It was a normal day for SHS alumna and journalist Casey Smith. She was shopping for her weekly groceries when she got a call from her writing partner, Katey Rusch.

Rusch was calling to tell her about some missed calls she got. She thought it might’ve been related to their investigative journalism series, “Right to Remain Secret.” After making a few calls, she called back and told Smith that they’d won the Selden Ring, an investigative journalism award with a prize of $50,000.

“It was really kind of humbling and like a very floored moment when we found out,” Smith said.

Smith and her partner, Rusch, wrote a series of journalistic articles over a five-year period, and since publishing their last addition to this series, their reporting has earned many journalistic awards and widespread attention.

In the fall of 2019, Rusch, who was then a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley, was working on a series of articles about California law enforcement with criminal convictions.

It was uncovered that the state of California allowed officers to have misdemeanor convictions. From there, she zeroed in on an area in central California where there had been a lot of officers with these convictions hired.

As she explored the files, she noticed that the charges were often dropped and wiped from the records.

The officers that were fired for misconduct were firm that the charges were dropped because nothing ever happened, she began to look deeper and noticed discrepancies in the records. That’s when she brought in Smith as her co-writer. They were in the same graduate program at the University of California Berkeley.

“Their adamant denial of what we were hearing from every other source we had made us think twice, and that’s where Casey came in,” Rusch said.

Smith dealt with requesting and retrieving the police records as well as sorting through them.

When they first uncovered what was going on, they had no idea to what extent the lengths of corruption in the California Police Department were.

What they had originally thought was only a few officers turned out to be hundreds across California using lawsuits as a way to keep getting away with misconduct.

“We didn’t really understand the breadth or scale of what they were and what they could do for police officers who had engaged in misconduct,” Smith said.

During the early stages of the project they were just starting to uncover the truth, Smith went back to her hometown: Indiana. She investigated and requested records from there but took a backseat in the writing process. In the meantime she would request files from police stations all over California.

Rusch was still in California and was closer to the issue, allowing her to start on more investigative work than when she started working on the story. After the series of articles gained significant traction online, California lawmakers stepped in.

On Oct. 6, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 847, a law that will make it easier for officers to be held accountable for misconduct after Jan. 1, 2026.

“The biggest win in my mind is that California lawmakers were compelled enough to change the law after the series came out,” Smith said.

This wasn’t the only win for Smith and Rusch. They also won or were finalists for several prestigious awards like The Pulitzer Prize, The Goldsmith and the Scripps Howard Journalism Award.

Even now after so many years of writing professionally, Smith is still very grateful for where she started: The Journal.

She’d always favored nonfiction and that’s why journalism appealed to her in the first place. The Journal was her first avenue into journalism.

“Journalism and The Journal specifically was so formative because every year, I was able to try a different section,” Smith said. “It was a great way to decide before college that journalism was something I wanted to do.”

In the future, Smith wants to continue investigative journalism. She loves what she does and wants to continue with her current position.

“I love covering Indiana’s legislature and I’m entering into a role that is primarily investigative enterprise. I’m doing less of the same day to day work, and I’m very happy about it,” Smith said.