Their camcorders and phones recording, about 10 cop-watchers stand on an embankment between six busy lanes and four gas pumps at an Arlington gas station, wondering why cops keep coming for what looks like a simple traffic stop. Don’t all these cops have something better to do, they think, like…
They successfully fought contract provisions that would have banned in-person visits at the Dallas County jail while the county made money from new video visits. Now exonerated inmates, prison rights advocates and County Judge Clay Jenkins aim to make the county among the first in the nation to stop profiting…
This week, the Observer’s Sky Chadde has a cover story about a group of Arlington “cop watchers” who spend their nights following the suburb’s patrol cars, filming police’s interactions with the citizenry and lobbing the occasional “oink,” all in the name of liberty. As part of that story, videographer Sarah…
It started out as a case that wasn’t very dramatic or high-profile. Latoya Scott, a 26-year-old woman, was arrested by the Irving Police Department for an alleged fight at a mall. Prosecutors said Scott hit and scratched a woman she was dating. She was charged with family violence assault, a…
At the latest town hall meeting held by District Attorney Craig Watkins, Dallas Police Chief David Brown, speaking to a primarily black crowd, said a program to educate young officers about the police department’s history with the city was in the works. He seemed to think it was badly needed…
Texas, the most gung-ho gun state in the country, may be getting just a little bit less infatuated with firearms. This year, the percentage of gun purchase requests submitted in Texas is significantly lower than last year. The Houston Chronicle reports that 1.1 million gun purchase requests were submitted last…
Two weeks ago, County Judge Clay Jenkins led a successful effort to change a contract that would have ended in-person visits with jail inmates while the county collected a share of the money a private company made from charging for the video visitation that was to replace it. See also:…
Vocativ, a website that claims to publish “news from the deep web,” has a post up showing pipe-bomb making instructions and suggested targets, including several tourist sites in Texas. The bombs are all standard, Anarchist Cookbook-style stuff. The forums discuss using powdered chlorine as a chemical element in the bombs,…
Since 2000, Dallas Cowboys players have been arrested only 14 times, well below league average, according to a report compiled by The New York Times’ The Upshot blog from USA Today data. NFL players have had 713 reported legal run-ins since USA Today started the database in January 2000. (It’s…
A national organization of black lawyers and judges is still awaiting a response from the Dallas Police Department to the group’s recent request for 10 years worth of public information “regarding the number of individuals who have been killed, racially profiled, wrongfully arrested and/or injured while pursued or in police…
Kids chase each other. They have probably have chased each other since man could walk upright on two legs. Maybe it’s some sort of Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle. However you look at it, kids have always chased and ran away from each other. A game of tag recently ended very badly…
Dallas County commissioners are asking for new bids on a controversial contract for the management of visitation and phone services to jail inmates, after County Judge Clay Jenkins and inmate advocates objected to a proposal that would have ended face-to-face visits while letting the county profit off families visiting their…
For Dan Elliott, his life’s work and now-generous income was born out of a horrendous family tragedy 25 years ago. “I got ‘the call’ from my mother, who told me that I needed to go tell my younger brother that his fiancee had been murdered,” says a stoic Elliott. “Someone…
Even without cell-phone metadata placing him near his ex-girlfriend’s San Antonio condo in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009, prosecutors may still have convinced jurors that Jon Thomas Ford was guilty of her murder. There was the testimony of their friends at the party he’d stormed out…
Three people on a “cop watch” were arrested while videotaping a traffic stop by an Arlington police officer late Saturday night. The people are part of organizations Texas Cop Block and the Tarrant County Peaceful Streets Project, whose members tape police in a effort to hold them accountable for their…
Clint Peterson’s on-again, off-again girlfriend called the police on October 28 to report that he showed up uninvited to her house that morning and vandalized her car. She says she warned the dispatcher that Peterson also sometimes carried a fake gun and may have had it on him. The girlfriend…
Since August 10, Dallas police officers have shot six people, killing four of them. Most were armed and a threat to others. One, Andrew Scott Gaynier, was unarmed, though police say he lunged at the off-duty officer who shot him. The events surrounding the shooting of an unarmed teen in…
With around 2,000 students in the district’s three campuses, Argyle ISD is a small, quiet district located smack dab in the middle of Denton and Fort Worth, off Interstate 35. And this school year, some teachers at Argyle ISD have a secret: Several of them have a guns hidden away…
Earlier this year, Judge Roberto Cañas initiated a countywide program to increase gun surrenders from domestic abusers. It’s a law whose lack of enforcement has a history of deadly consequences in Dallas. On Tuesday, the county commissioners court voted to fund nearly a third of the project and approved Cañas’…
An off-duty Dallas police officer shot and killed a man police said is a suspect in a fatal shooting in Northwest Dallas early Wednesday. Around 12:40 a.m., two men began to quarrel at the pumps of a gas station near Midpark Road and Central Expressway, police said. One of the…
Monday morning in southern Dallas, Steven Douglas rammed his truck into a car, breaking out the driver’s side window. It belonged to the mother of his children. With her three kids, she had been trying to run away from him. He’d visited her apartment that morning, and, when she managed…
In the midst of a string of recent police shootings, the Dallas Police Association, the city’s largest police union, has called for all officers to be outfitted with body cameras that record the officers’ every move. And the union’s receiving support from a group not generally considered an ally: the…
