While covering the case of a Washington state ferry boat captain accused of sexual harassment, News Tribune courts reporter Cynthia Flash began hearing stories of other lawsuits pending against the state. She wondered how many.
With the help of a computer, she found out. There were thousands, many thousands, not just for sexual harassment but also for illegal rectal probes of prison inmates and for people killed and maimed because of wrongful conduct and neglect by state employees.
An analysis of computerized state records led to a three-day series that revealed for the first time that state taxpayers were paying a heavy price for the negligence and misconduct of state employees - more than $76 million in settlements in less than a decade. The annual average was $9 million. Although ranking only 18th in population, the state was paying more per capita in liability damage awards than any other state in the contiguous United States. The series was the first major computer-assisted project at The (Tacoma, Wash.) Morning News Tribune and, as this piece is written, its findings are reverberating in the campaign to elect a new attorney general. Aside from that impact, its success underscored the fact that time-tested techniques of investigative reporting - specifically, following the paper trail - should be an integral part of computer-assisted reporting. Following the paper trail and using your noggin to figure out where documentation can be found are vital. The big difference is that, in these times, the indexes to the records, if not the records themselves, are kept on computer. In this project, the computer data led the way to the paper trail.
While there is a tendency to measure computer-assisted projects by the number of megabytes in the database you're crunching, don't be afraid to think small. In Washington state, many obscure public agencies have their own little fiefdoms. Instead of storing data on a state megacomputer, they tend to keep their records on PCs. The whole database you're after may fit on a few diskettes.
Something I learned in two decades of following paper trails: Read the applicable state laws before you get too far into your investigation. Become knowledgeable about how the system is supposed to operate.
That's what I did when I was asked to do the computer work for Flash's investigation. The risk management statutes yielded a quick dividend; I found that the risk management agency was required, by law, to maintain a computerized tracking system of all claims filed against the state.
The trouble was this computerized tracking system was, by law, confidential. However, the same law held that claims filed against the state were public records, available for inspection. Our strategy: Press for release of the data that was public, even though it was on a "confidential" database.
When Flash made her first visit to the agency, she was offered a voluminous print-out containing the key information of the public claims data kept on the computer. Altogether, there were some 25,000 cases.
The printed data was so diffused, so overwhelming, that it was virtually unusable. We needed the computer data in order to make sense of anything.
I made a public records request for the computer data, specifically the portion from the hard copy claims the state law said was public record.
Nothing like that had happened before at the risk management agency. The director sent the request to the attorney general's office for a legal opinion. It took six weeks to get an answer.
Finally we got word that our request had been approved; we would be given the computer data for all closed cases, some 20,000 of them, together with the type of case - civil rights, wrongful death, personal injury, etc. (Later, we got an additional 5,000 records of open cases.)
Using XDB, I began breaking down the claims data for each department, year by year.
The information was used in an information graphic with the number of cases per department and total dollars paid in settlements. I also tracked, year by year, the number of cases of each particular type. Civil rights complaints (including sexual harassment) turned out to be the fastest-growing type of claim.
This data was inserted into a QuattroPro spreadsheet that was invaluable for figuring percentages and making other calculations.
By manipulating the data, I was able to pinpoint which specific departments had the worst records.
But the most important use of the computer data was linking the worst cases, those with the biggest settlements, to claim numbers. This enabled Flash to go back to the agency and inspect the hard copy claims.
It was a case of using the computer trail to help us explore the paper trail, and its importance cannot be overstated. The hard copy claims were a rich source of detail, including names, addresses and telephone numbers, helping us to contact and interview the victims and survivors.
The series found that while total claims against the state were declining slightly, civil rights violations were skyrocketing - and so were settlements. The state ferry system, with the worst record, finally instituted a training program for employees.
But the series also showed that some state agencies simply kept doing things the same as ever, despite the fact that their mistakes were costing the taxpayer millions of dollars.
Flash found a 1978 case in which an auto plunged off an icy bridge, killing the driver. A Department of Transportation engineer recommended installing a $22,000 guard rail.
Nothing was done.
Five years later, another driver plunged off the bridge during a rainstorm, falling 40 feet to the gully below. The victim suffered a head injury that caused paralysis, memory loss and emotional problems.
Less than a year later, a third car slammed into a bridge girder during a heavy rainstorm. The driver suffered a broken back.
The last two victims sued the state and won nearly $1.8 million. And the bridge? It still isn't fixed. The Department of Corrections, which operates the state's penal institutions, turned out to be a major trouble spot. One series of cases involved a convicted rapist who was released from the sexual psychopath program at a state mental hospital. Over the next three years before he was caught, the rapist brutalized 26 Tacoma-area women.
So far the state has paid some $640,000 for its mistake in releasing the rapist, settling lawsuits brought by 18 of the victims. And the total is climbing as more victims sue.
Flash also unearthed the existence of "Dr. Bigfinger," the practice at state prisons of performing body cavity searches on all inmates admitted to the maximum security units.
Prison officials maintained the body cavity search policy was necessary to keep the prisons free from drugs, knives and rapes. The inmates, however, charged that the rectal searches amounted to rape.
In 1987, a federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional, finding that prison officials used the policy for punitive, rather than safety reasons.
The state stopped the "Dr. Bigfinger" practice when the first lawsuits were filed. But the issue of whether damages should be awarded to the inmates is being appealed by the state.
So far, the illegal searches have cost the state $194,528. The state has paid 65 inmates $200 to $500 for each search. Some cases are still pending.
Flash emerged from the project as a believer in computer-assisted reporting. "The computer pointed the way," she said.