As a producer at Reveal, you work on a lot of stories. One of the measures of success comes down to the impact an investigation can carry. Our reporting has exposed abuses of power and wrung some overdue accountability from very powerful people. Sometimes it’s even led directly to legislative reform.
I produced the Reveal episode We Regret to Inform You in fall 2023, which leaned on investigative reporter Brian Howey’s work about a controversial California police practice. This spring, our investigation won a George Polk Award and gained the attention of California state legislators.
The episode explains that if a police officer kills someone, police are supposed to notify the family. But instead of immediately doing so, they often were first trying to glean as much information about the person killed as possible from their family members – much of it unflattering.
Brian found that police departments and their attorneys would sometimes use the information to paint those killed by police as mentally ill, violent drug addicts or deadbeat parents in an attempt to reduce settlements owed to families or help exonerate the officers who had killed them. Several families shared a painful regret with us: Had they known that an officer killed their family member, they never would have shared such personal information about them with the police.
But now there is potential for change: In February, California Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) introduced legislation to prevent families from experiencing this abusive practice. The bill would change how police interview families after a killing and require them to inform families of rights, such as whether they are being recorded and a reminder of their rights to remain silent and retain an attorney. It has passed in the state Assembly and is now working its way through the Senate. If passed, it would protect families by giving them access to the information they need to make the best-informed decisions.
As investigative journalists, we dig for the truth about things that the powerful would rather keep hidden and make it accessible to as many people as possible.
Free of corporate ties, we rely on the support of members like you to do this work. Please give today. Your gift will help us continue to produce investigative journalism that has the potential to create real change, real impact – to make the world a better place.
Thanks for all you do,
Najib Aminy Producer
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting
