GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — Six members of the KARE 11 news team were honored by the Peabody Awards for their work on "PRONE," an investigative series completed in partnership with KUSA-TV 9NEWS in Denver.
The "PRONE" series investigated the deadly police practice of prolonged prone restraint, where officers restrain people on their stomachs while trying to handcuff them.
Investigative journalists A.J. Lagoe and Steve Eckert and photojournalists Chad Nelson, David Porter, Gary Knox and George Marincel were all named for their work on the award-winning project.
Researching body camera footage, autopsy reports, and court filings, 9NEWS Denver Reporter Chris Vanderveen created a searchable database that provided specific patterns so reporters could report similar cases in their areas. Over two years, the database became a catalyst for multiple news stories in other cities. In cooperation with local news teams from across the United States, KUSA-TV created an interactive web piece that featured each of the 131 cases and a video that serves as an instructive “how-to” for reporters to uncover prolonged prone-restraint deaths. The police departments of Denver and Minneapolis have changed their policies in the wake of the series.
INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: Click the photos for the names of people who 9News found died of positional asphyxia and more information about each case.
Records obtained by KARE 11 in 2021 revealed it took the Minneapolis Police Department months – even after George Floyd’s murder – to order beefed up, in-person training for all its officers about the dangers of holding someone face down with pressure on their back
According to a KARE 11 investigation, even though the MPD created a four-minute online training video specifically warning about the dangers of prone restraint last fall, records show no rank-and-file Minneapolis officers were ordered undergo additional in-person “Positional Asphyxia Training” until December 2020 – nearly six months after Floyd’s death.
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