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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Flush with money after the 2020 protests, community bail funds are releasing more people from jail. That's getting pushback from those who say they should be more careful about whom is bailed out.
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Academics, activists and police chiefs have been clamoring for national statistics on police use of force. A federal effort to collect those numbers voluntarily from police is floundering.
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No-knock warrants have been in steep decline since the height of the war on drugs, but the killing of a Black man in Minneapolis has raised questions about why police still insisted on the tactic.
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Chicago was shaken by the shooting death of 8-year-old Melissa Ortega last Saturday. Nationally, the number of children shot has jumped during the pandemic. -
The San Jose City Council has approved the nation's first law requiring gun owners to have liability insurance. City leaders hope it will reduce gun violence. Gun owners say they're being harassed.
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Specific homeless camps may fuel property crime, but one researcher says on average, camps do not appear to increase city-wide crime rates. -
The trial of former officer Kimberly Potter in Minnesota for shooting a suspect when she says she thought she had a Taser in her hand has revived worrying questions about Taser design and use.
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Brazen shoplifting is caught on video, but hard numbers for shoplifting don't really exist. Nonetheless, merchants say it's growing fast and online retailers are partly to blame.
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Stock markets around the world tumbled on concerns about the new variant. While it's too soon to tell exactly how the variant functions, virologists are rushing to learn more. -
Critics of the movement to reduce cash bail cite the $1000 cash bail paid by Darrell E. Brooks, Jr., weeks before he allegedly plowed his SUV through the Waukesha Christmas parade
