March 9, 2024 - 12:30pm to 1:30pm PST
Baltimore, Maryland

IRE (not EFF) will host this event. EFF's Beryl Lipton will participate.

Leveraging local newsrooms to uncover hidden police accountability stories

Using data from New York police misconduct records, the USA Today Network embarked on the first-ever investigation of police vehicle crashes in the state, finding that well over 335 crashes took place in Syracuse alone between 2013 and 2022. Most crashes resulted in no discipline for officers involved, and two-thirds of the officers who were disciplined got only a written reprimand. In the past nine months, a team of USA Today Network journalists, in partnership with Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and The Central Current, used data tools like Excel and Google Pinpoint, mined court documents and conducted dozens of interviews with attorneys, victims and police officials to publish a comprehensive account of how officers put haste over public safety, raising questions about their training, discipline policies and their ability to protect civilians on the road.


When:

March 9, 2024
12:30 PM PT

Where:

Baltimore Marriott Waterfront - Harbor E, fourth floor
Baltimore, Maryland

Cost:

Varies, please refer to event registration

Event Requirements:

Event registration required
You must be a current IRE member through April 1 to attend the conference

From IRE:

Join IRE & NICAR for our annual data journalism conference.

Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting. IRE was formed to create a forum in which journalists throughout the world could help each other by sharing story ideas, newsgathering techniques and news sources.

IRE provides members access to thousands of reporting tipsheets and other materials through its Resource Center and hosts conferences and specialized training across the country. Programs of IRE include the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), a collaboration between IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism.

About the Speaker:

Beryl Lipton, Investigative Researcher, focuses her work on government transparency, law enforcement surveillance technology, and other uses of technology by government actors. She has extensive experience using Freedom of Information laws and large-scale public records campaigns in her research.

At EFF, Beryl supports the Atlas of Surveillance, The Foilies, The Catalog of Carceral Surveillance, among other projects. She enjoys teaching others about the strengths and limitations of public records laws and discussing the potential and real harms of the surveillance state.

More about NICAR

NICAR, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, is a program of IRE, founded in 1989 and supported by the Missouri School of Journalism.
NICAR shares IRE’s mission to foster excellence in journalism, particularly with regard to data journalism.
For more than 30 years, NICAR has:
  • made valuable government datasets available to journalists
  • done custom analysis work for newsrooms large and small
  • held annual conferences that helped create and continue to support the active NICAR community
  • trained journalists around the country and overseas in the art of acquiring, cleaning and analyzing data
  • provided resources for using data effectively and responsibly
  • trained Missouri journalism students to handle data and do analysis

This event is organized not by EFF, but by IRE