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South Korean Slave Labor, Chicago’s Flawed Policing and More in MuckReads Weekly

by Adam Harris

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.

The NYPD is Running Stings Against Immigrant-Owned Shops, Then Pushing For Warrantless Searches, ProPublica/New York Daily News

Nuisance abatement actions aren’t just kicking people out of their homes in New York City, they’re also being used to ensnare “mom-and-pop shops that are almost exclusively located in minority neighborhoods,” according to a review of 646 cases filed by the NYPD against businesses over an 18-month period beginning in 2013. In fact, 90 percent of the nuisance abatement actions were against businesses in neighborhoods with a predominant minority population.

South Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of 'vagrants', Associated Press

As South Korea prepares to host its second Olympic Games, the AP investigates the widespread abuse of thousands of Koreans — “the homeless, the drunk, but mostly children and the disabled” — who were taken off the streets and forced into slave labor before the 1988 Seoul games. Nearly 30 years later, victims haven’t received any compensation and the government “has consistently tried to bury what happened.”  

Why Haven’t Bankers Been Punished? Just Read These Insider SEC Emails, ProPublica

Why didn’t the bankers responsible for the 2008 financial collapse go to prison? These emails offer some insight. According to one Securities and Exchange Commission investigator, the bankers were “good people who had done a bad thing.” And James Kidney, a longtime SEC investigator, says that line of thinking was exactly the problem

Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?, Bloomberg

“There’s no evidence that Amazon makes decisions on where to deliver based on race,” but, in many cities where Amazon offers same-day Prime service, black people are half as likely as white people to live in available delivery areas. And in Boston, while the predominantly black Roxbury neighborhood gets no same-day service, it is surrounded by eligible neighborhoods on all sides — which begs the question: should Amazon be considering how it serves minority communities?

The “Chicago Model” of policing hasn’t saved Chicago., The Marshall Project

In the first three months of 2016, there were twice as many homicides in Chicago as there were during the same period last year. At a time when several police departments are emulating Chicago’s policing tactics, the Marshall Project examines how a city with such tense community-police relations became a template for police reform nationwide.

Torpedoed., The Trace

In 2004, a St. Petersburg, Florida, shooting range agreed to a deal with the Southwest Florida Water Management District to build a wall preventing spent ammunition tainted with toxic lead from falling on public wetlands. It never built the wall. By 2015, the water district sued, but dropped the case soon after. E-mails and text messages obtained by The Trace reveal the role that NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer played in getting Florida to abandon the lawsuit.

More: Gun Ranges Produce Thousands of Tons of Toxic Pollution Every Year

MuckReads Local

Why Campus Crime Stats Don't Tell the Whole Story, The Arizona Republic

Emails show Nevada higher ed agency misled Legislature on funding study, Las Vegas Review-Journal

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