Martin Kaste
Martin Kaste is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk. He covers law enforcement and privacy. He has been focused on police and use of force since before the 2014 protests in Ferguson, and that coverage led to the creation of NPR's Criminal Justice Collaborative.
In addition to criminal justice reporting, Kaste has contributed to NPR News coverage of major world events, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2011 uprising in Libya.
Kaste has reported on the government's warrant-less wiretapping practices as well as the data collection and analysis that go on behind the scenes in social media and other new media. His privacy reporting was cited in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2012 United States v. Jones ruling concerning GPS tracking.
Before moving to the West Coast, Kaste spent five years as NPR's reporter in South America. He covered the drug wars in Colombia, the financial meltdown in Argentina, the rise of Brazilian president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, and the fall of Haiti's president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Throughout this assignment, Kaste covered the overthrow of five presidents in five years.
Prior to joining NPR in 2000, Kaste was a political reporter for Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul for seven years.
Kaste is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
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Republicans have raised the alarm about a migrant crime wave. Nationally, crime is down even as immigration has surged, but the concerns are real in some neighborhoods. -
As protests continue to roil colleges across the nation, NPR looks at why police tactics have differed from campus to campus.
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The number of U.S. children dying from gunshot wounds has climbed in recent years. Keeping guns out of reach is one way to curb the trend — others argue to teach kids to handle guns responsibly. -
A grand jury indicted a former assistant principal at a Virginia elementary school on counts of child abuse and neglect. The net appears to be widening in holding adults accountable for shootings.
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Marijuana legalization was expected to bring the industry out of the shadows. But in some states, the black market is alive and well. -
Chicago is suing Glock, saying its guns are too easy to convert to illegal automatic weapons. It's the latest example of Democratic jurisdictions pressuring gunmakers to change products and marketing.
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As marijuana has gone mainstream in America, lawmakers in states that legalized it are now grappling with a new question: Should high-potency pot products be regulated differently?
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As the fentanyl crisis ravages Native American communities, some of their leaders want tribal police and courts to go after non-tribal dealers. But they can't without getting permission from Congress. -
The trial of Jennifer Crumbley over murders committed by her son, Ethan, has focused attention on the legal responsibilities of parents and other adults when it comes to minors and guns.
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The Supreme Court has made history a central test of whether a gun control law is constitutional. That has meant a boom in demand for gun law historians, who are digging up forgotten old gun laws.
