Martin Kaste
Martin Kaste is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk. He covers law enforcement and privacy. He has been focused on police and use of force since before the 2014 protests in Ferguson, and that coverage led to the creation of NPR's Criminal Justice Collaborative.
In addition to criminal justice reporting, Kaste has contributed to NPR News coverage of major world events, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2011 uprising in Libya.
Kaste has reported on the government's warrant-less wiretapping practices as well as the data collection and analysis that go on behind the scenes in social media and other new media. His privacy reporting was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 United States v. Jones ruling concerning GPS tracking.
Before moving to the West Coast, Kaste spent five years as NPR's reporter in South America. He covered the drug wars in Colombia, the financial meltdown in Argentina, the rise of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and the fall of Haiti's president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Throughout this assignment, Kaste covered the overthrow of five presidents in five years.
Prior to joining NPR in 2000, Kaste was a political reporter for Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul for seven years.
Kaste is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
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The pandemic crime spike has largely subsided — with the exception of carjacking and car thefts. Those crimes remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. -
Police officers backed Trump's reelection, but police reform advocates wonder what that will mean for police accountability -
There are fewer tents on San Francisco sidewalks. The city has ramped up enforcement of anti-camping laws, and police are playing a bigger role. -
AI can improve police "professionalism" by monitoring officers' body camera footage, according to the first independent study on the topic. Police aren’t so sure the benefits are worth the cost.
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Polymer80 sold component kits that are easily assembled into working handguns that couldn't be traced. Regulatory pressure and lawsuits appear to have shut it down — but the Supreme Court may still rescue the business. -
An elected official in Las Vegas blamed his 2022 primary defeat on negative stories in the local newspaper. Now a jury has found him guilty of murdering the journalist who wrote them. -
Some states have passed minimum distance rules for when first responders warn the public to stay back. Journalism organizations say it's really about discouraging bystander video -
Republicans are attacking Kamala Harris for being soft on crime. But her record as a district attorney and California attorney general isn't so simple. -
Illegal "sideshows," also known as "street takeovers," have spread since the pandemic. When police try to break them up, they often face defiant crowds -
What happens now that the Supreme Court has overturned a federal ban on bump stocks, attachments that make semi-automatic weapons fire at machine-gun speeds.
