Emily Green and Jake Thomas receive top honors at the 2014 SPJ Awards June 7, 2015: Street Roots reporters Emily Green and Jake Thomas took home three first-place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for environmental and science reporting, ...
12 Jun 2015 -
A lawsuit alleging widespread corruption in its social service programs has been filed against Clackamas County. Filed Nov. 17 by Galina Burley, a former human services manager with the county, the lawsuit states that Clackamas County’s Social Services Di ...
6 Dec 2014 - Jake Thomas
Richard Harris spent much of his working life with people addicted to various substances, and he knows about drugs and what they can do to people. So when Harris came out in support of Measure 91, which would legalize recreational marijuana use if approve ...
14 Oct 2014 - Jake Thomas
Law enforcement and police accountability advocates alike are warming to the idea of requiring officers to film their encounters with citizens – a trend that promises to profoundly change law enforcement. Proponents of the idea expect that equipping offic ...
3 Oct 2014 - Jake Thomas
Gary Spanovich is a cheery 65-year-old man, who, from a tidy office in Northeast Portland has been working for the last 15 years toward a simple, yet seemingly impossible goal: prevent people from being violently killed. Spanovich is the executive directo ...
9 Sep 2014 - Jake Thomas
For decades, cities have spent untold sums of money trying to prevent people from possessing and consuming drugs. With Oregon potentially poised to legalize marijuana, the state’s largest city is already taking steps to benefit financially from pot being ...
12 Aug 2014 - Jake Thomas
It’s been four months and John Munro still doesn’t know where his money is or when he’ll see it. Munro entrusted a $130,000 inheritance to Safety Net of Oregon, a now shuttered Portland nonprofit that was tasked with administering the federal disability a ...
7 Aug 2014 - Jake Thomas
It could have happened in any town in any state. The checks were supposed to be deposited and used to pay for rent, utilities, food and other necessities for a disabled individual. The official report found otherwise. In 2012, an investigator from Columbi ...
8 May 2014 - Jake Thomas
On the desk in Juliet Follansbee’s downtown Portland office is a thick book of Oregon laws. It contains only a few sentences that grant the state agency she operates tremendous power over the lives of hundreds of Oregonians. In May, Follansbee was made in ...
12 Apr 2014 - Jake Thomas
The walls at Safety Net of Oregon, a nonprofit that once helped disabled people manage their federal benefits, are usually covered with collages and fake flowers. But now the plaster walls are bare except for a sign stating that there will be no tolerance ...
10 Apr 2014 - Jake Thomas