In more than a decade of journalism, I have frequently covered crime, policing and public safety issues.
Whether its reporting directly from the scenes of gun murders, exploring the impacts of violence on communities, or investigating in depth missing women cases or police misconduct allegations, my work has been published in This Magazine, Windspeaker, Vancouver Observer — and recognized with awards and nominations from both the Canadian Journalism Foundation and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
Below are some samples from my police portfolio.
Native people are more often killed or abused by police officers than are others in Canada, but police actions are more often than not chalked up to ‘bad apples’ on the force instead of symptoms of systemic problems within police ranks
Finalist, Canadian Association of Journalists 2012 Community News Award. Police across the country are seeking closer ties with gay, lesbian and transgender communities, but speakers at a recent international conference on policing questioned whether cops and queers make good bedfellows
Despite only occasionally surfacing in the news — with more than 1,000 G20 arrests, tasering deaths, lethal shootings and abuse in holding cells — police misconduct is not only widespread and historic it is also deeply entrenched, said presenters at a major conference on policing last week in Winnipeg
Biting a chunk out of the common adage that a few “bad apples” in the police are responsible for misconduct, Winnipeg Indigenous leader Leslie Spillett pointed to an inherent “culture of oppression” in Canada’s police forces at an international conference on policing
VANCOUVER – An eyewitness account of the 2011 Stanley Cup riot and its aftermath
Evidence found at the scene of a Salt Spring Island house fire last Thursday shows the blaze was definitely arson, police said
November 1999—Our small, five-person “affinity group,” the basic unit of social activism, was only one insignificant unit of a crowd of at least 40,000 anti-World Trade Organization marchers.
David P Ball 