The Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University teamed up with The Associated Press in spring 2022 to collaborate on a national investigation into lethal police restraint.
A rotating team of data journalists at the University of Maryland worked closely with AP reporters and editors for two years. Through in-depth data analysis, the team helped AP reporters identify newsworthy patterns that helped shape AP’s reporting and produced findings for publication. The team built custom software tools to make AP’s reporters more productive, allowing them to more easily surface relevant facts from a massive repository of digital documents. The team, building off early work by data journalists at Arizona State University, built a custom web application with thousands of distinct pages that integrated data collected by AP and the Howard Centers, digital text documents, video and other information.
The Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University teamed up with The Associated Press in summer 2022 to collaborate on a national investigation into lethal police restraint.
A rotating team of data journalists at the University of Maryland worked closely with AP reporters and editors for two years. Through in-depth data analysis, the team helped AP reporters identify newsworthy patterns that helped shape AP’s reporting and produced findings for publication. The team built custom software tools to make AP’s reporters more productive, allowing them to more easily surface relevant facts from a massive repository of digital documents. The team, building off early work by data journalists at Arizona State University, built a custom web application with thousands of distinct pages that integrated data collected by AP and the Howard Centers, digital text documents, video and other information.
Students at both schools filed thousands of public information requests seeking background on police officers involved in arrests that turned deadly, analyzed the results and helped develop what became AP’s master database of lethal restraint cases.
University of Maryland reporters zeroed in on Georgia, a state with a blend of urban and rural communities that has relatively good access to public records. Reporters examined details of the state’s 30 non-shooting deaths from 2012 through 2021 and interviewed dozens of law enforcement officials, family members and lawyers to understand how those deaths occurred.
In all, the project involved 205 students and faculty members at the University of Maryland during the course of the collaboration.
At Arizona State University, students in the Howard Center’s Summer 2022 semester were responsible for unearthing incidents of lethal police restraint across the state of Nevada from 2012 to 2021. They submitted public records requests to state and local law enforcement, medical examiners’ offices, county prosecutor and district attorneys’ offices, local government agencies, law enforcement standards and training boards, and citizen review boards. The students also reviewed court records and spoke with attorneys, advocates, lawmakers, policing experts, toxicologists and other public health scientists, as well as families of the victims. They traveled to Nevada for stories on policing legislation proposed since George Floyd’s death and Nevada-based restraint deaths involving drugs, such as methamphetamine, and mental health crises.
During the Fall 2022 semester, students from ASU’s Howard Center wrote stories based on restraint deaths at law enforcement departments across the country – diving deep into such topics as California’s police transparency laws, positional asphyxia deaths, officer mental health, and discipline (or lack thereof) for officers involved in restraint deaths. Students also reviewed hundreds of hours of police bodycam video to identify and assemble a visual investigation into one restraint death from Indiana.
In all, more than two dozen Howard Center students and faculty at Arizona State University worked on the collaboration, reporting and writing case summaries and stories for the project, as well as helping identify investigative angles worthy of further pursuit.
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
DATA REPORTERS
Joelle Anselmo, Sapna Bansil, Lyna Bentahar, Laura Charleston, Aidan Hughes, Victoria Ifatusin, Paul Kiefer, Hannah Marszalek, Jon Meltzer, Devon Milley, Mario Morais, Greg Morton, Stephen Neukam, Taylor Nichols, Michael Purdie, Khushboo Rathore, Victoria Stavish, Rina Torchinsky, Shreya Vuttaluru, Matthew Watson, Hanna Zakharenko, Hannah Ziegler
REPORTERS
Angel Gingras, Minnie Stephenson, Josie Jack, Courtney Cohn, Kate Seltzer, Hunter Savery, Maddy Peek, Marianeli De Leon, Stephanie Quinn, Eve Sampson, Sarah Siock, Tatyana Monnay, Fatema Hosseini, Torrence Banks, Destiny Herbers, Abby Wallace
Gabrielle Lewis, Abbi Ross, Ceoli Jacoby, Daryl Perry, Eric Neugeboren, Evan Hecht, Nyrene Monforte, Winter Hawk, Paige Maizes, Grace Yarrow, Nira Dayanim, Parker Leipzig, Aiesha Solomon
VISUALS REPORTERS
Amelia Jarecke, Chris Barylick, Vincent Petroni, Ella Sherman, Yifei Zhao, Jack Bloomfield
PROJECT EDITORS
Sean Mussenden, Mary Dalrymple, Kathy Best, Deb Nelson, Ron Harris, Derek Willis, Sandy Banisky, Krishnan Vasudevan, Alex Pyles, Adam Marton, Josh Davidsburg
COPY EDITORS
Josh Land, Kaitlyn Wilson
PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS/ PROFESSORS and STAFF
Christoph Mergerson, Micah Ratner, Jeffrey Guo, Megan Fromm, Maria Lee
PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS/STUDENTS
Ashley Ankapong, Rylan Bassett, Joseph Beck, Evalynn Booth, Juliana Brannan, Nina Branwell, Keara Bruno, Erin Burnett, Tyrah Burris, Yasmine Cowan, Luke Denbo, Aaron Dious, Taylor Edwards, Sherwin-Nestor Esguerra, Langston Frazier, Spencer Goodson, Sarah Hersh, Lydia Hurley, Aanisah Husain, Feras Ismail, Sydney Klapman, Taylor Mullen, Jalyn Mathis, Athena Matthews, Margaret McGuigan, Amadea Oberg, Lauren Reeder, Benjamin Reitman, Varun Shankar, Mahelate Solomon, Molly Szymanski, Matthew Weinsheimer, Ilana Williams, Madelyn Willoughby, Frederik Wolfe, Olivia Wolfson, Rachel Zozobrado.
Abigail Zimmardi, Emmett Gartner, Avery Alexander, Judith Altneu, Benicio Balignot, Joshua Banner, Jack Bowman, Mariam Bukhari, Austin Cole, Emily Condon, Ian Dalrymple, Samantha Ebner, Christine Folivi, Matthew Fusillo, Tara Goldstein, Micaela Hanson, Jessica Harden, Isaiah Hayes, Danielle Hodes, Jacob Hunting, Morgan Leason, Tyler Lochte, Taylor Lyons, Ryan McCaffery, Bode Ramsay, Rebecca Redeker, Nathan Schwartz, Brandon Schwartzberg, Benjamin Strober, Hayden Sweeney, Kara Thompson, Thomas Tucker, Abigail Warwick, Mattthew Watson, Katharine Wilson, Nicholas Wolcott, Alexa Wootten, Laura Wortman, June-Young Yun, Daniel Zika, Sununu Bah, William Beltran, Ethan Cannistra, Michael Levitsky, Carl McManus, Ryan Mercado, Avery Newport, Riley Rumbley, Mathew Schumer, Jessica Schwartz, Lisa Woelfl, Denisse Alvarez-Vaca, Dorothy Hood, Lilly Howard, Aya Hussein, Katherine Mahoney, Allison Seidel, Cecelia Shilling, David Smith, Aaron Wright, Christian Young, Molly Zatman, Christine Zhu.
Sasha Allen, Marwa Barakat, Samantha Barrett, Jordan Budney, Bridget Byrne, Jackson Clifton, Hailey Closson, Ryan Colasanti, Jennifer Gable, Jackson Hawkins, Dylan Jaffe, Erica Javadpour, Harper Lawson, Meredith Lutter, Taylor McLaughlin, Colin McNamara, Brian Melanson, Elana Mutnick, Sydney Nauman, Matthew Neus, Richard Podgorski, Nicolas Quintana, Elana Renbaum, Edward Rizkalla, Michael Rovetto, Margaret Scala, Emma Schmalz, Viviane Stackhouse, Brennan Stewart, John Susanin, Laura Van Pate, Matthew Watson, Xiaozhuo Zhu, Alexandra Alpert, Lleyton Beinhaker, Paige Bilsbury, Joshua Caplan, Shifra Dayak, Jon Dennis, Skylar Drew, Jonas Evans, Joseph Francomano, Alexander Gary, Abby Jablonski, Hannah Kennedy, Henry Lilienfeld, Rachel McCrea, Ross O’Keefe, Maya Patel, Andrew Rich, Evony Salmeron, Oliver Schaack, Emma Tufo.
FACT CHECKING
April Quevedo
WEB DESIGN
Jenna Cohen and Adam Marton
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
REPORTERS
Jessica Alvarado Gamez, Taylor Bayly, Arlyssa Becenti, Jonmaesha Beltran, James Brown, Tirzah Christopher, Nathan Collins, Grace Copperthite, Reagan Ryan Creamer, Tyler Dedrick, Katie Donnelly, Sam Ellefson, Mikey Galo, Rachel Konieczny, Brooke Manning, Shahid Meighan, Wyatt Myskow, Caralin Nunes, Lisa Patel, Juliette Rihl, Elena Santa Cruz, Taylor Stevens, Isza Amponin Zerrudo
VISUAL REPORTERS
Jessica Alvarado Gamez, Taylor Bayly, Jonmaesha Beltran, Tirzah Christopher, Reagan Ryan Creamer, Zachary Van Arsdale
ASSISTANT PROJECT EDITOR
Taylor Stevens
PROJECT EDITORS
Maud Beelman, Lauren Mucciolo, Sarah Cohen
