---The story was later picked up and published in a local Palo Alto print newspaper, The Daily Post, on August 5, 2015.

Transcription

1 1. Title of story/collection of stories/series and the names of people (in the order they should appear) who worked on this story. For a partnership or collaboration, please name each entity that took part in the investigation.: Driving with suspended license top crime in Menlo Park, many lose cars - By Farida Jhabvala Romero, Peninsula Press. 2. Date(s) published, aired, or posted.: ---Published on Peninsula Press: June 17, 2015 ( ---Published on partner site SFGate.com: June 17, 2015 ( ---Aired on KQED radio and published on partner site KQED.org: August 5, 2015 ( ---The story was later picked up and published in a local Palo Alto print newspaper, The Daily Post, on August 5, Topic and synopsis of story or series, including major findings.: In California, there are over 4.4 million people who have suspended driver s licenses simply because they can t afford to pay a traffic ticket. A $100 base fine can often spiral into $490 after fees and assessments -- and then to $730 if the driver misses the initial deadline. These minor citations can result in loss of license and sometimes a vehicle, which impacts people s employment and job potential. So we asked: does this punishment fit the crime? By focusing on the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park -- part of Peninsula Press core coverage area -- we explored the frequency and locations of people driving with a suspended license. Menlo Park police citations and vehicle impounds for driving with a suspended license nearly tripled from 2008 to 2014, and it represents the top crime in the city. We found a disproportionate impact on minority and low-income individuals and detailed the stories of local residents who lost their licenses and their cars in the process. Among their stories was that of a Menlo Park mother who was unable to pay to get her seized vehicle back, affecting her ability to work and take her son to school. Our reporting found that others defy their suspended licenses and drive to work, chancing other, more serious interactions with police. We also spoke with local law enforcement to get a broader perspective on traffic stops. Menlo Park Police suggested the problem is socio-economic in nature and that there is no effort to target minorities. To get to the source of the issue, we requested and analyzed police records, discovering that most of the citations and vehicle impounds for driving with a suspended license (a misdemeanor) were concentrated in the most diverse neighborhood of Menlo Park -- Belle Haven -- that is home to mostly Latinos and African Americans. There is also a lot of commuter traffic in this area. Few of these incidents occurred on the wealthier west side of the city. The

2 police logs illustrated a disproportionate impact on minorities: in a two-month period, 68 percent of those cited were Latino and 16 percent were African Americans. We developed a data visualization to allow readers to interact with the data themselves and to visually understand the disparity. The online package was also accompanied by a video report that offers an intimate portrait of affected residents and their living situations. The story went well beyond Menlo Park as well. We discovered impound costs across the Bay Area are much higher than the rest of the state -- sometimes surpassing the worth of the vehicle. Just the tow fee and impoundment fees are often too expensive for people living paycheck to paycheck. More than half the cars impounded this way in Menlo Park are never picked up. For a lot of people, it s cheaper to buy another car or take the bus, than it is to get the car back. Reporter Farida Jhabvala Romero s audio story on KQED moved the story forward and explained how Menlo Park s example represented a statewide phenomenon. This story was timely: in fall 2015, California Gov. Jerry Brown launched a new traffic debt amnesty program that would allow drivers with minor traffic infractions to instead pay half their penalties. The Daily Post in Palo Alto followed-up on Farida s reporting with a Sept. 11, 2015 story and an Oct. 8, 2015 story about Menlo Park s towing fees. Daily Post Editor and Co-Publisher Dave Price told us Farida s towing story opened up a discussion and controversy in Menlo Park that the city council was then compelled to address. On Aug. 11, 2015, The Almanac in Silicon Valley ran a story explaining how the city manager was reviewing the issue: The police department came under particular scrutiny in a June 17 story, Driving with suspended license top crime in Menlo Park, many lose cars, by the Peninsula Press, a project of the Stanford Journalism Program. The story received more attention Aug. 5 when KQED broadcast a news segment on it. 4. How the story got started (tip, assignment, etc.).: While doing beat reporting in Menlo Park for Stanford s Public Issues Data Journalism class, Jhabvala Romero obtained police data on all incidents in Menlo Park. When she found the most common incident in the city was stops associated with driving with suspended licenses, ferreting out the why led her to report this story. Romero mapped the data and discovered the geographic concentration around Menlo Park s poorest neighborhood, Belle Haven. She then started scraping data from online police logs -- including the perceived race or ethnicity of those stopped -- and gathering information about suspended licenses. She found large numbers of Latino and African-American drivers who were affected.

3 5. Was your work based in any way on another news organization's previously published or aired report? If yes, please provide the name and publication or air date.: No, this story was an original investigation derived from local data. During the reporting process, the reporter referenced a report about license suspensions by the East Bay Community Law Center, the Lawyer s Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and other groups. 6. Major types of documents used and if FOI requests were needed.: We filed public records requests with the Menlo Park Police Department to find where incidents happened, what time and whether a car was towed. We also used the police department s online data, which showed the latest 30 days of stops. The police department declined our request for more information on the owners of vehicles or how many vehicles were retrieved by owners. Data was requested from the California DMV, but the DMV did not track the reason impounded cars end up at lien sale auctions when they are not recovered by owners. 7. Major types of human sources used.: This story had personal anecdotes from drivers whose cars were impounded. We tracked them down with both modern and shoe-leather reporting methods: names in public police logs, as well as lots of door-knocking and calling relatives to find them. We also spoke with the Menlo Park Police Department, spokespeople at the DMV, towing companies and civil rights lawyers. 8. Results (if any).: As a result of our reporting on Peninsula Press and KQED, the City of Menlo Park moved to look into reducing the city s vehicle release fee for police-ordered impounds of $300. Menlo Park City Manager Alex McIntyre said the fee will be reviewed this coming spring. The Daily Post in Palo Alto and The Almanac in Silicon Valley both referenced Peninsula Press as the originator for sparking this community conversation. 9. Follow-up (if any).: We have not had to run any corrections or clarifications on this report. 10. Advice to other journalists planning a similar project.: It is key to meet and speak in-person with those at the agency you are trying to get public records and data from. That way you can clearly find out what data is available and what format it is in. We also found it is vital to go and spend time in the community. Jhabvala Romero spent hours reporting in Menlo Park, just talking and listening to people. She found residents would often

4 provide context: That happened to my cousin, or I saw police officers stopping someone right here. 11. Difficulty, uniqueness of effort, or other special circumstances related to this subject.: Police couldn t provide contact information for vehicle owners. So it took a combination of digital data and traditional, shoe-leather reporting to track down resident sources for personal anecdotes about impound policies. 12. Length of time taken to report, write and edit the story.: The whole project took about four months to report, write and edit. 13 a. Did you extensively use any Internet sources? If so, please list address(es) and explain how the site(s) was useful.: Yes. Jhabvala Romero used Menlo Park Police Department s website to scrape daily log information and to search for suspended license citations. 13 b. Did you obtain or build any electronic databases? If you obtained data, what was its name and source? What was the cost? If you created your own database(s), what records did you use?: All public data obtained by the Menlo Park Police Department was free. Through the reporting process, Jhabvala Romero built her own database with information about people whose cars had been towed in a span of four months by the Menlo Park Police Department. 13 c. Did you have difficulties with the data itself? How did you overcome them?: Jhabvala Romero boosted her Excel and Python skills through the reporting process for this story. She learned some Python coding, Excel sorting and pivot tables to analyze the number of cases and find intersections where most of the cases were occurring. 13 d. Was any analysis done? If so, what?: Yes. Data analysis was done to find: ---total number of citations that ended up on impounds from 2008 to 2014; ---number of citations that were due to DUIs or other reasons from 2008 to 2014; ---and correlating where they occurred (only had block address) to intersections to map it. 13 e. Was data analysis done by your own staff or was outside assistance used? Who?: All data analysis was done in-house by Jhabvala at the Peninsula Press/Stanford Journalism Program. 13 f. What specific software did you use?: ---Microsoft Excel. ---Tableau for visualizing data. ---Python to help in counting incidents at intersections and for arranging the data.

5 15. For Student award entries:: Stanford Hearst Professional in Residence Cheryl Phillips guided and edited student reporter Farida Jhabvala Romero s data negotiation, analysis and reporting for the written story and data visualization. Stanford Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor Geri Migielicz provided feedback for Jhabvala Romero s video portion of this multimedia package. Stanford Hearst Professional in Residence Dan Nguyen provided Jhabvala Romero technical assistance for data analysis using Python. Peninsula Press Managing Editor Vignesh Ramachandran copy-edited the piece. KQED Editor Julia McEvoy provided editorial guidance for the aired radio report on KQED News.