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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Minneapolis may become the first big city to eliminate its traditional police department. A Nov. 2 ballot question would replace it with a "Department of Public Safety."
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Public health data experts have a new way to calculate the underreporting of people killed by police. Criminologists call the results "interesting" but are reserving judgment on the accuracy. -
A year after historic protests calling for police reform, communities across the country have grappled with what that reform should look like amid rising violence and funding questions.
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New York's mayor accuses courts of being slow to get back up to speed, saying they're needed to combat violent crime. Have slower courts and fewer pretrial detentions added to the spike in violence?
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A board in California has recommended parole for Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of killing Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at a Los Angeles hotel in 1968. The governor will decide whether he is freed.
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Sirhan's sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole in 1972. On Friday, the California Board of Parole recommended parole.
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Resettlement agencies are receiving a huge wave of Afghan refugees. A church-based group in Seattle welcomes the new arrivals, and puts out the call for volunteers and spare bedrooms.
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American contractors who trained Afghan military pilots are now sounding the alarm about their safety under Taliban rule.
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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.
