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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The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on the devices, which could have wider implications for what qualifies as a machine gun. -
More postal workers continue to be robbed on the job despite a number of new safety measures. The mail carriers’ union has been holding rallies in recent months calling for stronger protections.
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What are police trained to do when faced with someone armed who is not pointing the gun? What does cognitive research say? This month's police killing of men in Florida and Alaska have resurfaced hard questions as police encounter more people with guns. -
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?