Sacramento Bee wins SPJ award for 2019 investigations, legal victory over sheriff
The Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter has named The Sacramento Bee among winners of its James Madison Freedom of Information Awards, recognizing the news organization’s victories in 2019 as it fought for transparency in public records and used those records for in-depth accountability reporting.
SPJ recognized The Bee’s successful lawsuit against the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, filed jointly in January 2019 by The Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times after Sheriff Scott Jones’ department rejected requests for records on deputies who had fired their weapons or engaged in misconduct while on duty.
As SPJ notes in the announcement, that lawsuit was the first in California that sought to enforce Senate Bill 1421, a police transparency law that went into effect at the start of 2019.
The legal victory paved the way for the largest-ever release of internal affairs and jail abuse complaints at the Sacramento County main jail and Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove, as detailed in a groundbreaking investigation by Bee reporters Sam Stanton and Molly Sullivan, published in December.
The award also recognized the yearlong collaboration with ProPublica for the “Overcorrection” series, a deep-diving investigative look at California’s prison and county jail systems since the “realignment” reform in 2011. The series was reported by Bee journalist Jason Pohl, joined by Ryan Gabrielson of ProPublica.
Lawyers Karl Olson and Aaron Field nominated the Bee for the award, noting the strong transparency and public-records journalism produced by Stanton, Sullivan, Pohl and state worker beat reporter Wes Venteicher. Venteicher last year used a Public Records Act request to uncover that a lavish retirement party for a prison agency manager had cost $12,000 in public money, most of which was spent on food, luxury portable restrooms and other supplies.
SPJ awarded wins in the the “news organization” category to The Bee as well as the Bay Area News Group and KQED. The latter two newsrooms launched the California Reporting Project, which “eventually snowballed to include more than 40 newsrooms across the state” and dove into more than 2,000 case files on police misconduct and use-of-force, SPJ wrote in this week’s announcement.
The Sacramento Bee, KQED, the Los Angeles Times and more than a dozen individual award winners will be honored during a banquet dinner March 19 in San Francisco, at the Delancey Street Town Hall.
