Martin Kaste
Martin Kaste is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk. He covers law enforcement and privacy. He has been focused on police and use of force since before the 2014 protests in Ferguson, and that coverage led to the creation of NPR's Criminal Justice Collaborative.
In addition to criminal justice reporting, Kaste has contributed to NPR News coverage of major world events, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2011 uprising in Libya.
Kaste has reported on the government's warrant-less wiretapping practices as well as the data collection and analysis that go on behind the scenes in social media and other new media. His privacy reporting was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 United States v. Jones ruling concerning GPS tracking.
Before moving to the West Coast, Kaste spent five years as NPR's reporter in South America. He covered the drug wars in Colombia, the financial meltdown in Argentina, the rise of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and the fall of Haiti's president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Throughout this assignment, Kaste covered the overthrow of five presidents in five years.
Prior to joining NPR in 2000, Kaste was a political reporter for Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul for seven years.
Kaste is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
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Being a Police Chief in 2020 is precarious. Carmen Best, Seattle's first Black female chief, has some tactics for keeping her job and protecting her department from the "defund the police" movement.
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News stories often describe anti-police protests as being "mostly peaceful," with some violence. In reality, two kinds of protests are going on, and there's tension over tactics.
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The Trump administration is defending its use of federal law enforcement officers in Portland, Ore. But the state is suing, saying the feds have overreached.
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Recent protests have revived a longtime campaign to create a national system to track police misconduct and make sure those who lose their license can't find another police job in other states.
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Seattle officials swept through the area known as CHOP, ending a police-free zone born from protests over racial injustice. Recent shootings and other crimes added to its growing list of detractors.
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Recent shootings prompted Seattle officials to clear the police-free zone known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest. The police chief said she supports lawful protests, but violence is unacceptable.
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Officials say the scammers took advantage of vulnerabilities in the system as the state rushed to get unemployment benefits to people quickly.
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As states re-open under new pandemic rules, enforcement often falls to the police. But some people — including some police — think that's a bad idea. -
Police departments are facing a new reality in the era of coronavirus. As familiar categories of crime fade, officers are being asked to handle unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable new assignments.
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He was the unnamed doctor in his 40s reported to be clinging to life, one of the earliest cases of an American health care worker laid low by COVID-19. He says timely medical interventions saved him.
