Common Grounds | Flip the Script: A Police Take on the Issues

Kansas City, Kansas police officers around a table

One of the story lines of this election year has been alarm over law and order in cities and police shootings of unarmed black Americans. This week in our Common Grounds coffee conversation series, we head to Kansas City, Kansas, where we get a police take on that polarizing issue. We bring together five KCK…

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Keeping the Pressure On, His Memory Alive

A vigil

Updated 1:38 p.m. July 29 The family of a man shot to death by Kansas City police three years ago has filed a wrongful death suit against the department, alleging that its policies were to blame for an incident that quickly spun out of control. The suit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for…

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In the Crossfire

graphic rendering of parts of faces

Just this week, the New York Times detailed a study finding that police are more likely to rough up blacks than whites, meaning tactics like cuffs, pepper spray, and forcing the suspect against a wall.  However, it also found no racial bias in lethal force, the deadly shootings we’ve come to rally around. The graphic below doesn’t…

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Life, Prison, Then Life Again

Woman

The prison population is growing, and growing fast. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the number of incarcerated felons grew by 408 percent between the years of 1978 and 2014. Even more eye-opening: The number of incarcerated women in the United States ballooned 646 percent between the years of 1980 and 2010, according to a study from The Sentencing Project, a…

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