SARAH L. RYLEY Investigative & Data Journalist
Hi, I'm a freelance journalist specializing in investigations, data and FOIA. If you have information you’d like to share, please see my contact page for the many ways you can reach me.
Most recently, I was an investigative journalist at The Trace, a non-profit newsroom that covers gun issues. In partnership with BuzzFeed News and Chicago's WTTW, I produced a series of data-driven stories on law enforcement’s increasing failure to solve shootings. The reporting involved hundreds of public records request. We made public the raw data we obtained from 56 law enforcement agencies, along with thousands of pages of documentation detailing the architecture of police databases. My reporting also helped free from prison a man who had been sentenced to life for a murder he says he didn’t commit.
From 2012 - 2017, I was an investigative journalist, data projects editor and courts editor at the New York Daily News. My reporting primarily focused on “broken windows” policing, and triggered the passage of at least 24 new laws, the creation of several oversight units, a class action civil rights lawsuit, and numerous other reforms. My series on the NYPD's use of the nuisance abatement law to push people out of their businesses and homes, done in partnership with ProPublica, resulted in sweeping changes to the law and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Prior to The News, I was an investigative producer for the national tablet publication The Daily (R.I.P.), where I delved into topics such as Homeland Security, high-profile criminal trials, the real estate market, the Kabbalah Centre, and tax shelters. I started my career in 2006 as a beat reporter covering New York’s billions of dollars' worth of development projects. My earliest impacts, which I’m still very proud of, include helping to save an Underground Railroad home from eminent domain and jump-starting the construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
I studied journalism at Wayne State University in Detroit. Prior to discovering my love of reporting, I was an artist, community organizer and waitress.
Edwin J. Torres