When Timothy Gutierrez felt a runny nose and sinus congestion coming on about a week ago, he was sure it was COVID-19. Gutierrez, who has been held in Dallas County Jail since mid-November on an alleged probation violation stemming from a previous drug-related charge, noticed many of the inmates coughing and…
Dr. Erin Carlson was “horrified” to learn that unvaccinated people had regularly been visiting her 84-year-old father, who suffers from kidney failure and other underlying conditions, without masks. When Carlson, a professor of public health at the University of Texas at Arlington, asked her elderly mother why they’d been allowing…
The family of a Dallas’ QAnon cult member is sounding the alarm. Multiple members of the Leek family confirmed that their relative, who left her husband and children behind in Delaware to follow a fringe QAnon cult leader to Dallas last month, has been drinking a chemical cocktail containing chlorine…
Late last month, Dallas City Council members rolled out a new plan for curbing panhandling across the city. The Panhandling Deflection Program aims to connect people asking for money on the street to social services that will keep them from panhandling in the future. To access those services, panhandlers will be…
On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in Texas’ exceptionally harsh abortion ban. Abortion providers will be permitted to challenge the state law effectively banning nearly all abortions after the six-week mark, the court ruled. But abortion providers will only be permitted to sue a narrow group of state…
Around Texas and beyond, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins has built a public profile for his fight against Gov. Greg Abbott’s approach to combating the coronavirus. Jenkins has called for better protections against the virus, has criticized the state’s Republican officials for lax measurements and even evicted J.J. Koch from a Commissioners…
Sean Leek was excited to live near his mother again. It was 2018, and he’d recently moved back to the area around the same time she bought a house in Delaware. “Finally,” he thought, “we’re gonna be back in each other’s lives.” Within months, he realized something was off about…
Sure, Aaron and Carly were wary to say too much – like everyone else at the QAnon gathering in Dallas, they wouldn’t even share their full names – but they beamed with excitement. They’re in their mid-thirties, and they left behind a business and their apartment in Mexico City to…
The Navarro County District Attorney’s Office has arranged a trial date for Michael Police, a former Navarro College student accused of possessing drug paraphernalia amid claims that a campus cop had racially profiled the Black former student-athlete. Navarro County District Attorney William Thompson sought the trial date for early January 2022…
As his brother’s mental health spiraled, Devon Pickard grew alarmed. He had spent the last five years working as a diving instructor in Hawaii and had just moved back to Van Zandt County, where he lived with his father while he tried “to regroup and figure out what’s next.” Meanwhile,…
Damon Finney’s wife knew he was sick when they set off on their honeymoon on July 27, but she didn’t imagine it was coronavirus and never expected it would kill him. The response to his death from his employer, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, was another bitter surprise. “He didn’t…
Dallas City Council has been trying to reduce panhandling for a while now. Back in 2018, Dallas police stopped enforcing a city ordinance outlawing panhandling in certain areas after dark, in response to U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an Arizona case that measures like it were unconstitutional. “End Panhandling Now,”…
During their prosecution of Crystal Mason for alleged illegal voting in the 2016 election, Tarrant County prosecutors built their case around the testimony of two witnesses: Jarrod Streibich and Karl Dietrich, who were Mason’s longtime neighbors in Rendon and served as volunteer election judges at the polling place there. Discrepancies…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has always been a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, and now Trump’s seemingly returning the favor yet again: He’s hosting a pricy dinner and photo session for Paxton at Mar-a-Lago next month. On Dec. 9, Trump’s hosting an invite-only fundraiser for Paxton’s reelection…
Of course he does. After all, It’s only been a couple weeks since Rolling Stone reported that Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert was among a gaggle of GOP lawmakers allegedly meeting in secret with the organizers of the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Gohmert has dismissed the allegations as false.) But when you’re Louie…
In September, the Dallas Police Department announced an expansion of its aerial surveillance program before the city’s Public Safety Committee. The police department soon after expanded its eyes in the sky, adding unmanned drones to its helicopter unit. Albert Martinez, the police chief’s executive assistant, assured the committee that DPD’s aerial…
When hackers breached the Houston-based Colonial Pipeline’s cybersecurity defenses in late April, the whole country took a hit. Within days, drivers from Houston to New Hampshire found themselves waiting in line for hours to get gas.The federal government later concluded the country could’ve only lasted another three to five days…
Mark Zuckerberg’s had a busy few weeks. In response to a lawsuit, his company Meta (formerly Facebook) plans to delete facial recognition data, a move Texas officials are fighting. On Oct. 20, the attorney general for the District of Columbia added Zuckerberg as a defendant in a 2018 lawsuit that…
If you’ve driven north on Interstate 35 through Dallas in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen the billboard bearing former President Donald Trump looming over commuters near the Commerce Street exit toward downtown. Hunched over, head bowed, Trump looks solemn on the billboard. “TRUMP LOST” and “NO MORE ‘AUDITS'”…
If you’re older than 12 and test positive for COVID-19, you most likely qualify to receive monoclonal antibody treatment on Texas’ dime. For most, the largest barrier to getting the early-stage COVID-19 treatment has been knowing that it exists at all, according to a CNN report published last week. In…
Every night in Texas, about 400 kids have to sleep in makeshift dorms in Texas Department of Family and Protective Services offices. This group of kids without a foster placement are especially vulnerable to overmedication and physical and sexual abuse, according to a recent court monitor’s report ordered by a…
On Aug. 1, Porsha Bookman took to Facebook to voice her gripes about her job at Dallas County Jail. “I just got mandated again!!!!” Bookman posted on Aug. 1. She included the hashtags #wannabefree and #8morehourstogo. Nineteen days later, the 36-year-old died of COVID-19 complications. Five days before her death,…
