InvestigateWest

InvestigateWest Nonprofit investigative newsroom keeping an eye on decision-makers in the Pacific Northwest.

Our mission is to engage Pacific Northwest residents in social issues by providing compelling, change making investigative and explanatory journalism.

Emails show how an Idaho county probation department is helping ICE - including by combing through its case files to cre...
08/18/2026

Emails show how an Idaho county probation department is helping ICE - including by combing through its case files to create a "foreign born list" containing the names of 82 probationers.

A federal judge has dismissed a nonprofit’s lawsuit claiming that an Idaho state agency violated the First Amendment by ...
08/14/2026

A federal judge has dismissed a nonprofit’s lawsuit claiming that an Idaho state agency violated the First Amendment by revoking funding in retaliation for speaking to reporters.

The Idaho Anti-Trafficking Coalition’s former executive director Jennifer Zielinski was one of more than three dozen people who spoke to InvestigateWest for a July 2024 series detailing how the founder of another anti-trafficking nonprofit, Community Outreach Behavioral Services, funneled clients into counseling sessions at a potentially fraudulent for-profit mental health agency run by her son. The series also scrutinized the state agency, the Idaho Council on Domestic Violence and Victim Assistance, or failing to properly investigate survivors’ complaints about COBS.

A 2021 Washington law expanded the state's power to strip cops of their certification, part of an effort to keep problem...
08/11/2026

A 2021 Washington law expanded the state's power to strip cops of their certification, part of an effort to keep problem officers out of law enforcement. But Washington agencies have kept hiring cops accused of serious misconduct - and many manage to avoid a state investigation altogether.

One officer who was repeatedly accused of misconduct still earned a promotion to police chief, where he allegedly defrauded taxpayers. Another was charged with DUI and fled the scene of a car accident, but was never formally investigated by the state commission. A third remained certified in Washington years after another state revoked his certification amid a felony conviction.

At her sentencing hearing on Friday, an Oregon mom convicted of manslaughter over the death of her two-month-old infant ...
08/05/2026

At her sentencing hearing on Friday, an Oregon mom convicted of manslaughter over the death of her two-month-old infant opened up to the court for the first time about alleged domestic violence by the baby's father.

Deborah Albin said her ex-partner repeatedly choked and threatened her, destroyed her belongings when she tried to leave and once shoved her into his car to bring her home again. Her family asked the judge to reduce her sentence because of alleged domestic violence.

“There had been numerous times I thought he would kill me, and after a while, I gave up trying to leave.”

07/28/2026

What happens when local news disappears? Polluters pollute more. Governments become less accountable. Entire communities are left in the dark.

Since 2009, InvestigateWest has been building something the Pacific Northwest desperately needed: a nonprofit investigative newsroom — and the civic infrastructure to spread accountability journalism across the region.

For years, Angela Kim says her ex-husband was controlling, abusive and violent - enforcing his arbitrary rules through b...
07/27/2026

For years, Angela Kim says her ex-husband was controlling, abusive and violent - enforcing his arbitrary rules through beatings and threats to take their kids. So when he planned to kill his business partner, Kim said refusing to participate was “not an option." She was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison.

Kim and other advocates have pushed Oregon lawmakers to adopt reforms that would allow judges to depart from mandatory minimum sentences if domestic violence played a role in a person's crime. But those proposals have repeatedly hit roadblocks and failed to advance in the Oregon legislature.

Washington’s K-12 education oversight agency is proposing a series of changes to expand its investigatory abilities into...
07/21/2026

Washington’s K-12 education oversight agency is proposing a series of changes to expand its investigatory abilities into teacher s*xual misconduct. It comes after InvestigateWest and other news outlets reported on gaps that have allowed accused teachers to quietly resign and move on to other jobs.

A Kalispel Tribal Police detective was fired in 2021 after lying about why he arrested a woman. During the investigation...
07/20/2026

A Kalispel Tribal Police detective was fired in 2021 after lying about why he arrested a woman. During the investigation, it was also discovered that he had been soliciting s*x workers.

The detective, Phineas Haglin, had worked at 10 other police departments in Washington over more than 30 years, and has been fired by at least two of them.

Tribal police departments make up a small fraction of Washington’s law enforcement workforce, but they are a disproportionately common landing place for officers who’ve been fired elsewhere, according to an analysis by InvestigateWest and the Invisible Institute.

Since 2022, staff, students and teachers at Meadowdale Elementary in Washington had repeatedly raised concerns about how...
07/15/2026

Since 2022, staff, students and teachers at Meadowdale Elementary in Washington had repeatedly raised concerns about how teacher David Sibley interacted with students.

The principal had told him to stop giving students candy, and instead of stopping, he told the kids to keep the candy a secret. A mother told administrators her daughter, who has severe learning disabilities, was uncomfortable with how Sibley touched her in class. A staff member told the principal and human resources director that a first-grade student was being “molested” by Sibley, who pulled the student into his groin during prolonged hugs, police records show.

Despite these reports to the school, administrators did not remove Sibley from the classroom. He was still teaching in December 2023, when a fifth grader says she was s*xually assaulted by Sibley in his classroom.

An Idaho state judge said Jesus Agustin Perez Garcia was the kind of defendant who would “typically get probation." Both...
07/13/2026

An Idaho state judge said Jesus Agustin Perez Garcia was the kind of defendant who would “typically get probation." Both Perez Garcia's defense attorney and the Bingham County prosecutor recommended he get probation for charges of drug possession and destroying evidence.

Instead, the judge sentenced him to jail. Because Perez Garcia had been deported once and then reentered the country, the judge found he couldn't comply with a probation requirement to follow all federal laws.

The Idaho Supreme Court upheld the ruling in a decision that said judges can consider immigration status when deciding whether to grant probation. Some attorneys and scholars worry the ruling will make it harder for undocumented people to get probation.

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