On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case involving the criminalization of homelessness, letting stand an appeals court ruling that an ordinance banning camping on the streets in Boise was unconstitutional. “As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people…
On Tuesday morning, three police cruisers shepherded two trucks through the empty streets of South Dallas. Every few blocks, the caravan stopped in front of a homeless encampment and a small army of men in white coveralls jumped out to clear it away. Tommy Renfrow, who had pitched his tent…
Nearly a fifth of the nation’s youngest uninsured children live in Texas, a stark reminder that the state has some of the most restrictive policies in the nation governing healthcare benefits for its most vulnerable residents. More than 8% of Texan children under the age of 6 are not insured, according…
For over a decade, Genaro Garcia Luna was in charge of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s violent crackdown on the country’s cartels. But instead of hunting drug traffickers, Luna allowed them to operate with impunity in exchange for multimillion-dollar bribes, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Tuesday. Luna was arrested…
Last year, Dallas’ police and fire departments teamed up with Parkland Hospital to rethink how they responded to 911 calls involving mental health crises. They placed a social worker inside the dispatch center to triage calls and sent out a special team staffed with a mental health professional whenever possible…
In 2017, art teacher Stacy Bailey spent the first day of class introducing herself to her students at Charlotte Anderson Elementary School in Arlington. She flipped through a slideshow of pictures of her family, which included a photo of Bailey and her fiancée making fish faces while dressed as Finding…
River Ranch Educational Charities, the scandal-plagued operator of the city-owned horse park in southern Dallas, is refusing to pay out a $25,000 settlement to a woman who was thrown off one of its horses in 2017. The woman, Rhonda Allen, was there on a staff-supervised ride with her daughter and…
Dallas’ jails and emergency rooms are overwhelmed by mental health crises. These institutions of last resort have become the only option for many “high utilizers,” people who return time after time in need of medication or counseling. It’s not their fault, explains Jessica Martinez, the chief clinical officer at a…
When military veterans come home, many start businesses. Those businesses, from Walmart to FedEx, are some of the largest in the world. And they’re also almost exclusively started by men. Only 3% of businesses led by female veterans have managed to hire an employee, according to research published by the National…
If you were concerned about recent media reports that New York City is busing hundreds of homeless people to Dallas, don’t be. They’re lies. That’s according to the City of Dallas, which attempted to dispel the rumors in a memo released late Friday. City staff called the New York City…
Food is medicine, the adage goes, acknowledging that you can’t address many health problems without tackling the underlying issues of poverty and food insecurity. A new Dallas initiative is about to take a stab at doing exactly that, thanks to a $250,000 grant and a resource-sharing agreement between some of…
In a startling example of community policing gone wrong, a drug-sniffing dog attacked a little girl after the county’s narcotics team showed up at an Arlington elementary school career day. This was in 2017. Now, the county is paying her medical bills after the girl’s mother, Yesenia Arevalo, filed suit earlier…
Every year, the Human Rights Campaign ranks cities across the United States based on the LGBTQ friendliness of their laws and services. And every year, a few Texas cities — Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin — get perfect scores. Dallas suburbs, however, do not. Take Irving, for example: The city scored a…
A few weeks ago, a group of out-of-town activists told their followers they were going to make a “mighty impact on Dallas” by marching through downtown on Saturday, “spreading the joys of straight pride” to all who would hear. On Saturday morning, three people showed up. The march had, in…
Ed Calderon deployed to Iraq three times as a Marine. There, driving fast was a necessity. So when he returned home, he relied on cruise control not to fall into old habits. But it didn’t stop him from getting a speeding ticket in 2007 while he was driving his wife…
Dallas saw a massive spike in hate crimes in 2018, according to FBI data released Tuesday. The Dallas Police Department reported 31 such incidents to the FBI last year, more than double the previous year’s number. Angela Hale, acting CEO of Equality Texas, attributed the rise to hateful rhetoric by…
Over the last three years, the federal government has gutted an Obamacare program designed to increase health insurance enrollment. Dallas has been hit hard: millions of dollars that had been used to help low-income households has disappeared, contributing to its status as one of least insured regions in the country…
In March 2017, Neeraj Jindal had a problem. He ran a Richland Hills staffing agency that provided home health care agencies with therapists to do house calls. One of those agencies had just informed him that it was reducing the amount it would be paying for each house call. Jindal knew if…
In 1991, Saddam Hussein used tanks and helicopters to subdue rebelling Kurds in northern Iraq. Terrified that Hussein would again use chemical weapons, as he had in 1988, millions of the country’s persecuted Kurdish minority fled. Saman Gardy was one of them. He and his family were living in Erbil,…
Landlords have long complained that red tape prevents them from accepting federal housing vouchers, limiting the places that low-income tenants can live. Those in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods tend to turn voucher-holders away, driving segregation. One bureaucratic slowdown that has particularly frustrated landlords is how long it can take for inspectors from…
Two drivers for Irving Holdings, the Dallas transportation company that owns Yellow Cab, have filed suit, alleging that they worked unpaid overtime and sometimes earned less than minimum wage. Didyme Kalenga and Arnold Bankete, the two employees named in the lawsuit, both drove company-owned paratransit vans that served the elderly…
If you’re looking for a lesson to take away from last month’s tornado that flattened homes and demolished businesses in North Dallas, try this: get insured. That’s according to Rocky Vaz, Dallas’ emergency management director, who said getting apartment dwellers signed up for insurance is a big priority in the…
