Jeremiah Dobruck in Long Beach Wednesday June 5, 2019. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

Long Beach Post breaking news and public safety editor Jeremiah Dobruck won a statewide first-place award for racial justice reporting from the Sacramento Press Club Thursday for an investigation showing Long Beach police use potentially life-threatening force more often that many other departments, according to a state database, which was also shown to be flawed through Dobruck’s reporting.

The story, which published in August 2020, also looked at whom that force was directed toward, with numbers from the database showing Black people are being seriously injured during police encounters at much higher rates than their representation in the population.

Dobruck has been a newsroom leader at the Post for nearly three years.

He began his journalism career in 2007 as an intern at Palos Verdes Peninsula News and has worked for The Forum Newsgroup in New York City, the Daily Pilot and the Press-Telegram.

Other finalists for the racial justice award included Anita Chabria from the Los Angeles Times and Jennifer Wadsworth with San Jose Inside.

Read the full article:

Statistics show LBPD seriously injures people at high rate, but police say database is flawed

Editor’s note: This story was updated to show Dobruck’s article was published in August 2020, not April 2020.