illinois issues – ROBERT LOERZEL

Civil Asset Forfeiture Critics Complain Innocent People Pay

Illinois Issues, February 16, 2017 — The police took away a 70-year-old Moline woman’s car when her grandson drove it with a revoked license. “Why am I being punished?” Judy Wiese asked a reporter last year at the Rock Island County courthouse. After the story made headlines, a lawyer stepped forward and helped her out, pro… Continue reading Civil Asset Forfeiture Critics Complain Innocent People Pay

State budget impasse hits homeless youths

Illinois Issues, December 17, 2015 — The state budget impasse could put more young people out on the streets this winter. Read the story — and hear a WUIS interview with me about my reporting. Photo: From The Homestretch, Kartemquin Films

Urban Flooding in Illinois

Illinois Issues magazine, September 10, 2015 — Heavier rainfalls and sprawling development have left outdated sewers struggling to keep water out of streets, businesses and homes. Big rainstorms are hitting Illinois more often. In many cities and towns, the sewers can’t always handle heavy downpours. Without anywhere to go, the water fills streets, yards and basements.… Continue reading Urban Flooding in Illinois

Environmental threats shrink the numbers of Illinois’ beloved state insect, the monarch butterfly

Illinois Issues magazine, July-August 2014 — Urbana resident Alex Wild kept an eye out for monarch butterflies last year. He was alarmed by what he saw. Or rather, what he didn’t see. “I saw two the entire season,” says Wild, a biologist and photographer who specializes in taking close-up pictures of insects. “That was it… Continue reading Environmental threats shrink the numbers of Illinois’ beloved state insect, the monarch butterfly

Impoverished in Illinois

Illinois Issues, January 2014 — In some pockets of Illinois, where one in every three people live in poverty or close to it, the need is visible in the landscape: empty lots where buildings once stood in Cairo; abandoned houses marked with X’s in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood; families living in ramshackle trailers in Kankakee County’s Pembroke… Continue reading Impoverished in Illinois

Showdown over guns

This article by Robert Loerzel originally appeared in Illinois Issues magazine’s November 2008 issue. Ever since the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, Americans have been arguing about what it means. Does it give every citizen the right to own guns? Or is it just about the need for a militia? Illinois has often been… Continue reading Showdown over guns