THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, March 22, 2025
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Hello! In this issue:
- Inside the reign of terror perpetrated by Rankin County, Mississippi’s “Goon Squad.”
- Infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera talks about the collision course between the Trump administration and developing public health emergencies on More To The Story.
- Our recent investigation has spurred several police departments to change their policies on reselling their officers’ guns.
- The team from WNYC’s The Blindspot takes us back to the days when the HIV epidemic first hit New York City.
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Here’s to 10 years of the groundbreaking radio show Reveal. We can’t do it without the support of our listeners.
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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
The Deputies Who Tortured a Mississippi County
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Andrea Dettore-Murphy. Credit: Rory Doyle for the New York Times
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When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes.
But in 2018, she learned the truth the hard way when a group of sheriff’s deputies raided her friend’s home and beat him relentlessly while she watched. A few years later, she watched it happen again.
For nearly two decades, the deputies who called themselves the “Goon Squad” roamed Rankin County at night, beating, tasing, and choking suspects in drug crimes until they admitted to buying or selling illegal substances. Their reign of terror continued unabated until 2023, when the deputies were finally exposed.
This week on Reveal, reporters Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield with Mississippi Today and the New York Times tell us how a voicemail from Dettore-Murphy led them to their investigation into the Goon Squad, whose members have allegedly tortured at least 22 people since the early 2000s.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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MORE TO THE STORY
Bird Flu, Measles, and Trump’s Ticking Time Bomb
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A sign outside Seminole Hospital District in Texas offers measles testing in February. Credit: Julio Cortez/AP
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This week on More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera about the collision course between the Trump administration’s health priorities and developing public health emergencies.
You may remember Malaty Rivera as the host of our special series The Covid Tracking Project. Today, with the bird flu spreading, Rivera says the US is still not testing enough people to determine whether these diseases and others are spreading. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is making things even more difficult by withholding regular public health data that infectious disease experts routinely rely on to assess whether a larger health emergency is emerging.
“Without good data, we can’t make good informed choices,” she says. “And it is conceivable that [a pandemic] can be happening and brewing right underneath our nose and us not pick it up.”
Find this episode of More To The Story in the Reveal feed on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. And be sure you click follow so you don’t miss a single episode.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora
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IMPACT UPDATE
Several Law Enforcement Agencies Have Stopped Reselling Guns
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More than a dozen law enforcement agencies have stopped reselling their used guns or pledged to reconsider the practice after an investigation last year by The Trace, CBS News, and Reveal.
The investigation revealed that more than 52,000 former police guns had resurfaced in robberies, domestic violence incidents, homicides, and other crimes between 2006 and 2022. Many of those guns found their way into civilian hands after agencies traded them to retailers for discounts on new equipment or resold them to their own officers. Read more.
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“Most people thought about this as, well, it’s just a gay disease, so we don’t need to worry about it. It’s somebody else’s problem.”
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Before Anthony Fauci became a household name during the Covid-19 response, he was the head of the federal agency that led research on infectious diseases. His first public notoriety came as the federal point person on AIDS, which means he’s been rehashing what went right and what went wrong for decades—including the narrow focus on gay men at the outset.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kate Howard and edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend. Have some thoughts? Drop us a line with feedback or ideas!
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