At WitnessLA, we were very happy to learn that one of our ongoing investigative series made it into the finals of this year’s Southern California Journalism Awards, an important string of awards, which is sponsored each year by the Los Angeles Press Club.
This year, WitnessLA’s continuing investigative series, “Rosa Gonzalez, The Whistleblower,” Part 1 and Part 2, is a finalist in the category of “Investigative Reporting, Crime Related,” for “online publications.”
In our category, we are up against some tough and very deserving competition.
So we truly are happy to be a finalist.
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Regarding WLA’s entry, for those who have forgotten, here’s a reminder about what WitnessLA’s ongoing Whistleblower series contains thus far:
As most regular readers know, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department notoriously dislikes whistleblowers. In the case of Rosa Gonzalez, her whistleblower actions came with a very high cost.
Yet, Sergeant Rosa Gonzalez is exactly the kind of department member that the LASD should have treasured.
She is very smart, hardworking, emotionally stable, and wanted to be a cop ever since she was a kid. She saw the police as the hero of her neighborhood.
“I grew up in a bad environment,” she said when we talked about her childhood ambitions.
“My dad was a heroin addict. My mom had to work two jobs to make ends meet. She worked in the strawberry fields and cleaned houses for a living,” said Gonzalez.
“Growing up in that environment I grew up with a lot of...
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