The camera guy was already there when Detective Scott Sayers pulled up to the 79-year-old victim’s Earlywood Drive home in March of last year, ready to gather footage for A&E’s true-crime reality show, The First 48. There was a phone number detectives could call to notify a camera crew that…
UPDATED OCTOBER 6, 2014: Jason Harrison’s Father Sues Dallas and the Police Officers Who Killed His Son ORIGINAL POST: To neighbors and family, it was obvious that Jason Harrison was mentally ill, even if the legal system kept treating him like someone who wasn’t. The last time his mother called…
It started out, according to court documents, on the up and up. Bradley Ward, owner of The Lone Star Shipping Company, agreed with FedEx to become an Authorized Shipping Center for the freight company. In exchange Lone Star received deep discounts on FedEx services and signage to put in front…
Toni Gallego knew what she was going to get her granddaughter for her birthday. She knew the store where she was going to get it, too. She shopped at Target all the time, buying formula and diapers. Then she saw the picture: long, black rifles in the big box store’s…
At the GOP convention in Fort Worth last weekend, as rifle-toting protesters stood outside decrying their guns’ exclusion from the convention hall, three thirtysomething men, two brothers and a cousin, approached Texas State Rifle Association lobbyist Alice Tripp. Their pitch — that Texans should have the right to openly carry…
Until 2011, Luis lived in Mexico, where he made a living building houses. Luis’ wife and children, who are American citizens, lived in Los Angeles. Luis visited his wife and children as much as he could, until he was arrested for illegal reentry. For this crime, he served a three-year…
For as long as a decade, the feds say, brothers Cesar and Gilberto have been the kingpins of a large and violent drug-dealing syndicate in North Texas, known by law enforcement as the Goon Squad. Theirs was a family business. The brothers worked along with their sister Elva as drug…
In a handful of places in Texas — Austin and Midland and San Marcos, for example — getting caught carrying a small amount of marijuana will get you a ticket and a court date but, barring more serious infractions, won’t involve handcuffs. Dallas has a different approach. “We take you…
Pamela Jones is a teacher at DeSoto’s alternative high school. She’s 35. She has a husband and four kids. She works for Athletes for Change, whose mission to “provide exceptional role models” to young people. If authorities are right, she has an odd sense of what makes a great role…
When Robert Coleman’s house got egged, he called the University Park police. It was a Saturday night in September 2012. Officers came to the crime scene but found no leads, other than the splattered egg yolk. Coleman realized that his patio umbrella was also missing, according to the police report…
In news that further confirms something you knew all along — that fast food restaurant restrooms are just the worst — Andrew Crawford Boden, the Irving man arrested for allegedly hiding a camera in a Grapevine Braum’s restroom, has been arrested again. After the Braum’s camera was found on May…
In court documents, he is referred to as “Ruben.” We don’t know his real name, and we don’t know if he was the first to make contact with the now-27-year-old Gerardo Cisneros, aka “Tatuado” or, simply, “Jerry.” But we do know that in November 2012, Ruben made a call to…
And you thought jury duty in Dallas sucked. Tarrant County residents are being contacted by a man calling himself Lieutenant Allen who claims to be with the sheriff’s office, police department or constable’s office. “Allen” informs the person receiving the call that they have been fined between $2,000 and $4,000…
Monday afternoon, the same day Governor Rick Perry announced a statewide advertising campaign to combat human trafficking, Dallas’ Dereck Johnson pleaded guilty to that offense in United States District Court. According to court documents, on June 1, 2012, Johnson lured a 15-year-old girl away from the Downtown Dallas Greyhound Station…
Open Carry Texas and its most active local offshoot, Open Carry Tarrant County, have succeeded marvelously in their quest to mercilessly troll gun-control advocates. Whether they’ve made any progress toward their stated aim of legalizing openly carried handguns in Texas, however, is another matter. The National Rifle Association, for one,…
Local chef Kent Rathbun has a very practical reason for driving a neon yellow Porsche. “Everyone knows it’s you,” he told The Dallas Morning News a couple of years ago. “That’s a good thing and a bad thing, actually. Part of the reason I like it is because when it’s…
Squad Car Footage from Amy Silverstein on Vimeo. The allegations against the former McKinney Police Department officer are serious: He was driving too fast, with no siren lights on and making a dangerous lane change before crashing into the car of a man who is now suing him. But there’s…
Before Open Carry Tarrant County members and their rifles set foot in a Fort Worth Jack in the Box earlier this month, setting off a series of increasingly absurd showdowns between open-carry gun activists and national restaurant chains, its members were standing on Arlington sidewalks handing out copies of the…
If nothing else, you can at least say this about former state trooper Kelly Helleson: she proved quite willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. That was the case anyways on the night of July 13, 2012, when she helped a colleague with a traffic stop along…
If, like us, you’ve been worried that discussions on substantive policy issues like home-rule and merit pay have distracted from Dallas ISD’s long and storied history of stupid penny-ante graft, then you’re in luck. Federal prosecutors have just brought charges against a former DISD employee who allegedly stole $162,000 through…
Something weird and unsettling happened last year at the Dallas County Sheriff’s Training Academy. Of 27 recruits that enrolled, a mere seven — barely 25 percent — passed on their first try. Weird because the wave of failures was unprecedented. The previous year, all 16 would-be deputies passed. Unsettling because…
Denton High School students were puzzled on Thursday when journalism teacher Greg Bogomol was ignominiously escorted from the building. They were soon tweeting about rumors “that something happened.” Rumors are slippery, unreliable things, as any high school journalism student can attest. Maybe they contain a nugget of truth. Lucky for…
