Kyle Vass

Charleston police are working on new reforms over the use of weapons as well as training with Tasers. The refocus comes after police in April shot a man who was brandishing a knife on Charleston's West Side.

There's a name for young people, who aren't in school, or working, or training for work. They are disconnected youth. West Virginia has one of the highest rates of these young people — between the age of 16 and 24 — who feel stuck in the transition between school and joining the workforce.

On April 30, Charleston Police officers shot Denaul Dickerson, a 33-year-old Black man, while attempting to make an arrest on Charleston’s West Side. The incident has left many people in the community wondering why police resorted to shooting Dickerson who had brandished a knife.

Recently, a Kanawha County teen, KJ Taylor, was shot and killed on Glenwood Avenue on Charleston’s West Side. In what his friends would say was either a stray bullet or a case of mistaken identity, KJ was hit in the chest and died moments later. The person who shot him has yet to be arrested.

Data from 2020 show 75 instances where people who were approved by the county court system for involuntary commitment weren’t picked up by sheriff’s deputies. The sheriff says his department is overwhelmed.

A Freedom of Information Request filed by WVPB which was used to analyze sentencing data in the state, showed 20 percent of people who have been sentenced to life in prison under the state’s three-strike law are Black men. That’s one out of every five cases in a state where Black people make up less than 4 percent of the population.

The CDC says the year of COVID-19 has been deadly for people living with a substance addiction. Isolation, anxiety and boredom, three triggers for drug abuse, have created a so-called mental health ‘shadow pandemic.’Us & Them host Trey Kay visits a Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) program at Cabin Creek Health Systems in Charleston, WV to speak with doctors, nurses and patients about what it takes to stay drug free in the Age of COVID-19.

People around the world have spent nearly a year sheltering at home to avoid a global pandemic. For those who are homeless, the challenge of COVID-19 isn’t even on their list. What’s on their mind is “Am I gonna eat?” For this episode, the Us & Them team talks to homeless West Virginians about the challenge of sheltering from the virus.

A volunteer-run harm-reduction group in the city of Charleston called SOAR has come under fire from city officials for distributing syringes as part of its “mobile outreach” efforts.

Early on in the pandemic, many states declared day-care facilities to be critical care sites and ordered them open to care for the children of our essential workers. Months later, those businesses face continually evolving regulations designed to keep children and workers safe. The success of our services and our economy is banking on them.