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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Since the protests in Ferguson, Mo., police departments have rushed to adopt body cameras. But local laws governing their use are all over the map. See the laws in your state. -
The question of whether tech companies should be required to build backdoors has been floating around Congress for years. A public fight over the San Bernardino terrorism case could break the logjam. -
The last four anti-government militants at the National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon appear close to surrendering to the FBI. Law enforcement began closing in on them late Wednesday afternoon.
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Anger erupted in front of the county courthouse in Burns, Ore., Monday as anti-government protesters in town for a rally met a wall of locals sick of outsiders trying to start a movement there. -
Prosecutors and some police departments in the state say reducing prison sentences is having an undesired outcome: more property crime. But reform advocates say police are jumping to conclusions. -
The armed occupiers of a federal wildlife refuge have been free to come and go. After deadly government raids in the 1990s, such as Waco and Ruby Ridge, there's less appetite for force these days. -
The scene was quiet Monday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Center in Oregon as it was occupied by more than a dozen armed, anti-government supporters.
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Local police and emergency services in the U.S. have been preparing for a new reality: a strategic attack by terrorists who use diversionary tactics to maximize chaos and death. -
Police and prosecutors work together — it's the nature of the legal system. That closeness can be problematic when it comes to investigating police misconduct. One idea is to bring in outsiders. -
The numbers remain small, and hard to quantify, but prosecutors seem to be under pressure to charge police in on-duty shootings, and the "benefit of the doubt" they enjoyed seems to be eroding.
