Some random notes with which to start your final day of winter vacay. Last night I briefly toyed with the idea of attending the final Cotton Bowl to be held at the actual Cotton Bowl, but an anticipated record crowd of 88,175 — what you get when you combine a…
First he leaves At the Movies; now, he’s no longer the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. As of tomorrow, Richard Roper’s back in the private sector, working for Thompson & Knight, after four years spent as U.S. Attorney. Course, this was inevitable: Barack Obama will pick a…
Sandwiched between reports of strangulations, strikings and stolen cars on Saturday’s Dallas Police Department crime report is this item from the Fiesta at 9727 Webb Chapel Road in Northwest Dallas: “AP ATE A CHOCOLATE DONUT AND LEFT WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT.” And, yes, “AP” means the guy was arrested –…
If you had Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins in your office’s Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year pool, well, collect your winnings. (This no doubt displeases Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield, who says in the piece that Watkins and his DNA exonerations are “costing the taxpayers $480,000 per…
How many shopping days left till Christmas, Don Hill? Dang, then we’d best hurry! A couple of housekeeping items this morning, including the disappointing news of a scheduling change. You can cross January 20 off your calendar if you were planning on attending the trial of former Dallas Mayor Pro…
About half an hour ago, Allen Gwinn alerted us media types to this Dallas.org item concerning a hoax e-mail being sent ’round concerning the harmful hustle that wasn’t: folks taping fliers to the back windows of cars at NorthPark Center, which they use to lure would-be victims from their vehicles…
In late October, a woman named Kandice Hutchison was killed in a car crash on W. Airport Freeway in Euless, when her 2004 Nissan 350Z hit a center median, flipped onto the concrete barrier “and slid along the top of it until the car slammed into a bridge support and…
In March, Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle fired Senior Cpl. Jeffrey “Jack” Nelson, one of the three officers involved in the now-infamous phony ticket scandal that also resulted in the officers filing a lawsuit against D magazine last July. As The News recounted upon Nelson’s firing in the spring:Senior Cpl…
Can’t say I’d ever heard of Highland Park’s Hiram Walker Royall till last night, when I stumbled across this piece from the First Amendment Center concerning the developer’s October ’08 libel lawsuit, brought about because Royall’s furious over the contents of the well-reviewed 2007 book Bulldozed: “Kelo,” Eminent Domain and…
How many hours should we stay home this morning till the bridges and overpasses thaw, Don Hill? One? Gotcha. Thanks. Former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill, indicted about 28 years ago in that City Hall low-income-housing bribery and extortion case that started back in the days of eight-tracks and bell-bottoms,…
In October 2006, Sung Bum Chang of Coppell was sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of forced labor and one count of conspiracy to commit forced labor — meaning, he was a human trafficker and a slave master. So too was…
Been a long while since I’ve heard the name Bob Gale, who was quite the big deal back in the early 1980s for having written the likes of Used Cars and Back to the Future, both for Robert Zemeckis, with whom he was Oscar-nominated in ’86. (Gale also wrote the…
The new ordinance would prohibit the sale of individual cigars and require cigars to be sold in packages of at least five, with a penalty of no more than $500 awaiting the perpetrator. Notably, it doesn’t apply to cigars sold in tobacco shops or other businesses. So what’s Caraway’s beef…
Only a few days ago, The Dallas Morning News ran a piece about Texas’ Tango Blast gang, which was formed within the confines of the state’s penitentiaries and “could change the Dallas landscape because it rejects old notions of prison gang exclusivity and lifelong commitments,” wrote Tanya Eiserer. (The D-Town…
The U.S. Attorney’s Office just sent word: Arturo Tinoco is going to federal prison for a long, long time — 19 years and then some. Why? Because twice in the span of seven months, the 29-year-old was stopped by Dallas police, who, both times, found a whole bunch of methamphetamine…
The Las Vegas media this morning is touting the arrest of a man wanted in connection with an October 24 shooting in South Dallas: Kevin Jermaine Davis, who was picked up by law enforcement officials only last night. Davis had a whole posse after him: the U.S. Marshals Service’s Nevada…
Stories like this are why we’ve opted for the Termibot. Hell of a way to kill bugs. Courtesy Courthouse News Service this morning comes this story out of Plano: Laura Grant is suing Terminex in a McKinney courthouse, claiming that in March of this year a termite inspector named Mark…
A little more than one year ago, Dr. James Shin was a Southlake resident and a family man and the Chair of the Internal Medicine Department at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth. Then, on September 17, 2007, officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement cybercrime unit discovered “numerous…
In August 2007, as it was becoming evident that Dallas was becoming “ground zero for criminal justice change,” in the words of Innocence Project of Texas founder Jeff Blackburn, Glenna Whitley wrote that faulty eyewitnesses were partially to blame for the convictions of so many innocent men. Which is why,…
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins A couple of days back, The Wall Street Journal ran a profile of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins – and he’s “The Exonerator,” proclaimed the headline to a story that, like many others written about Watkins in recent months, focuses almost exclusively on…
At this very moment, the city council’s Public Safety Committee is meeting to discuss, among other things, the so-called Holiday Crime Initiative aimed at preventing crime during this most wonderful time of the year. Specially, today’s presentation deals with two parts of town: the Dallas Police Department’s North Central Patrol…
Anand Jon with one of his famous former clients Several Friends of Unfair Park who quite vividly recall the sordid story of fashion designer Anand Jon have sent this update: Yesterday, Jon was convicted in Los Angeles of raping and sexually assaulting aspiring models as young as 14. The conviction,…
