Cohort 2024
InvestigateWest
Investigating Overpolicing of Indigenous Communities
Stevens County, WA
In Washington State, Indigenous people are overrepresented in the criminal legal system. Although Indigenous people make up just about 2 percent of the state population, they make up about 6 percent of those incarcerated. In previous research, InvestigateWest, a nonprofit investigative journalism newsroom in Seattle, found that Indigenous drivers are the most likely drivers to be searched by the Washington State Patrol. These findings prompted state lawmakers to fund a racial bias study (PDF) of the patrol, which also found racial disparities in police stop searches in Indigenous communities, and to support efforts to diversify the agency’s workforce.
With Catalyst Grant funding, InvestigateWest seeks to document the causes and consequences of overpolicing of Indigenous communities in Washington, and potential remedies. It will explore media coverage, reports, and community complaints that focus on Indigenous communities’ experiences with law enforcement, conduct interviews with affected community members, and analyze data from the Washington State Patrol on stops, arrests, use-of-force incidents, and any internal investigations on racial profiling. The goal is to build data visualizations and disseminate a data-driven article that illustrate disparities in policing in Indigenous communities.
