Jeremy Kohler is a St. Louis-based reporter covering issues in Missouri and the Midwest. He came to ProPublica in January 2021 from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he worked for more than 20 years. Kohler previously worked as a reporter for the Gloucester County Times, Trentonian and Courier-Post newspapers in New Jersey. He has also served as an adjunct journalism instructor at Washington University since 2003.
In a city with a high violent crime rate and claims of inequitable policing, leaders are questioning the $100,000 per year the chief receives from local business owners. “Can the criminals get together and pay the chief?” asked one alderwoman.
In St. Louis, murder investigations often rely on a single detective, making them vulnerable if the detective is unable or unwilling to come to court. But a former homicide investigator said he has no obligation to cooperate, claiming that “retirement is meant to be retirement.”
After major American cities began electing prosecutors who campaigned on the promise of systemic reform, law enforcement unions labeled these DAs as soft on crime while lawmakers made legal and legislative efforts to remove them from office.
Across the country, police have undermined and resisted reform. To protest a prosecutor, one detective was willing to let murder suspects walk free, even if he’d arrested them and believed that they should be behind bars.
A 2015 state audit found the Minnesota Board of Nursing was slow to act on complaints about nurses, putting the public at risk. The board ramped up its discipline for a few years, but now cases are backing up again.
Following a ProPublica investigation, a St. Louis official said the city would review private policing in its wealthier neighborhoods. Three months later, that review has yet to begin.
A St. Louis ordinance lets courts banish people from huge swaths of the city as a punishment for petty crimes. These neighborhood orders of protection often prevent people from accessing the services they need and raise constitutional questions.
A statewide clean-energy lending program in Ohio stalled last year before making any loans. Lawmakers want to add consumer protections in case the program resurfaces.
St. Louis’ largest private policing firm — hired to serve the city’s wealthier and whiter neighborhoods — is a who’s who of city police commanders, supervisors and other officers.
Wealthier neighborhoods in St. Louis have armed themselves with private police, giving them a level of service poor areas can’t afford and fueling racial and economic disparities.
A ProPublica investigation revealed how PACE loans hurt homeowners. Ygrene, one top Missouri lender, said reforms made after our investigation were a factor in its decision to stop making loans in the state.
Abortion foes praise the nonprofit centers for supporting women and presenting alternatives to ending pregnancies, but supporters of abortion say the facilities mislead women by appearing to offer clinical services and unbiased advice.
St. Louis officials are celebrating a big drop in murders while the city’s police classify more and more killings as “justifiable homicides” instead.
Representative Bill Kidd joked that he didn’t get a vaccine because he’s a Republican. Now he has COVID.
An Ohio city had a low-interest loan program for energy-saving home improvements. Now, the officials who run it plan to turn it over to the same company behind Missouri's troubled program.
Lawmakers approve consumer protections and oversight to PACE loans that have disproportionately burdened borrowers in Black neighborhoods.
Lawmakers in Missouri are exploring ways to rein in the state’s clean-energy loan program, which ProPublica found disproportionately harms Black homeowners.
Dozens of Missouri homeowners who used PACE loans to fix up their houses ended up trapped in debt and could soon see their homes sold at auction.
Armed far-right mobs met little law enforcement resistance when they repeatedly attacked state capitols. You can draw a direct line from that kind of impunity to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6.
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