CIR has identified dozens of armed guards who previously had been fired from or left law enforcement after being accused of offenses such as civil rights violations, excessive force and corruption.
Shoshana Walter
Reporter
Shoshana Walter is a reporter for Reveal, covering criminal justice. She and reporter Amy Julia Harris exposed how courts across the country are sending defendants to rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry. Their work was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. It also won the Knight Award for Public Service, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, and an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a finalist for the Selden Ring, IRE and Livingston Awards. It led to numerous government investigations, two criminal probes and five federal class-action lawsuits alleging slavery, labor violations and fraud.
Walter's investigation on America's armed security guard industry revealed how armed guard licenses have been handed out to people with histories of violence, even people barred by courts from owning guns. Walter and reporter Ryan Gabrielson won the 2015 Livingston Award for Young Journalists for national reporting based on the series, which prompted new laws and an overhaul of California’s regulatory system. For her 2016 investigation about the plight of "trimmigrants," marijuana workers in California's Emerald Triangle, Walter embedded herself in illegal mountain grows and farms. There, she encountered an epidemic of sex abuse and human trafficking in the industry – and a criminal justice system focused more on the illegal drugs. The story prompted legislation, a criminal investigation and grass-roots efforts by the community, including the founding of a worker hotline and safe house.
Walter began her career as a police reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida, and previously covered violent crime and the politics of policing in Oakland, California, for The Bay Citizen. Her narrative nonfiction as a local reporter garnered a national Sigma Delta Chi Award and a Gold Medal for Public Service from the Florida Society of News Editors. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she has been a Dart Center Ochberg fellow for journalism and trauma at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim fellow in criminal justice journalism. She is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Guns, Hired Guns
Florida clubgoer’s death shows weak links in security guard licensing
Regulators have approved licenses for guards without conducting mental health evaluations or checking for evidence of substance abuse.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Law Enforcement
How a federal Ecstasy sting ended the party for Mac Dre’s rap label, Thizz
Dion “Freeky D” Daniels (left) greets Simon Curtis “Kilo Curt” Nelson, who still produces music under the Thizz label. A few Thizz rappers and former friends from their neighborhood in Vallejo, Calif., were swept up in a federal drug bust last year. “To come to 2012 and be labeled a drug label, it’s a bad […]
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Posted inMoney and Politics
Calif. agencies often fail to protect confidential information, data shows
When a thief rang up $2,000 in charges at Victoria’s Secret, Gymboree and Gap on Rosa Franco’s credit card, she quickly surmised the reason – the state of California had mistakenly left her credit card and Social Security numbers exposed. Twice. The state Department of Developmental Services, which serves Franco’s 5-year-old daughter and thousands of […]
Posted inMoney and Politics
Embezzlement, scam shatter venerable Vanguard Foundation
Tracy Gary, one of the original members of the Vanguard collective and an heir to the Pillsbury fortune, said Hari Dillon was responsible for the foundation’s downfall. “But so, too, was the culture that all of us created,” she said.Michael Short/Center for Investigative Reporting The Vanguard Public Foundation was once a social justice leader in […]