Brian Howey is an award-winning reporter who has covered topics ranging from policing to wedgefish. He has published work in the The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, the Los Angeles Times and various other national, regional and local publications. Howey currently works as a New York Times Local Investigations Fellow with Mississippi Today, where he focuses on Mississippi sheriffs departments. He earned a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he studied investigative reporting and narrative writing.
Impact
After Howey and his team published their series investigating criminal acts by Mississippi sheriffs, state lawmakers passed a 2024 law that gives investigative powers to Mississippi’s law enforcement certification board, allowing the board to revoke officer licenses even when they are not yet charged with a crime.
In California, legislators are currently considering whether to pass AB-3021, a law that would require police and DA investigators to inform the families of people killed by police that they have the right to know the status of their loved one before answering questions. The law was inspired by Howey’s reporting and cited in press releases written by the bill’s author. As of June, 2024, the proposed law has passed the California State Assembly and is awaiting a vote by the the state senate.
In 2020, Howey’s reporting on San Francisco’s controversial use of sweeps to confiscate unhoused residents’ belongings led the city to temporarily (and unofficially) halt the practice.
Awards
Howey won a George Polk Award in 2024 for his two-part exposé of a controversial police interview tactic popularized by one of the nation’s largest developers of law enforcement policy manuals. He published the stories in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program, the Los Angeles Times and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. His Los Angeles Times story also won a Sacramento Press Club Journalism Award for Best Criminal Justice Reporting.
Howey was part of the reporting team that was named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting finalist for Unfettered Power: Mississippi Sheriffs, a series for Mississippi Today and The New York Times.
He also won a 2020 SPJ Excellence in Journalism Award for his reporting on San Francisco’s response to homelessness during the onset of the pandemic, and was a producer on the CalMatters reporting team that won third place at the 2020 Best of the West journalism awards for a series on a proposed law that would have been the strictest police shooting law in the country.