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 Minneapolis Police Department is short-staffed, even as violent crime has surged. The city and its residents are improvising as they argue over what the future of policing should look like.
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One year after the George Floyd protests, the future of Minneapolis Police Department is still unclear, as the Defund movement collides with the reality of increasing violent crime.
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The Justice Department is getting ready to bring back consent decrees, the feds' main tools to force reform in a police department. But post-George Floyd, do they still make sense?
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Celebrity defense attorney F. Lee Bailey has died, His high-profile clients included Patty Hearst and OJ Simpson and those cases, along with controversy, helped bring national prominence.
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King County, Wash., banned the use of facial recognition by county agencies like law enforcement, following cities such as San Francisco. In most of the U.S., activists are finding bans a tough sell.
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Last year's dramatic increase in shootings and murder has continued into 2021, and police departments are steeling themselves for a difficult summer.
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Some blame the U.S.'s high rate of police shootings on racism or militarism. But another theory says there's a simpler problem: American police aren't taught how to grapple with armed suspects. -
Recent shootings and traffic stops have triggered outrage about police conduct, but also about their skills. Experts say police training is uneven in the U.S., and a lot of it is ineffective.
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The conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin is being seen as a watershed moment for police accountability. But will it actually change policing in America?
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The implications from the trial of Derek Chauvin could impact the policing system.
