Identity & Justice

Pennsylvania will double the number of National Guard members it's sending to help secure Washington after the violent riot last week in which angry supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol.

A Delaware County man linked to the white supremacist Proud Boys has been charged with assaulting three Capitol Police officers with a fire extinguisher during last week’s violent riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Gov. Tom Wolf on Thursday ordered the Pennsylvania Capitol closed for two days next week around the swearing-in of three statewide officials and the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

After insurrectionists breached the U.S. Capitol last week, the FBI warned armed protests have been planned in all 50 state capitals.

Police who guard the Pennsylvania Capitol are working to be more visible and have been coordinating plans with other agencies to secure the building since a violent mob stormed and occupied the U.S. Capitol last week, a Department of General Services spokesperson said Monday.

Charges against two dozen protesters from last summer's demonstrations against police brutality are being refiled, but Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala disagree about the circumstances for that move.

A victims’ rights constitutional amendment that Pennsylvania voters apparently passed by a wide margin was thrown out Thursday by a divided state court that ruled it bundled too many changes together.

One of the first actions by President Donald Trump when he took office was to ban transgender people from serving in the military. Now that President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office on Jan. 20, local LGBTQ advocacy groups are cautiously optimistic about the Democrat’s proposed policies and protections for the community. 

Domestic violence shelters in western Pennsylvania say they’re seeing an increase in hotline calls, amid worries that a difficult and isolating winter is on the way.

Dannielle Brown spent much of 2020 on a hunger strike to protest her son’s death at Duquesne University. And while the school has taken action in response, it seems likely the dispute will continue in the new year.

As health care workers and nursing home residents are getting vaccinated against COVID-19, officials are still finalizing the distribution plan for the so-called Phase 1B group. This next phase of vaccine distribution includes first responders, critical workers and those with pre-existing conditions that put them more at risk of severe illness from the coronavirus.

Free electronic tablets have been distributed to those incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail as a way to connect them to the outside world through video calls, movies, eBooks and messaging. But there have been complaints about reliable connection and costs associated with accessing many of the tablet’s features.

Yvonne Newkirk would talk to her 60-year-old brother Edward Ball on the phone almost every day. He was serving time at a state prison in Luzerne County, where he would also write to her every week. Then, in mid-November, all contact ended.

Harrisburg’s city government is adding 18 new jobs to its police department in 2021, 16 of which are meant for civilians. 

The state Department of Corrections defied federal guidelines and a doctor’s order last week, demanding that an officer who tested positive for COVID-19 come back to work at a Pennsylvania prison struggling to contain the spread, Spotlight PA has learned.

Two years ago, the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia joined the long line of ambitious prosecutors investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of priest-abuse complaints.

Magisterial district judges are the gatekeepers of Pennsylvania’s legal system.

Drug companies are on the verge of releasing coronavirus vaccines to the public, but getting Black people and Latinos to trust the vaccine is yet another hurdle in the pandemic that has affected people of color the most.

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh paid out $19,237,000 to victims of sexual abuse by its clergy members through a compensation fund launched after the release of a grand jury report in 2018. That report found widespread child sexual abuse in Catholic churches across Pennsylvania.

The settlements were paid out by the Kenneth Feinberg Group, an independent mediator hired by the diocese in 2019, to 244 claims, according to a statement from the diocese Thursday.

A ban on buying books for people incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail was lifted Wednesday. The policy prevented people at the jail and their loved ones from purchasing books from approved third party providers. The ban lasted a little more than two weeks.

Racial disparities persist in Allegheny County’s criminal justice system, according to a report the Abolitionist Law Center’s Court Watch program released Tuesday. The study documents racial imbalances at the earliest stages of the criminal court process.

An Allegheny County Jail sergeant used excessive force on three female former inmates, one of whom was pregnant, with psychiatric disabilities, according to a federal lawsuit.

Pennsylvania's highest court questioned Tuesday whether Bill Cosby's alleged history of intoxicating and sexually assaulting young women amounted to a signature crime pattern, given studies that show as many as half of all sexual assaults involve drugs or alcohol.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated former Penn State President Graham Spanier's conviction for child endangerment over his handling of a report that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused a boy in a team shower.

Soup kitchens are typically busy places on Thanksgiving Day. They have always offered people in need a place to come in from the cold and share a turkey dinner with their neighbors in the community.

Lawyers representing families detained at the Berks County Residential Center say Immigrations and Customs Enforcement may deport two families as soon as this weekend. They argue those families and 21 other families detained in Dilley, Texas, never received a fair chance to state their case for asylum because their cases were decided under policies that courts later struck down.

Officials at the Allegheny County Jail announced Monday that 10 jail employees were diagnosed with COVID-19 over the past weekend, with another 50 quarantined. Since March, some 33 staffers at the jail have tested positive for the virus.

The state Senate denied the commonwealth’s victim advocate, Jennifer Storm, another term by a vote of 32 to 18 Monday. Supporters of the move said Storm is both unqualified and under investigation by the State Ethics Committee