By an investigative collaboration examining justice, technology, and public finance In 2000, a federal jury awarded $3.1 million to Curtis Harris, a Cleveland man paralyzed after being shot by a patrol officer. It was one of many warning flares over the next decade. By 2012, 13 officers would fire 137 […]
Yearly Archives: 2026
25 posts
Trump’s Cleveland Deal: Ending Police Oversight Before Justice Is Delivered Cleveland was promised constitutional policing. After the U.S. Department of Justice found a pattern of excessive force and systemic failures inside the Cleveland Division of Police in 2014, a federal consent decree followed — a court-enforced roadmap toward bias-free policing, […]
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the Cleveland Division of Police had engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force, unconstitutional policing, and systemic accountability failures. The resulting 2015 federal consent decree placed Cleveland under court-supervised reform — mandating new use-of-force standards, bias-free policing policies, crisis […]
CLEVELAND, OH — In a stark echo of policing reforms across the United States, the City of Cleveland has filed a joint motion with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to terminate its decade-long federal consent decree governing the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP). The decree, born of a 2015 DOJ investigation into patterns of […]
A mother sat in the wooden benches of the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, clutching a paper that said her son’s hearing would be “informal.” She had not been told he needed a lawyer, and no one from the court insisted he should have one. Within minutes of the judge walking […]
Georgio Sabino had learned to read a siren the way some people read the weather. He knew the difference between a casual patrol rolling past a corner store and the sharp, stuttering flash that meant someone’s life might change in the next three minutes. The moment everything can go wrong […]
The expected customer for GoVia Highlight A Hero is a safety‑conscious person, family, or community member who worries that a routine police encounter—or any high‑stakes crisis—could escalate without witnesses, support, or accountability. This includes Black and Brown communities and other over‑policed groups, college students, gig workers and drivers, and loved […]
Listening to the echo of a single phrase “death squad”—as it moved from Latin America’s killing fields into the quiet streets of American cities. The world now knows the historical fact and a current warning, a pattern of power that might change uniforms and flags but rarely changed its logic. […]
Death Squads in America 1. The Reality of Police Surveillance in Cleveland Over the past several years, Cleveland has embraced a suite of modern surveillance tools that sit at the intersection of public safety and civil liberties. The city has installed at least 100 fixed automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras at […]
By a senior correspondent drawing on the investigative rigor of The New York Times, the global perspective of Al Jazeera, and the balanced reporting of BBC News CLEVELAND, Ohio – February 1, 2026 – In 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. launched the Poor People’s Campaign, a multiracial march […]
“GoVia Highlight A Hero – A Police Safety App” Unbundle Policing. Reimagine Public Safety. We are no longer in a time where public safety can rely on one system, one response model, or one narrative. At GoVia – Highlight A Hero, our global innovation team is building the infrastructure for next-generation community […]
Executive Summary Mass Detention The United States operates two parallel detention systems with starkly different constitutional protections, accountability mechanisms, and algorithmic governance frameworks—one nominally bound by criminal justice due process protections, the other increasingly insulated from them. An investigative analysis of immigration detention, criminal justice algorithmic risk assessment, and state-level […]
Ohio keeps producing the same nightmare headline: people who did nothing wrong end up in handcuffs, in cells, and sometimes in prison for years before the truth finally catches up. GoVia: Highlight A Hero is built as a safety net around those moments, so that the next Michael Sutton or […]
GoVia could plausibly justify a 150 million dollar valuation by 2029 if it converts its early proof‑of‑concept into a scaled, defensible platform in a fast‑growing public‑safety market, with real contracts, recurring revenue and international reach. Market and timing The global community‑policing and personal‑safety app market is already measured in the […]
Federal immigration firepower has turned parts of Minneapolis into a live‑fire test bed for how far Washington will go in using police‑style and military‑grade tactics against its own residents, including U.S. citizens protesting in their own streets. At the same time, organizers and technologists are racing to build tools like […]
Police and some federal agencies in the United States have quietly tested and deployed vehicles and devices that can see through cars and even building walls, raising hard questions about privacy, health, and constitutional rights. A new platform called GoVia: Highlight A Hero pitches itself as a way to rebalance that power, […]
Below is a deep-dive investigative style contrast between the fictional world of Mercy (2026) and real-world criminal justice challenges, The Premise — Fiction vs Reality In Mercy (released January 23 2026), LAPD detective Chris Raven wakes up strapped into a chair in a high-tech courtroom and faces an AI judge called Maddox who will execute him unless he proves his innocence in 90 minutes. […]
DALLAS, TEXAS — January 21, 2026 — On a winter morning that should have been quiet, the Dallas County Commissioners Court did something profound: it officially declared Tommy Lee Walker innocent — 70 years after the state executed him for a crime he did not commit. And while the declaration brought long overdue […]
By an investigative team inspired by the New York Times, BBC, and Al Jazeera standards. By Georgio Sabino III Introduction: What People Mean by “SuperCop” James Simone — sometimes called Jim Simone — is a retired patrol officer of the Cleveland Division of Police. During a career spanning 1973–2011, Simone became one of the […]
This past year, our community in the Cleveland area was confronted with a troubling story that touched on privacy, trust, and the rule of law. A former law enforcement officer from Rocky River — Michael Bernhardt — admitted to repeatedly accessing sensitive police databases without lawful reason. Over a span of about 10 […]
By GoVia Highlight A Hero The Viral Claim vs. The Real Question In 2025, a viral claim spread rapidly across social media: “Police can now see your bank accounts and everywhere you’ve been during a traffic stop using an AI tool called Gotham.” The fear was immediate—and understandable. But the […]
GoVia exposes how Stingray cell‑site simulators work, why they matter for citizen safety, and how communities can demand both effective policing and strong privacy protections. What Stingrays Are Core Characteristics and Signal Strength From an “elite operative” perspective, the core tactical characteristics are: Law‑Enforcement Use and Exploitation In the story, […]
A poster showing a photograph of Renee Nicole Good, 37, hangs on a lamppost at the site where she was shot and killed by a federal agent while she was in her vehicle in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7. (David Guttenfelder/The New York Times) Police Law Brief Over the past […]
Photo by Stephen Maturen / Getty Images – Educational Purposes On January 7, 2026, a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis fatally shot a 37-year-old woman identified as Renee Nicole Good during a large-scale immigration enforcement operation in the city. Through his tweet, Donald Trump effectively suggested […]
By Georgio Sabino III America does not suffer from a lack of conversation about justice.It suffers from a lack of infrastructure to resolve it. The AMC drama series 61st Street (now widely streamed on Netflix in the U.S.) did not become culturally relevant because it exaggerated reality. It resonated because […]