Public records law is making headlines this week with new legislation on the horizon. States across the nation are looking to revise, change, and add new directives that will affect records requesters in their state and across the nation.

As part of a project to to shed light on how domestic violence is still treated differently from other violent crimes, we requested domestic violence response policies for state police departments in all 50 states. Today, we’re looking at North Dakota, where victims can be arrested, kicked out of their homes for, or even lose their children because they had the misfortune of being abused.

MuckRock asked all 50 states for a copy of the data frame that they use to track pregnancy-related deaths, in order to figure out if every department is using a similar system, or even tracking the same information. Spoiler alert: they’re all doing their own thing.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Curtis Waltman was able to return to the Dakotas as part of his ongoing project on the impact of police militarization. Here’s a short travelogue of what he heard, saw, and did.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Curtis Waltman was able to return to the Dakotas as part of his ongoing project on the impact of police militarization. Here’s a short travelogue of what he heard, saw, and did.