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It Takes a Lot to Take Rogue Cops Off the Job in Colorado (MuckReads Weekly)

by Terry Parris Jr.

Some of the best #MuckReads we read this week. Want to receive these by email?  Sign up to get this briefing delivered to your inbox every weekend.

Making the cut: Why choosing the right surgeon matters even more than you know (ProPublica)

"...we are making public the complication rates of nearly 17,000 surgeons nationwide. Patients will be able to weigh surgeons' past performance as they make what can be a life-and-death decision. ... A small share of doctors, 11 percent, accounted for about 25 percent of the complications. Hundreds of surgeons across the country had rates double and triple the national average. Every day, surgeons with the highest complication rates in our analysis are performing operations in hospitals nationwide. Subpar performers work even at academic medical centers considered among the nation's best."

+And check out the #SurgeonScorecard database

Yemenis are terrorized by a weapon made in America, sold to the Saudis (PRI's The World)

"Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on SFWs from Textron with US government approval. When these two nations started to stockpile SFWs several years ago, each weapon cost about $360,000. This year the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen's Houthi rebels began to use the weapon in the Houthis' home province of Saada, near the Saudi border."

Colorado laws allow rogue officers to stay in law enforcement (The Denver Post)

"Michael Jimenez resigned from the Denver police force in 2008 after he allegedly had sex with a prostitute he picked up in his squad car. But that did not stop the Custer County Sheriff's Office from hiring him in 2009. He lost that job, too, in less than a year. Then the Fowler Police Department, whose chief knew Jimenez from Denver, hired him. Jimenez never showed up for work and was later fired after pleading guilty to driving while ability impaired. Still, his certificate to work as a police officer remained active."

Tens of thousands of rape kits go untested across USA (USA Today)

"New York is one of 44 states with no law stipulating when police should test rape kits and 34 states that haven't conducted a statewide inventory. 'We need to have a full accounting for the state of what's left, what hasn't been tested, why it hasn't been tested and just clear it up,' said New York State Assembly member Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat, who has introduced legislation requiring an inventory. The bill has yet to make it out of committee."


We didn't send out a #MuckReads weekly newsletter last week. So, if you missed some of those reads, here are a few we would have sent out:

Fatal extraction: Australian mining in Africa (The Center for Public Integrity and The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)

"Across the continent, Australian mining companies have been implicated in deaths, cases of alleged negligence, illegal licensing, unfair dismissal, forced displacement and environmental degradation. Thousands have sued or filed grievances against these companies, their subsidiaries and subcontractors. ... Since 2004, Australian-listed companies were linked to more than 380 deaths in on-site accidents and off-site skirmishes in Africa."

Ghost students, ghost teachers, ghost schools (BuzzFeed News)

"For Afghanistan overall, the data showed 1,174 schools — almost 1 in every 12 — was a ghost school, an educational facility that the Afghan government publicly claimed was open but that was, in fact, not operating. In the provinces that are the most dangerous to monitor — and into which the U.S. poured the most aid money — that proportion soared. In Kandahar province, where DeNenno served, a full third of the 423 schools the Ministry of Education publicly reported as open in 2011 were not functioning, and in Helmand, it was more than half."

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