Radley Balko 
Investigative Journalist | The Washington Post
New York, NY, UNITED STATES
Senior writer for the Washington Post, where I do investigative reporting on civil liberties and the criminal justice system
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Biography
Radley Balko is a writer and investigative reporter for the Washington Post, where he covers civil liberties and the criminal justice system. His book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, published in July 2013 by PublicAffairs, has received widespread praise, including from the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the New York Journal of Books.
Previously, Balko worked as an investigative reporter for the Huffington Post, a senior editor for Reason magazine, and a policy analyst for the Cato Institute. His work has been cited by the Supreme Court in the case Hudson v. Michigan, and by the Mississippi Supreme Court in Edmonds v. Mississippi. Balko is credited with bringing national attention to the case of Cory Maye, a black man on death row in Mississippi for shooting and killing a white police officer during a botched drug raid on Maye’s home. Maye was eventually released from prison in 2011.
Balko’s November 2007 investigative report on Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne contributed to Hayne's termination. In 2011, the L.A. Press Club named Balko "Journalist of the Year."
Balko has been published in Playboy, Time, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Forbes, ESPN, the National Post, the ABA Journal, and numerous other publications. Balko has also appeared on the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, HBO, Showtime, and NPR.
Balko graduated from Indiana University with a degree in journalism and political science.
Industry Expertise (2)
Research
Writing and Editing
Areas of Expertise (8)
Law Enforcement
Police
Civil Liberties
Crime
Prosecutorial Misconduct
Forensic Misconduct
Criminal Justice
Over-Criminalization
Accomplishments (2)
Maggie Award (professional)
2009-01-01
Reporting award presented by the Western Publishing Association
Journalist of the Year (professional)
2011-01-01
Awarded by the L.A. Press Club
Education (1)
Indiana University: BA, Journalism & Political Science 1997
Affiliations (3)
- The Huffington Post
- Reason.com
- Cato Institute: Media Fellow
Links (14)
- The Agitator
- The Rise of the Warrior Cop
- Rise of the Warrior Cop: Is it time to reconsider the militarization of American policing? – Wall Street Journal
- Huffington Post Articles
- Articles in Salon.com
- Articles in reason.com
- Commentary, Blog Post, Cato Studies from the Cato Institute
- Truth-out.org: When the Police Become a Standing Army, Liberty is Sacrificed Without Security
- Motherboard: How Cops Became Soldiers: An Interview with Police Militarization Expert Radley Balko
- “Once a town gets a SWAT team you want to use it”
- Rise of the Warrior Cop; Interview with Radley Balko
- Matt Lewis Interviews Radley Balko: FTR Radio
- KUT News Interview With Radley Balko
- BBC News Magazine: Radley Balko: Rise of America’s warrior cop
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