Topher Sanders is a reporter at ProPublica covering railroad safety. Previously he covered race, inequality and the justice system. In 2019, Sanders was part of a team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Public Service and won the Peabody and George Polk awards for their coverage of President Trump’s family separation policy. In 2018, he and reporter Ben Conarck received the Paul Tobenkin award for race coverage and the Al Nakkula award for police reporting for their multi-part investigation “Walking While Black,” which explored how jaywalking citations are disproportionately given to black pedestrians. His reporting has won a number of other national awards including a NABJ Award, an Online Journalism Award, the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim award for excellence in criminal justice reporting and he is a two-time winner of the Paul Tobenkin award for coverage of racial intolerance and discrimination.
In 2016 Sanders co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit working to increase the number of investigative reporters and editors of color. He is a graduate of Tuskegee University and started his journalism career at The Montgomery Advertiser in Montgomery, Alabama.
Many railroad employees tell us being injured on the job or reporting a safety concern can be fraught with consequences. Our investigative journalists want to talk with insiders in order to tell this story right.
After seeing images of kids crawling under trains, regulators ask companies to address blocked crossings, lawmakers demand consequences, residents clamor for solutions and Norfolk Southern’s CEO calls a mayor to work out a fix.
When crossings are blocked for hours, kids risk their lives to get to school by crawling through trains that could start at any moment. Ambulances and fire trucks can’t get through. The problem has existed for decades. But it’s getting worse.
Trains are getting longer. Railroads are getting richer. But these “monster trains” are jumping off of tracks across America and regulators are doing little to curb the risk.
In October, months before the East Palestine derailment, the company also directed a train to keep moving with an overheated wheel that caused it to derail miles later in Sandusky, Ohio.
An alarming number of people (especially children) have drowned after disappearing into storm drains during floods. The deadly problem should be easy for federal, state and local government agencies to fix, but tragedy strikes again and again.
Withheld records. Canceled interviews. Slow-walk requests. The Inspector General keeps hitting walls while trying to probe problems in the NYPD. “There’s a reason people call 1 Police Plaza the puzzle palace,” one city official said.
How NYPD officers continue to use chokeholds — which can be deadly and are explicitly prohibited by the department — on civilians, while officers with substantiated claims of abuse go without any meaningful punishment.
States and the federal government also don’t reliably collect data so we won’t have a good idea of whether the vaccine is reaching these critical populations.
The men said Assistant Chief Christopher McCormack touched them inappropriately during searches or ordered others to do so. Eighty-six NYPD leaders have at least one credible misconduct allegation on file. McCormack has the most.
Our analysis of federal inspection reports found that nine nursing homes put residents in “immediate jeopardy,” including a case where a nursing assistant fed a resident after changing soiled briefs without washing hands.
When Laura Whalen went to a hospital with COVID-19, she brought her kids. Her husband was already in an ICU, and she couldn’t risk them exposing their grandma. But the state told her to find someone to take them or it would.
Cardinal Health withdrew the gowns just before the pandemic because a Chinese supplier failed to sterilize them properly. The recall has created what a hospital association official called a “ripple effect.”
Pharmacists told ProPublica that they are seeing unusual and fraudulent prescribing activity as doctors stockpile unproven coronavirus drugs endorsed by President Donald Trump.
The CDC and hospitals have put medical providers and patients at risk as they fail to address national supply shortages. One emergency room doctor who did not have proper equipment and learned he had COVID-19 said, “I’m sure I exposed everyone I saw.”
None of Congress’ emergency coronavirus funding goes directly to first responders for the protective gear and supplies that paramedics, firefighters and EMTs need to safely fight the virus. One fire chief said they’re being forgotten.
Key direction from the CDC on how to protect emergency responders came after the first American case and the exposure of at least one firefighter. It’s yet another example of a fragmented and halting response at the highest levels of government.
La Iglesia Católica permitió que más de cincuenta clérigos basados en los Estados Unidos se mudaran al extranjero tras enfrentar acusaciones creíbles de abuso sexual. Algunos de ellos siguieron trabajando con menores.
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