Dallas Animal Services Still Overheated and Understaffed

Good news first: the kittens have their own room now. Bad news: most of those kittens are still going to die. Every few months, the Animal Shelter Commission gets together for a progress report from shelter manager Jody Jones and director of Code Compliance Jimmy Martin. It’s always a mixture…

DPD Announces Firing Of One Officer And Discipline of Another

The Dallas Police Department would like you to know they’ve fired one officer and disciplined another, effective immediately, following two disciplinary hearings Thursday morning. The first one is pretty straightforward: Officer Kelly Schumpert was arrested in Forney for DWI in February of this year. An Internal Affairs investigation concluded she…

Teresa Hawthorne: The Decider

In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 30 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Mark Graham. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. State District Judge Teresa Hawthorne had been on the bench for less than a year when she…

Monika Korra: The Survivor

In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 30 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Mark Graham. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. On a cold night in 2009, SMU freshman Monika Korra was kidnapped at gunpoint by three men…

Daniel Cates and C.d. Kirven: The Equalizers

In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 30 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Mark Graham. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue. In January, Mayor Mike Rawlings held a closed-door meeting with 25 LGBT leaders. It was his way of…