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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Flooding cut off I-75 for hours as officials struggle to restore power and water to residents in the path of the storm's destruction. -
Being a Police Chief in 2020 is precarious. Carmen Best, Seattle's first Black female chief, has some tactics for keeping her job and protecting her department from the "defund the police" movement.
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News stories often describe anti-police protests as being "mostly peaceful," with some violence. In reality, two kinds of protests are going on, and there's tension over tactics.
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Seattle officials swept through the area known as CHOP, ending a police-free zone born from protests over racial injustice. Recent shootings and other crimes added to its growing list of detractors.
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American police are caught in the angry middle, literally and politically, as civil unrest rages the U.S. Police share thoughts on the current violence and what future they see for their profession.
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The U.S. hit a grim milestone on Wednesday — 100,000 people have died in this country from COVID-19. We reflect on this moment with three journalists in different regions of the country.
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The pandemic has caused fear, uncertainty and unpredictability, as well as lavished new forms of government aid. It became a perfect environment for scammers.
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As states re-open under new pandemic rules, enforcement often falls to the police. But some people — including some police — think that's a bad idea.
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Police departments are facing a new reality in the era of coronavirus. As familiar categories of crime fade, officers are being asked to handle unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable new assignments.
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Many states are projected to have excessive demand for ventilator machines in the coming weeks, but no state government has formally asked hospitals to prepare for difficult and complex crisis triage.
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Washington State reports dropping hospitalizations, and hospitals in San Francisco seeing less patient load than feared. But those facts require context.
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Inmates and guards don't have the option of staying home during a coronavirus outbreak, so detention centers risk becoming "incubators" for the disease. Some are scrambling to mitigate the risk.
