THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022
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Hello! In this issue:
- The glaring signs police are missing in domestic abuse cases – and the deadly consequences.
- How suspected war criminals could be walking free in the U.S.
- A number to remember on the estimated lives lost yearly due to stand your ground self-defense laws.
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NEW
Police Often Miss Red Flags in Domestic Abuse Cases, and the Consequences Are Deadly
By Jennifer Gollan and Grace Oldham
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Guns photo: Columbus Division of Police; Mariah Carpenter photo: Courtesy of Dawn Sutherland
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One day after Mariah Carpenter was gunned down by her ex-boyfriend, her mother met local police at a storage unit in Columbus, Ohio, belonging to the killer. They rolled up the door and made a shocking discovery: at least 20 guns, including assault rifles. A convicted felon, Quantaine Tate was barred from having any of them under federal and state law.
It wasn’t just the volume of guns Tate owned that was stunning. So was the number of warning signs that should have alerted authorities to be especially vigilant about protecting Carpenter from the father of her 2-year-old son.
Recognizing red flags is essential for police, prosecutors and courts to make informed decisions as they try to protect domestic violence victims and their families – for example, by requiring abusers to relinquish any firearms they possess or by helping victims connect to shelters and other lifesaving support services.
But red flags can help save lives only if police, prosecutors and judges know how to identify them – and if they act on that knowledge.
In scores of domestic violence gun homicides from 2017 through 2020, we found that the opposite often happened: Law enforcement repeatedly ignored even the most glaring signs that a victim was at high risk of being killed.
The failure to heed red flags is one of the factors contributing to soaring rates of domestic violence gun homicides in the U.S. – up 58% since 2010, to the highest level in nearly three decades, according to FBI data analyzed exclusively for Reveal.
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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
My Neighbor the Suspected War Criminal
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In July, a popular uprising in Sri Lanka forced the country’s president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to flee the country and resign. Before he was president, Rajapaksa was accused of carrying out mass atrocities and serious human rights violations when he served as the country’s defense minister. Some people believe the deposed president, who no longer has immunity, might now have to account for those allegations.
Rajapaksa used to call the U.S. home, but the federal government never pursued him for war crimes accusations while he was on U.S. soil. How could he walk free, and how many other suspected war criminals have been found inside the U.S.?
Reveal reporter and guest host Ike Sriskandarajah spent six months looking into the U.S. government’s failure to charge accused perpetrators of the worst crimes in the world. We bring you his investigation this week on Reveal.
This is a rebroadcast of an episode originally released April 23, 2022.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
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📸 Gotabaya Rajapaksa (center), then Sri Lanka’s defense minister, stands with his commanders and special forces in 2010. Credit: Reuters/Alamy
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In the News
What’s happening in the news — with a Reveal context
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A courtroom sketch depicts Guy Reffitt (left) in federal court in Washington on Feb. 28, 2022. Credit: Dana Verkouteren via Associated Press
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🔹 Capitol rioter turned in by son has been sentenced. Guy Reffitt, the first person to stand trial for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on Monday. It’s the longest sentence so far for a Jan. 6 defendant.
“Traitors get shot,” Reffitt told his kids days after he returned from Washington. His son, Jackson, turned him into the FBI anyway. The case has divided their family. As for Guy, he believes he had “every constitutional right to carry a weapon and take over the Congress,” according to a recording Jackson secretly took of his father.
We partnered with the podcast Will Be Wild from Pineapple Street Studios, Wondery and Amazon Music to tell the Reffitt family’s story on Reveal.
🎧 Listen to the show.
🔹 Federal officials continue to look into Amazon warehouse safety practices. Inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Monday visited Amazon warehouses in Colorado, Idaho and New York. The visits were part of an ongoing investigation by OSHA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Warehouses in New York, Illinois and Florida were also inspected last month.
The investigation is looking into potential workplace safety hazards at warehouses nationwide and “possible fraudulent conduct designed to hide injuries from OSHA and other regulators,” CNBC writes.
In 2019, our investigation showed for the first time that injury rates in Amazon warehouses were far higher than the industry average. Then, we obtained internal Amazon data and records that revealed the company had been deceiving the public about its safety crisis – even as injury rates got worse. At the same time, the federal government had been refusing to release workplace injury records for Amazon and thousands of other companies. So we sued the U.S. Department of Labor and won, forcing the government to release the injury data it’d been keeping secret. That allowed reporters and other organizations to hold Amazon and other companies across the country accountable for their safety practices.
Still, for years, Amazon didn’t have much to fear from safety regulators. But that appears to be changing, with many recent developments having roots in our reporting.
📝 Read some of the developments so far.
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In 2005, Florida became the first state to pass a stand your ground self-defense law. In 2012, the law made national headlines when George Zimmerman claimed self defense after killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Martin’s death prompted calls for lawmakers to repeal and reform the statutes. But instead, stand your ground laws across the country have expanded by nearly 60%.
Today, 38 states have some sort of stand your ground self-defense policy in place. Researchers have found that roughly 700 more people die in the U.S. every year because of stand your ground laws.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kassie Navarro, edited by Kate Howard and copy edited by Nikki Frick and Kim Freda. 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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