Justin Fenton

I'm a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, where I have worked since 2005. I was part of the team that was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news, and I am a two-time Livingston Award finalist. I am writing a book about a police corruption scandal, for Random House.

For years I have covered crime and corruption in one of America's most violent cities. These efforts took on a national spotlight in 2015 with the death of Freddie Gray - I covered the early protests over his death, was at the center of the riots, exclusively obtained the autopsy report and have covered the trials of the six officers charged in his death. The same year, homicides spiked to the highest per capita level in city history with more than 340 killings. I anchored a project interviewing the families of 45 victims in the city's deadliest month, and was embedded with homicide detectives for months as they worked a case, culminating in a five-part serial narrative. Since then, I have been covering the Gun Trace Task Force scandal, in which a team of officers was shown to be robbing citizens and lying about their cases for years.

Before then, my reporting spurred reform in sexual assault investigations in Baltimore and beyond after showing that the city led the country in the percentage of rape cases deemed "unfounded" by detectives.

(Image credit: Arthur Lien)