Even without cell-phone metadata placing him near his ex-girlfriend’s San Antonio condo in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009, prosecutors may still have convinced jurors that Jon Thomas Ford was guilty of her murder. There was the testimony of their friends at the party he’d stormed out…
Three people on a “cop watch” were arrested while videotaping a traffic stop by an Arlington police officer late Saturday night. The people are part of organizations Texas Cop Block and the Tarrant County Peaceful Streets Project, whose members tape police in a effort to hold them accountable for their…
Clint Peterson’s on-again, off-again girlfriend called the police on October 28 to report that he showed up uninvited to her house that morning and vandalized her car. She says she warned the dispatcher that Peterson also sometimes carried a fake gun and may have had it on him. The girlfriend…
Since August 10, Dallas police officers have shot six people, killing four of them. Most were armed and a threat to others. One, Andrew Scott Gaynier, was unarmed, though police say he lunged at the off-duty officer who shot him. The events surrounding the shooting of an unarmed teen in…
With around 2,000 students in the district’s three campuses, Argyle ISD is a small, quiet district located smack dab in the middle of Denton and Fort Worth, off Interstate 35. And this school year, some teachers at Argyle ISD have a secret: Several of them have a guns hidden away…
Earlier this year, Judge Roberto Cañas initiated a countywide program to increase gun surrenders from domestic abusers. It’s a law whose lack of enforcement has a history of deadly consequences in Dallas. On Tuesday, the county commissioners court voted to fund nearly a third of the project and approved Cañas’…
An off-duty Dallas police officer shot and killed a man police said is a suspect in a fatal shooting in Northwest Dallas early Wednesday. Around 12:40 a.m., two men began to quarrel at the pumps of a gas station near Midpark Road and Central Expressway, police said. One of the…
Monday morning in southern Dallas, Steven Douglas rammed his truck into a car, breaking out the driver’s side window. It belonged to the mother of his children. With her three kids, she had been trying to run away from him. He’d visited her apartment that morning, and, when she managed…
In the midst of a string of recent police shootings, the Dallas Police Association, the city’s largest police union, has called for all officers to be outfitted with body cameras that record the officers’ every move. And the union’s receiving support from a group not generally considered an ally: the…
Continuing to make hay while the sun shines, RickPAC, our esteemed governor’s political action committee, is now selling T-shirts featuring his mugshot. See also: Rick Perry Wisely Strikes Back with Video Targeting Travis County DA The shirts, available for a minimum donation of $25, feature the aforementioned mugshot with the…
The man heard the first gun shot down the street and moved the kids from the front yard into the house. Then he heard four more. The man, a neighbor who requested we don’t name him, says he wasn’t surprised there was a shooting in the area, a tree-lined street…
As midnight rolled around last night, a police car with officers Jay Jankowski and Michelle Herczeg pulled into the rear lot of the Grand Hotel Dallas, just off LBJ Freeway, where they saw an idling truck. They thought the truck had been stolen, police say, so they went to investigate…
The woman in the passing car shouted, “Black power!” And the gun-rights advocates lined up on the sidewalk outside Forest Avenue Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard returned the call. In the heat of a Wednesday afternoon, about 30 black men and a few women, dressed head-to-toe in…
You likely remember Ethan Couch, the then-16-year-old boy who, while drunk and stoned on Valium, drove his car into four people, killing them, and then got 10 years probation because of his privileged upbringing that the judge termed “affluenza”? Yeah, pretty sure you remember him. Well: His father, Fred Couch,…
Last week, Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins announced the formation of a new Civil Rights Unit, a two-person team that will investigate shootings by officers independent of the police department. Chief David Brown supports the unit. “You can’t have enough oversight when it comes to police-involved shootings,” he said at…
Zion Hayes, 14, stopped wanting to become a police officer last month. Until then, he had so much enthusiasm that he had his mom, Audrey Hayes, threw him a police-themed birthday party. But a run-in with a real Dallas officer changed Zion’s career goals. Following a noise complaint at the…
In the wake of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins tonight will hold a 7 p.m. town hall meeting at St. Paul United Methodist Church, where he says he hopes to start a conversation about police shootings to avoid in Dallas what has happened in…
On their surface, the claims made by Douglas Leguin in his 911 call last Monday are almost comical. His name is Dougie Doug, and he has seceded from the United States established Doug-e-stan, an independent republic, because “shit’s too screwed up.” That he’d taken over a house that wasn’t his…
When questions arise about how investigators handled a suspicious death case, or when they appear to have possibly caused the death themselves, they usually don’t comment about what happened because the investigation is ongoing and it will take a very long time to solve. It’s a logical enough explanation in…
In Ferguson, Missouri, this week, as police officers began to look more like soldiers, and as the lack of transparency about the Mike Brown shooting continued, a police officer in Dallas took to his smartphone. Major Max Geron heads the Dallas Police Department’s Media Relations Unit, Community Affairs and Planning…
In the wake of violent clashes in Ferguson, Missouri, a candlelight vigil has been planned for the Continental Deck Park tonight at 6 p.m. As part of what’s being called a “National Moment of Silence,” attendees will observe a moment of silence, then be given the chance to speak out…
In Texas, we already knew there was plenty of work to be done to alleviate the tired and overburdened public mental health care system. In Dallas, we know that we have the same stretched resources that are reported statewide, but in addition we have also not received the majority of…
