Texas lawmakers are chewing over several civil-forfeiture reform bills, ranging from the weak (allowing police departments to use forfeiture money to fund scholarships for children of officers killed in the line of duty) to the strong (Representative David “God made weed” Simpson’s to do away with civil forfeiture entirely. As…
The Dallas cops who shot and killed a mentally ill man holding a screwdriver will not face charges, after a grand jury declined to indict Dallas Police Department Officers John Rogers and Andrew Hutchins. “The family is obviously severely disappointed,” attorney Geoff Henley told The Dallas Morning News. The news…
The Dallas Police Department’s explorer program, a partnership with the Boys Scouts, offers young people with a “sincere interest in law enforcement” the chance to do things like ride-alongs and paint over graffiti with cops. But according to the department, one veteran officer recently took an alarming interest in his…
At the Dallas County jail, a local company’s attempt last year to end in-person visitations and replace them all with video chats was quickly foiled by local activists and politicians. But in Denton, the same plan recently went off without a hitch. Denton County and the video company Securus are…
Two Colombian nationals are sitting in Collin County Detention Center after being arrested for multiple home invasion robberies that allegedly targeted individuals of Asian descent. Pier Alexander Pelaez, 44, was arrested Friday in Dallas. Edwin Riascos Romero, 32, was arrested Tuesday in Plano. Plano police say they starting receiving reports…
On February 9, a dog was taken to the animal emergency room in Denton County. The dog had been “injured,” according minutes from the Denton County Commissioners Court, “while deputies of the Denton County Sheriff’s Office performed their patrol duties.”…
Soso Jamabo is a funny kid. His viral stunt, the one where the 28th-ranked football recruit in the country told WFAA that he’d narrowed his decision about where to play running back to ITT Tech and the University of Phoenix, showed a self-awareness that was refreshing in the absurd recruiting…
Despite what you may think about Mesquite, having a ton — OK, 1,900 pounds — of meth in one’s house in that fair suburb is pretty sure to convince law enforcement that the drugs aren’t simply for personal use. Jose Farias Lopez, 24, found that out the hard way Friday,…
A convicted sex offender wanted by police after escaping his halfway house apparently spent a few of his precious hours of freedom in the saddest way imaginable, holed up at a Winstar Casino in Oklahoma. Charles Raymond Sprague left his halfway house shortly after 5 a.m. Wednesday after cutting off…
Sometime after 3 a.m. on February 5, at the Flats at Five Mile Creek apartments, a tow truck driver left his truck idling and walked away. He was looking for parking violations, police said. When the driver returned to his truck, a 27-year-old probation officer named Lance Lemons was sitting…
Back in February the Austin American-Statesman published a great investigation on so-called Brady lists. These are records kept by prosecutors identifying local police officers with credibility issues that are sometimes so severe that they the DA’s office will no longer accept cases from them or allow them to testify in…
At 12:40 p.m. Tuesday, the DeSoto Police Department put out an alert. The department and U.S. marshals were looking for Colby Robinson, who faced murder warrants in Oregon. By 10 p.m. Robinson was dead, shot by DeSoto police after a car and foot chase that ended in southeast Oak Cliff…
In an East Dallas efficiency roughly the size of the prison cell where he once lived, John Whiteman has finally found a home. His neighbors in the rundown apartment building are former inmates like him. The apartments are like dorm rooms at what would be a very seedy college. A…
When the FBI announced in November that it had taken down a Pleasant Grove drug ring, it buried the lede. Yes, the vague allegations of kidnapping and gave the story a bit more juice than the bust of a typical alligator-less street-level drug ring, and casually pointing out that one…
For a former Dallas vice cop set to head to federal prison this summer it was, as it was for Richard Nixon, not about the crime, but about the cover up. Jose Luis Bedoy was convicted in October of telling a prostitute with whom he was having a relationship to…
On a late Monday night in 2013, police pulled over Brian Michael Hunter for making an unsafe lane change. He was arrested on old warrants and taken to the City Detention Center, which is run by the City Marshal’s Office, and placed in solitary confinement. The next morning, city jail…
A woman arrested Monday by Balch Springs police allegedly joined pastors at her church in starving a toddler the group believed to be demon-possessed then tried to resurrect the child in a “raising ceremony” after he died on March 22, according to The Dallas Morning News. Areceli Meza, who served…
The man who menaced South Dallas with a series of sexual assaults over the summer of 2013 will spend at least the next 30 years in prison. Van Dralan Dixson, captured in Baton Rouge in September 2013, attacked women at night. Carrying a gun he said he used to do…
As much of the nation still reels from the death of Walter Scott, a South Carolina man shot in the back by police officer Michael Slager, the Texas House of Representatives considered mandating body cameras for the state’s police officers Thursday. Slager was charged with murdering Scott on Tuesday after…
“This is funny shit,” Assistant Chief Billy Getzendaner said after he watched a video of a trainee volunteer firefighter being sodomized with a link of sausage by a group of other volunteers, a warrant issued for Getzendaner’s arrest in Ellis County claims. Getzendaner, 34, and Gavin Satterfield, the 31-year-old chief…
As Unfair Park should have made clearer in our report Tuesday about Ellis County volunteer firefighters accused of sexually assaulting a trainee with a link of chorizo, the firefighters are not employed by the the city of Waxahachie or connected with Waxahachie’s 58-member professional fire department. Texas Rangers say the…
“I’m pregnant,” yells an unseen woman, surrounded by police officers, moments before one of the officers is seen throwing down his fist. The woman, Deanna Jo Robinson, says she was 38 weeks pregnant when she was arrested and punched by a Hunt County sheriff’s deputy on March 4. The event…
