Dallas’ police department has received intense scrutiny since Micah Johnson ambushed Dallas police following a march against police brutality on July 7. Our city has a complex history with law enforcement that the Observer has extensively covered. Here’s a quick list of reading material that can help explain the dynamic between the…
As Dallas was hit with rain Friday morning, the Dallas Public Library moved to save the memorial that sprung up at police headquarters in the immediate aftermath of July 7’s police ambush. Everything hand-written or non-perishable from the memorial will be saved. Thousands of items left by people from around…
It’s official: Mack Rhoades is Baylor University’s new athletic director. The former athletic director at the University of Houston and, most recently, the University of Missouri, Rhoades has to rebuild a program reeling with accusations of sexual assaults by players. The task he faces is hard to underestimate, and…
Between 1,500 and 2,000 people gather in front of City Hall to light candles, offer prayers and listen to testimonials to the five Dallas police officers murdered by a gunman last Thursday after a Black Lives Matter march in downtown Dallas. The crowd is about 80 percent white. Everyone is here to express…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown has been talking a lot over the last few days about community policing, a combination of strategies designed to build trust between the police and the people whose lives they patrol. What he doesn’t say in public is something that I know he knows. I…
Downtown Dallas is known for tragic landmarks. Now it has one more. On Thursday night, a group of protesters gathered by the Dallas County Courthouse, itself a scene of community tragedy, although one not as well known as Dealey Plaza and other places related to the Kennedy assassination. Here, in…
The wail is the same. It doesn’t matter which side the wail comes from. Wail of loss. Wail of pain. It’s all the same wail. We don’t have cell phone video of the moments in Dallas when wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, lovers, dear…
In every fight, whether a gun battle or a boxing match, there’s something called initiative. It’s not easy to describe, but it exists. Loosely put, it means one side is reacting to the other and therefore can predict their opponent’s moves. Those who have the initiative, win. Those who…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown today told CNN his rationale when approving the use of a robot to deliver an explosive to kill police shooter Micah Johnson during Thursday’s rampage at a protest march. He says negotiations failed and that trying to get a sniper to shoot him would expose…
Major Max Geron is a 24-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department. He’s served as the voice of the department, leading the media relations unit, and is now assigned to the crimes against persons unit. Thursday night, as Micah Xavier Johnson began shooting, Geron was sitting down to dinner. He…
People have been paying their respects with flowers, letters and signs, affixed to DPD cruisers parked in the plaza just outside the entrance to Jack Evans Police Headquarters. Lunchtime Saturday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and his wife Micki stopped to pay their respects at the memorial and to attempt to…
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick criticized peaceful Dallas protesters for seeking police protection as gunfire erupted Thursday evening. Patrick, no stranger to inflammatory comments, blamed Black Lives Matter activists for the shooting of 12 Dallas officers — five of whom died — and…
On Friday, police searched the home of police shooter Micah Johnson, gleaning details about the man who targeted them in a rampage Thursday night. Detectives found “bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition, and a personal journal of combat tactics,” according to the Dallas Police Department. Johnson, 25, had no…
Micah Xavier Johnson, the man Dallas police say killed five officers in an ambush attack at a demonstration against police violence Thursday night, told officers he was not affiliated with any group or organization but was targeting white people and white police officers because he was upset about police shootings…
Sherie Williams, 46, was visiting from her home in Minneapolis when she learned that her sister, Shetamia Taylor, 38, of Garland, had been shot in the leg during Thursday night’s ambush massacre of police in downtown Dallas. Williams says Taylor and her three sons had been just about to return…
A rally against police violence became a scene of bedlam when a pair of gunmen opened fire, killing five officers. The hail of gunshots shattered a previously peaceful rally, sending hundreds of people fleeing through the streets in panic. At least two shooters from separate elevated positions above the demonstration site…
Dallas police have cordoned Main Street and the area surrounding Belo Garden downtown following reports of multiple gunshots following a demonstration to protest recent police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge and Minnesota. Unconfirmed reports from bystanders say two police officers may have been wounded. At 9:40 p.m., police ordered…
Last June, 35-year-old James Boulware planted pipe bombs and then shot up DPD headquarters. He was later killed by a police sniper. During an interview with the Dallas Observer, Dallas Police Chief David Brown spoke about the threat of violence his officers feel on the job. In the wake of…
Independence Day, a time when Americans of all stripes come together to celebrate their nation’s birth. Invariably, many do this by making all manner of terrible decisions involving booze, fireworks, large bodies of water, or some combination of the three. And invariably, some of those decisions prove fatal. Below is…
Despite the thousand of tips that have poured in, all of the evidence that’s been collected and all of the man hours that have been put in by the Midlothian police department and federal agents, authorities are apparently no closer to finding Missy Bevers’ killer more than two months after…
Former Cowboys safety C.J. Spillman has been convicted of rape by a Tarrant County jury. He now faces a minimum of two and as many as 20 years in prison at a Friday sentencing hearing. On September 20, 2014 Spillman attacked a woman visiting him from Chicago at the Gaylord…
Local police and federal agencies are investigating the murder of Jacinto Hernández Torres, better known under his byline, Jay Torres. Torres worked for more than 20 years at La Estrella, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Spanish language sister paper. Someone shot the reporter dead, police believe, a few days before…
