earlier this month during Press Forward's Funder's Summit. We are grateful to be a grantee of Press Forward Chicago, a funder collaborative dedicated to strengthening and sustaining local news. On a tour of our newsroom, funders and fellow journalists were able to learn more about some of our programs from our data director Trina Reynolds-Tyler and legal fellow Layla June West. Photos: Jamaal Raushan

This just in: the winners of the 2024 Nonprofit News Awards (INNYs) were announced tonight at a ceremony in Atlanta. The INNYs honor excellence in journalism, leadership and community service and are presented by INN to members of the 450-newsroom INN Network and their collaborators. Congratulations to the #INNYs2024 winners: Andy Hall?and Dee J. Hall?of Wisconsin Watch, Maple Walker Lloyd?of Block Club Chicago, Voices of Monterey Bay, InvestigateWest, Injustice Watch, The Marshall Project, The New York Times,?California Health Report, Asheville Watchdog, Flatwater Free Press, AL.com, The Post and Courier, Mississippi Today, The Frontier, The Guardian, Borderless Magazine, El Tímpano, City Bureau, Invisible Institute, InDepthNH.org, Springfield Daily Citizen, Jewish Currents, Honolulu Civil Beat, Brookline.News, Dallas Free Press, The Narwhal, The Forward, THE JOLT - The Journal of Olympia, Lacey & Tumwater, San Francisco Public Press, Retro Report, WORLD Channel, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and Ruby Franzen?of The Hechinger Report. Read more about this year’s winners here: https://lnkd.in/eDpT_Udm The 2024 INNYs were sponsored by Google News Initiative?and Canva.

Today we're launching the National Police Index: a project and data tool showing police employment history data obtained from state police training and certification boards across the U.S. All but one state has such a system. In total, 27 states have released centralized employment history data, 17 of which are currently represented on the data tool and can be viewed at?national.cpdp.co. This public data project is led by reporter Sam Stecklow of Invisible Institute, created in partnership with Ayyub Ibrahim of the Louisiana Law Enforcement Accountability Database of Innocence Project New Orleans, and Tarak Shah of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. Learn more and explore the data at?national.cpdp.co

In a new story at Gateway Journalism Review/St. Louis Journalism Review, Sam Stecklow and GJR publisher William Freivogel outline Missouri's long and critical history in the push for greater transparency around police employment and misconduct. Ranging from the 1876 vote that split the City of St. Louis from St. Louis County and creating many small municipalities with their own police departments, to many local governments' reliance on fines and fees to stay afloat, to a lack of government oversight, officers with histories of misconduct in Missouri have been jumping from department to department without the public's knowledge. In the 1980s, Roger Goldman, a local law professor, began a fight that would become his life's work: proposing a decertification procedure in Missouri that would curtail the issue of wandering officers. His ideas and scholarship have helped to push state-level police oversight across the country. Missouri's POST commission, which Goldman was instrumental in creating, passed the state legislature in 1988. However, issues like funding, underreporting, and restrictions on what information is shared with the public hamper the effectiveness of POST. While 26 states now release data showing the employment history of officers to allow for use by the public, press, researchers, attorneys, and others to quantify the problem of wandering officers that was first fully exposed in Missouri, Missouri restricts its data to only to what officers are active in Missouri and their current agencies at the time the information is requested. Without a full picture of employment and certification data in Missouri, and other states that fully deny access to this information, the issue of wandering officers will continue across the country. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/gt47_Gmd

Be sure to pick up a copy of this week's Chicago Reader to catch the latest story in our 'Catalog of Infamy' series. Max Blaisdell and Sam Stecklow report on CPD's Rule 14 - often know as the 'you lie, you die' rule that prohibits department staff from “making a false report, written or oral.” Under existing rules, all officers who commit Rule 14 violations should be added to the Cook County State's Attorney's Brady Lists — meaning that their credibility in court could be called into question and their misconduct may need to be disclosed to defense attorneys. Failure to turn over this information is often described as a constitutional violation. However, our investigation reveals glaring holes in the SAO's Brady lists: there are nearly 120 current and former Chicago police officers with sustained misconduct complaints for lying or making false or misleading statements missing from State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s Brady lists, at least 15 of whom remain active on the force. Read the full investigation in this week's copy of the Reader: https://lnkd.in/g3RY9UJG

In May 2021, while working for the Kincaid Police Department, Sean Grayson pulled over Kyle Adkins, saying there was a warrant for his arrest. Grayson went on to issue a Notice to Appear and recommend felony drug charges against Adkins. Adkins would be in and out of court for two years before these charges were dropped. Our investigation reveals that the warrant - and other evidence Grayson said he had - never existed. Despite admitting to the chief of police that he had no evidence, Grayson would go on to work at four other police departments in Illinois - ultimately ending up at Sangamon County Sheriff's Office, where he would shoot and kill Sonya Massey after she called for help. Our investigation and interviews with experts reveal that this dishonesty and other misconduct from Grayson, including a dangerous high speed chase and inappropriate interactions with a female detainee, should have been reported to state authorities and could have prevented Grayson from being hired again. Sean Grayson's employment history details the critical need for transparency from police departments on employment history and misconduct records. Read the full article from Farrah Anderson, Sam Stecklow, and Dean Olsen: https://lnkd.in/gnbczAcA

The application window for our Investigative Reporting position closes tomorrow! Learn more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/eCXZUD6M

This weekend at Printers Row Lit Fest, catch our team at two different events! Join Data Director Trina Reynolds-Tyler on Saturday, Sept. 7 at 4pm at Center Stage speaking with City Bureau's Sarah Conway on their Pulitzer Prize winning investigation Missing in Chicago. Then on Sunday, Sept. 8 at 2pm on Center Stage, hear members of our Pulitzer Prize winning audio team discuss their podcast You Didn't See Nothin - Erisa Apantaku, Bill Healy, Sarah Geis and Yohance Lacour will be joined in conversation by our Senior Editor Audrey Petty. Check out the full lineup here: https://lnkd.in/d98_M-6P