HOW POLICE DEPARTMENTS GET AWAY WITH IT

The Weekly Dispatch

HOW POLICE DEPARTMENTS GET AWAY WITH IT


Welcome to the Weekly Dispatch. This week our reporters have covered the biggest topics, from police accountability to the exponential spread of COVID-19 and the chaos of the government’s distribution of billions of dollars in contracts for coronavirus supplies. Let’s start with a police accountability story that unfolded right in front of the family of a ProPublica editor last Halloween.






(Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica)





Try Holding the NYPD Accountable. It’s Not Easy.






Witnesses saw an unmarked NYPD cruiser hit a Black teenager who was running with a group. The teenager got away. The NYPD then detained a completely different group of Black teenagers in front of dozens of witnesses who told them they had the wrong teens.
It happened in ProPublica Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky’s neighborhood last Halloween, and his family saw the whole thing. He decided to follow up and learned how the system really works.
We won’t stop investigating the country’s biggest police force. Know any useful information? Help us out.





Coronavirus Case Counts Are Going Up. It’s Not Because of More Testing. There Are More Cases.






The virus is spreading dramatically in many states, and the president continues to push his misleading claim that cases are only going up because there’s more testing.
We have looked at the numbers. In Florida, Texas, Arizona, California and other states that are becoming new epicenters, the data clearly shows that testing is increasing and positive cases are increasing faster. Only one explanation for that: The virus is spreading.
“The tip of the iceberg can’t be growing with the iceberg shrinking,” said Dr. Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “It violates laws of physics and oceanography.”
We took a look at West Virginia, where restaurants in the billionaire governor’s own luxury resort face charges that they are not being safe about reopening.
And the virus’s spread in prisons continues unabated, but officials are ready to declare victory. This week we took you inside the biggest maximum-security prison in the United States.
Incarcerated men described appalling conditions, including inmates who were obviously sick with the coronavirus but were denied even cursory medical examinations, mostly because they did not register sufficiently high fevers. Men passed out and were told they were dehydrated. Others, who complained of bad coughs, aches, fatigue and stomach pains, were treated with Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol and Tums.





Profiting Off Government Money for Medical Supplies






Another big federal contract for medical supplies has gone to somebody with deep connections to the White House and no experience in ... medical supplies!
Frequent readers will remember that this is not the first instance of this we’ve found.
And don’t forget about the rich investor who was paying TaskRabbit contractors to rip masks out of packaging that said “MEDICAL USE PROHIBITED” before shoving them into packaging that omitted the warning.

Thanks for reading.

Yours in isolation,

Karim Doumar

Audience editor, ProPublica





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