As Portland weighs expansion of an alternative crisis-response program, new data from a MindSite News-Medill investigation shows police often deploy force on residents who are unhoused or grappling with mental illness.
Public Safety
Posted inGun Violence, Policing, Public Safety
Family of Texas College Student Killed by Police Launches Their Own Investigation
This story has been updated. Sharon Jenkins received a late-night call at home in The Woodlands, Texas, from a Lubbock County officer the week of Thanksgiving 2024. She was told there had been a “horrible accident” involving her son. The words hit hard. Although she understood them, she couldn’t quite process the reality. She never […]
Posted inCulture, Politics & Policy, Public Safety, Rural Issues
Meet the Black Women Who Say Survivalism Is a Necessity, Not a Trend
Kelli McGuffey Pilkington hunts deer and squirrels, fishes whenever she can, stores jars of preserved food she cans herself — and keeps a holstered Smith and Wesson .38-caliber handgun under her T-shirt, just in case. Pilkington, 48, is a sturdily built 6-foot-tall Black biracial woman who lives in a 644-square-foot cabin on 18 acres of […]
Posted inClimate Change, Public Safety
Why Were Black Altadena Residents Not Warned to Evacuate in Time?
A faint glow flickered behind the canyon ridges, and at first, it felt like a threat no different from fires past. Inside one home, Erliene Kelley, an 83-year-old grandmother, believed, as it had always gone over her 57 years in Altadena, that it would never roll down the hill toward homes. This time, however, the […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice, Health, Money, Public Safety
Generational Black Homes in LA Reduced to Ash Amid Growing Wildfires
Support Black-Led, Nonprofit News Capital B is an independent news organization uncovering important stories — like this one — about how Black people experience America today. But we can’t tell these stories without your help. If you support our mission, please consider becoming a member by making a tax-deductible donation. Sixty-two years burned to ashes for […]
Posted inPublic Safety
‘Our City Is Always Hurting’: Black New Orleans Residents Grapple With Inequity
NEW ORLEANS – Mark Whitaker sells chicken and hot links in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter every New Year’s Eve as fireworks paint the sky along the Mississippi River. He pulls his cooler and barbecue pit through the crowded streets to maximize his profits as the city attracts up to 150,000 tourists on New Year’s […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Policing, Public Safety
Justice Eludes Survivors as Former Detective Dies Amid Abuse Allegations
This story contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For more than 25 years, prosecutors say, white homicide Detective Roger Golubski terrorized Black women in Kansas City, Kansas. His accusers said he would kidnap them, he would sexually abuse them, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Everything's Political, Politics & Policy, Public Safety
The Threat of Unchecked Anti-Black Violence in 2025 and Beyond
What might happen to federal checks on anti-Black violence once Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office in January? Maybe this question popped into your head after you read that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the killing of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by a […]
Posted inInfrastructure, Partner Content, Public Safety
A Boy’s Bicycling Death Still Haunts a Black Neighborhood 35 Years Later
The story originally published on Healthbeat, a nonprofit newsroom covering public health published by Civic News Company and KFF Health News. Sign up for its newsletters here. DURHAM, N.C. — It’s been 35 years since John Parker died after a pickup collided with the bike he was riding on Cheek Road in east Durham before school. He was 6. […]
Posted inCourts, Gun Violence, Public Safety
‘Ghost Guns,’ Black Communities, and the Case That Could Alter a Crisis
Two years ago, 16-year-old Angellyh Yambo was leaving her favorite bodega in the Bronx borough of New York City when she was struck and killed by a stray bullet. That bullet came from a 9 mm pistol that lacked a serial number, which most guns have. But this wasn’t a traditional firearm. It was a […]