Peggy Lowe
Investigative ReporterI’m a veteran investigative reporter who came up through newspapers and moved to public media. I want to give people a better understanding of the criminal justice system by focusing on its deeper issues, like institutional racism, the poverty-to-prison pipeline and police accountability. Today this beat is much different from how reporters worked it in the past. I’m telling stories about people who are building significant civil rights movements and redefining public safety.
Email me at lowep@kcur.org.
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The National Registry of Exonerations says 153 innocent people were freed last year. A new report credits an increase on innocence organizations and conviction integrity units working on cases.
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In the first of our series “The Injured,” a Kansas family remembers Valentine’s Day as the beginning of panic attacks, life-altering trauma, and waking to nightmares of gunfire. Thrown into the spotlight by the shootings, they wonder how they will recover.
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In an unusually fast response from federal authorities, the men were not charged with shooting the weapons, but rather with trafficking, illegal sales and lying to federal agents. One of the weapons was illegally bought at Frontier Justice, where Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed the since-blocked "Second Amendment Preservation Act."
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A new federal lawsuit argues that the Missouri law cementing state governance of KCPD was created “to keep Black people enslaved.” One of the women is Narene Crosby, whose son Ryan Stokes was killed by KCPD in 2013.
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Lyndell Mays, 23, is being held on $1 million bond. He was shot nine times during the February 14 shooting near Union Station, including once in the face, and is in constant pain, his attorney said.
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Prosecutors wanted Golubski, who faces several federal criminal charges, to go back to lock-up because he took an unauthorized trip to Culver’s in January and lied to his probation officer about it. A federal magistrate denied the request, ruling it was a single violation, but tightened his release terms.
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Gov. Mike Parson appointed Madeline Romious, an AT&T vice president, to the five-member board that oversees the police department. Parson has chosen all four of the appointed board members, while Mayor Quinton Lucas fills the fifth slot.
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A citizen saw Golubski and a woman in a Culver’s on Jan. 23, videotaped him, and sent the tape to prosecutors. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas said the former detective “flaunted” a judge’s conditions for home detention, and his behavior is “in keeping with his conduct over decades in which he has flouted the rules.”
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The Jackson County Prosecutor's Office charged Dominic Miller and Lyndell Mays with second-degree murder, after a verbal argument about "staring at each other" escalated into gunfire near Union Station.
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Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves’ first year coincided with the city’s deadliest on record, with 185 homicides in 2023. Kansas City is an outlier to many U.S. cities, where murders decreased.