Peggy Lowe
Investigative ReporterI’m a veteran investigative reporter who came up through newspapers and moved to public media. I want to give people a better understanding of the criminal justice system by focusing on its deeper issues, like institutional racism, the poverty-to-prison pipeline and police accountability. Today this beat is much different from how reporters worked it in the past. I’m telling stories about people who are building significant civil rights movements and redefining public safety.
Email me at lowep@kcur.org.
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Police Chief Karl Oakman, on the job for two years, says he reduced homicides and violent crime by using four strategies, including keeping officers present in neighborhoods and responding to every single fentanyl overdose.
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Across the U.S., thousands of children and young adults serve as informal interpreters for family members that don’t speak English. For kids of Latino immigrants in Kansas City, being the family interpreter is an honor and burden. Plus: Gov. Laura Kelly is again calling for lawmakers to expand Medicaid to provide health care to about 150,000 low-income Kansans.
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Kansas City got nearly six inches of snow over the last day. Evergy reported nearly 1,400 separate outages in Kansas and Missouri as of Tuesday afternoon, due to the storms and high winds. Looking ahead, "brutal cold."
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In 2023, Missouri executed four people, making it one of just five states to use the death penalty — and another execution has been set for this year.
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Kansas City, Missouri, has exceeded its record for deadliest year, with 185 homicides in 2023. The city's 51st victim, who was killed in April, ran a popular fish restaurant and taco truck, and was a champion pickleball player.
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Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has launched an effort to charge more cases of retail theft and illegal firearms on the Plaza.
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The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners recently approved spending $200,000 for another year of ShotSpotter, a surveillance technology, despite a new study that says it doesn't achieve the city's public safety goals.
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In an explosive new federal lawsuit, five women say the Unified Government knowingly allowed "dirty cops" to sexually exploit them, among numerous other crimes. The lawsuit names disgraced former detective Roger Golubski, who is already facing federal charges, as well as a former police chief who now serves as the U.S. Marshal in Kansas.
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Kansas City's Black Archives preserves police killing documents so people will know 'the real story'The Jackson County Prosecutor’s office, which won former Kansas City police officer Eric DeValkenaere’s conviction for killing 26-year-old Cameron Lamb, was “memorializing the moment” of the historic case.
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The disgraced Kansas City, Kansas Police detective, who faces civil rights charges of sexual assault and kidnapping, is set to be back in federal court Wednesday. The apparent lack of progress in his case has frustrated his alleged victims and social justice advocates in Kansas City, Kansas.