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Researchers study effect of marijuana on policing

The long-time controversy over marijuana legalization in Washington finally came to an end in 2012 when the state legislature passed Initiative 502. Four years later, WSU researchers are studying how it affected police operations.

Mary Stohr
Stohr

WSU criminal justice and criminology professor Mary Stohr will lead a $1 million three-year study beginning January 1, 2017, to research the effects that the legalization has had on law enforcement and policing. The grant, from the National Institute of Justice, will look at policing in the state and how the criminal justice organization adjusted to this policy change.

Stohr said they are curious about how police changed their practices since the legalization and how it affected crime rate statistics.

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Daily Sun News

Daily Evergreen

WSU News

Opinion: Donald Trump, the herald of evangelicals’ end times

Matthew Sutton
Matthew Sutton

Matthew Avery Sutton, a history professor at Washington State University, is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism. In his recent op-ed for the Seattle Times, Sutton examines the views of many evangelical Americans who see Donald Trump’s candidacy as a harbinger of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

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Seattle Times

Panel tackles police-involved violence, race

In the wake of police-involved shootings that left two black men dead in two cities, Washington State University hosted an expert panel discussion on race and policing in America.

The event, held Tuesday afternoon in the CUB auditorium, drew a large crowd of students and community members. Put on by WSU’s Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, the panel addressed the growing outrage over police use of force against minority members.

Cornell Clayton
Clayton
Even the two presidential candidates are daring to speak out on the issue, said institute director and professor of political science Cornell Clayton.

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WSU News

Unknown sponsors behind one-third of U.S. Senate campaign ads

A study by the campaign finance watchdog Center for Responsive Politics and Wesleyan University’s Media Project finds that a type of political group that does not have to disclose its donors is responsible for $80 million in ads nationally—35.8 percent of all advertising in Senate races.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

Without knowing who is paying for the ads, voters are robbed of “an important clue” that allows them “to take a claim made in an ad with a grain of salt,” said Travis Ridout, a Washington State University political science professor who works with the Wesleyan University project that analyzes campaign donations.

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McLeansboro Times Leader

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Washington secretary of state race heats up ahead of vote

Part of Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s challenge in keeping her office in Republican hands arises from the political divide brought about by the presidential election that could have more of an impact on state races than in previous years, said Cornell Clayton, a political science professor at Washington State University.

Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

“You have someone at the top of the ticket that we know is turning off large numbers of independent voters,” he said, referring to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

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