Dig

Dig

Dig is an audio series from Louisville Public Media’s Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. Our team of reporters go deep on issues that affect you, your community and your commonwealth. KyCIR is an independent, nonprofit news organization committed to serving the public interest. Here, you’ll find journalism that holds powerful people accountable, builds trust, and shines a light on Kentucky.

Episodes

Back to school with no bus

August 6, 2024 • 12 mins
Hey Dig listeners. It’s been a while, we know. But we’ve been working on some new stories and will be adding them here when they’re ready. Up first, our reporter Jess Clark has been following the Jefferson County Public Schools system for a while — and when the school district’s board of education voted earlier this year to cut bus service for dozens of magnet schools, Jess started talking to families. She wanted to know how thi...
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Dirty Business

September 14, 2023 • 55 mins
In July 2022, floods killed 45 people and caused more than a billion dollars of damage in eastern Kentucky. Then, the people who were supposed to help clean up actually made things worse for a lot of survivors. There’s big money in disaster recovery. In “Dirty Business,” we investigate the expensive, messy work of cleaning up after 2022’s catastrophic flooding.
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6: 'Who's Gonna Be Next?'

October 18, 2021 • 26 mins
So much has changed since Louisville first proclaimed itself a model city for policing reform: the police chief was fired. The city was upended by protests and grief over Breonna Taylor, and David McAtee. But some things are the same: The anger. The frustration. The disconnect between the police and the community. In our season finale, city leadership makes a very familiar set of promises. Could 21st Century Policing work this time...
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5: Say Her Name: Breonna Taylor

October 18, 2021 • 33 mins
“Early this morning, we had a critical incident involving one of our officers who was shot and another person at the scene who was killed.” When LMPD Chief Steve Conrad first described what happened in Breonna Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, he did not mention her by name. But the city would soon learn it — then the country, and then the world. What came next demonstrated how far LMPD had fallen from its ideals. Crowd c...
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4: Might As Well Appeal

October 18, 2021 • 33 mins
For LMPD to become the police department it claimed to want to be, the department would have to recruit the best of the best, retain experienced officers, and effectively discipline and remove problem one. But LMPD’s disciplinary system makes the latter hard to do. Former and current officers say the job can chew up and spit out people who want to do community policing — harming the most-policed communities in the process.
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3: People, Places and Narcotics

October 18, 2021 • 32 mins
Even as city leaders were making big promises about the model city they claimed Louisville was going to become, they were making decisions that undermined those policing reform goals. In 2016, there were 117 homicides in Louisville — at that point, the most in decades. Police responded with a “People, Places and Narcotics” strategy that targeted some Black neighborhoods with aggressive patrols.
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2: Promises

October 18, 2021 • 23 mins
In 2016, the police chief laid out his vision: Louisville was going to become the kind of place where everyone across the city, no matter what neighborhood they lived in, would get the same treatment from the police — policing that’s about your protection, and safety. But that’s not what happened.
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1: The Eye of the Storm

October 18, 2021 • 25 mins
Barbecue chef David McAtee, the man they called Yaya, was a staple at 26th and Broadway in Louisville’s predominately Black West End. He was a friend to everyone who stopped by for a meal — including many police officers. For years, Louisville had claimed to be building bridges between police and Black communities. Yaya was one of those bridges. Here’s what happened to him, and how.
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Available Now... Dig Season 2

October 6, 2021 • 3 mins
Louisville, Ky., the city now known for the police killing of Breonna Taylor, once made ambitious promises to transform its police department and mend its relationship with the Black community. Just five years before they killed Breonna Taylor in her home, Louisville considered itself a model city for police reform. In a joint KyCIR/Newsy investigation, insiders and documents reveal the systemic barriers and choices made by cit...
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The Hearing

March 6, 2020 • 26 mins
Jen Sainato had been waiting for this day for a long time. She’d woken up early, put on her black striped suit, and drove five hours to attend the Louisville Metro Council’s public safety committee meeting. The council had called the police to answer questions about their handling of rape cases, in the wake of our story about Jen’s case. When Jen walked into the council chamber, the police were already settled in at the front of...
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Update: Prosecution... Declined?

February 21, 2020 • 18 mins
It’s been two months since we released the first season of Dig. And a lot has changed: city leaders are calling the police department to account, and there have been some changes in Jen Sainato’s rape case that we did not see coming.

Visit kydig.org and donate to support this and future seasons of Dig.
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Cleared By Exception

December 5, 2019 • 18 mins
Episode 4: In the final episode of this investigation, we learn more about Jen Sainato’s rape case - why it was closed, and how much evidence the police really had against the man she says raped her. (Note: This episode includes description of a rape and injuries sustained from a rape.)
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Harder to Prove

December 5, 2019 • 21 mins
Episode 3: Louisville officials say rape cases are hard to prosecute. They are not wrong. But we talked with police, prosecutors and experts from around the country who told us it’s not impossible — you just have to be willing to lose a few trials. (Note: This episode includes a series of brief descriptions of sexual violence from courtroom recordings throughout the 14th and 15th minutes, and again in the 17th and 18th minutes.) <...
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The Wizard of Oz

December 5, 2019 • 21 mins
Episode 2: Jen Sainato reported a rape to Louisville police in January 2018. In this episode, we hear about her attempts over the next two years to follow up on her case. And we ask LMPD why cases like Jen’s seem to be taken to the prosecutor’s office so early - sometimes before suspects have even been interviewed. (Note: This episode includes brief descriptions of multiple rape reports.)
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Prosecution Declined

December 5, 2019 • 24 mins
Episode 1: Jen Sainato reported a rape to Louisville police in January 2018. She didn’t feel like they believed her. Jen’s case puts a spotlight on police response to rapes, the prosecutors’ unusual role in rape cases here in Louisville, and how it feels to the people who report. (Note: There are descriptions of a rape, and audio from a police body camera on the scene of a rape investigation, throughout this episode.)
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Dig Season 1 Trailer

November 20, 2019 • 1 min
A woman told Louisville police she was raped in January 2018. She expected them to quickly try to arrest the suspect. But an officer on the scene that night didn’t seem to believe her. The detectives weren’t convinced that a crime occurred. And a prosecutor rejected the case well before an arrest was even under consideration. In the first season of Dig, a new podcast from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, we bring y...
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