From Sprouts to Spotify, a watermelon-shaped television looms over impressionable tykes as a simple melody plays. The chorus of children’s voices cries: “CoComelon!” Caregivers have increasingly relied on the show, a highly-branded singalong available for free on YouTube and many major streaming services, during pandemic parenting. The show follows...
RACE & PLACE Black music has made room for every form of resistance you can imagine—and more. The past century of Memphis policing shows us how. This piece is part of a special National Black Music Month series for pop justice, Scalawag’s newsletter exploring the intersection of popular culture and justice—namely through abolition. Sign up for more stories...
Every year in America, more than 5,000 killers get away with murder. The percentage of homicides that go unsolved in the United States has risen alarmingly even as the homicide rate has fallen to levels last seen in the 1960s. Despite dramatic improvements in DNA analysis and forensic science, police fail to make an arrest in more than one-third of all homicides...
The Murder Accountability Project has filed a lawsuit to compel the Illinois State Police to provide homicide clearance counts and other important murder data it ceased reporting to the U.S. Department of Justice and to the public more than 20 years ago. The nonprofit organization filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on December 3, 2015, in Cook County...
This piece contains spoilers for Barbie (2023). Editor’s note: Scalawag stands in solidarity with the writers, actors, and others of SAG-AFTRA and WGA striking for fair pay and against wage discrimination. During the peak of my childhood, my signature bedtime routine included being greeted by my Black Barbie princess bedsheets. It wasn’t until much later...
More than half of America’s major police departments are struggling to solve homicides at the same level of success they enjoyed a decade ago, according to a study of federal crime records by the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project. The study focused on the nation’s 160 police departments that investigate at least 10 homicides a year and that also faithfully...
Murder Accountability Project: Police fail to report infanticides and elderly murders Police fail to report infanticides and elderly murders Police and sheriffs’ departments frequently fail to report homicides of infants and elderly Americans to the U.S. Department of Justice, a troubling finding by the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project based upon a...
Chicago Police have arrested Arthur Hilliard and charged him with the homicide of Diamond Turner, the first arrest to be made among a large cluster of 51 female strangulations on Chicago’s South and West sides. The cluster was identified by a computer algorithm developed by the Murder Accountability Project. Turner, 21, was found strangled, beaten and partially...
America’s coroners and medical examiners reported nearly 3,000 more homicides in 2018 than were reported by law enforcement officials – the largest discrepancy on record. A new study by the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project found significant lapses in police participation in the annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR), a voluntary reporting program administered by...
The Easton Police Department has hired a town resident as its newest officer. Easton Police Commission Chairman Richard Colangelo swore in Anthony Caruso on March 11. Caruso replaces Police Officer Luis Rodriguez who resigned earlier this year. Easton Police Officer Anthony Caruso. Contributed photo Caruso, 32, brings a wealth of experience to the department...