Adiel Fuentes was a cog in a much bigger machine. He started working for Gerardo Cisneros halfway through 2012, according to court documents, and he took quite well to the type of work Cisneros employed him for. He was one of the main collaborators in Cisneros’ burgeoning meth ring that…
With the mountains of tips the Dallas Police Department fields on any given day, and with finite resources forcing the department to prioritize and decide which leads to follow up on and which to put on the back-burner, it’s only reasonable for a concerned citizen to wonder how to make…
Life just got a little bit worse for women in Texas — and particularly for women in Dallas County. The Texas Council on Family Violence released a study on Tuesday that shows Dallas County has the highest number of female domestic violence deaths in the state. More telling, Dallas has…
In hopes of raising awareness of police brutality, two groups walked single-file together through downtown Dallas Monday afternoon with rifles slung over their shoulders. The Huey P. Newton Gun Club, which marched down Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in August, and the Indigenous People’s Liberation Party stopped in front of…
This guy is wanted for shooting two people at a Seagoville trailer park Sunday afternoon. If you have seen him or know where he is, we apologize. You should also contact Seagoville police…
Get caught with a joint in Dallas this afternoon and you’ll find yourself being chauffeured to Lew Sterrett in the back of a squad car. Get caught with a joint in Dallas this January and you may well escape with a ticket and a stern admonition to show up in…
David Harrison, whose mentally ill son Jason Harrison died at the hands of Dallas police in June, filed a lawsuit on Friday claiming two officers used excessive force when they shot his son six times within minutes of arriving at the son’s home on Glencairn Drive. Linda Turley, David Harrison’s…
A man died last weekend after a confrontation outside a bar on Cedar Springs Road. Detective Derick Chaney said video from JR’s Bar & Grill shows that Joseph Chase was punched on the sidewalk then fell to the ground, unconscious. Chaney said he lay there until police arrived. He was…
Their camcorders and phones recording, about 10 cop-watchers stand on an embankment between six busy lanes and four gas pumps at an Arlington gas station, wondering why cops keep coming for what looks like a simple traffic stop. Don’t all these cops have something better to do, they think, like…
They successfully fought contract provisions that would have banned in-person visits at the Dallas County jail while the county made money from new video visits. Now exonerated inmates, prison rights advocates and County Judge Clay Jenkins aim to make the county among the first in the nation to stop profiting…
This week, the Observer’s Sky Chadde has a cover story about a group of Arlington “cop watchers” who spend their nights following the suburb’s patrol cars, filming police’s interactions with the citizenry and lobbing the occasional “oink,” all in the name of liberty. As part of that story, videographer Sarah…
It started out as a case that wasn’t very dramatic or high-profile. Latoya Scott, a 26-year-old woman, was arrested by the Irving Police Department for an alleged fight at a mall. Prosecutors said Scott hit and scratched a woman she was dating. She was charged with family violence assault, a…
At the latest town hall meeting held by District Attorney Craig Watkins, Dallas Police Chief David Brown, speaking to a primarily black crowd, said a program to educate young officers about the police department’s history with the city was in the works. He seemed to think it was badly needed…
Texas, the most gung-ho gun state in the country, may be getting just a little bit less infatuated with firearms. This year, the percentage of gun purchase requests submitted in Texas is significantly lower than last year. The Houston Chronicle reports that 1.1 million gun purchase requests were submitted last…
Two weeks ago, County Judge Clay Jenkins led a successful effort to change a contract that would have ended in-person visits with jail inmates while the county collected a share of the money a private company made from charging for the video visitation that was to replace it. See also:…
Vocativ, a website that claims to publish “news from the deep web,” has a post up showing pipe-bomb making instructions and suggested targets, including several tourist sites in Texas. The bombs are all standard, Anarchist Cookbook-style stuff. The forums discuss using powdered chlorine as a chemical element in the bombs,…
Since 2000, Dallas Cowboys players have been arrested only 14 times, well below league average, according to a report compiled by The New York Times’ The Upshot blog from USA Today data. NFL players have had 713 reported legal run-ins since USA Today started the database in January 2000. (It’s…
A national organization of black lawyers and judges is still awaiting a response from the Dallas Police Department to the group’s recent request for 10 years worth of public information “regarding the number of individuals who have been killed, racially profiled, wrongfully arrested and/or injured while pursued or in police…
Kids chase each other. They have probably have chased each other since man could walk upright on two legs. Maybe it’s some sort of Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle. However you look at it, kids have always chased and ran away from each other. A game of tag recently ended very badly…
Dallas County commissioners are asking for new bids on a controversial contract for the management of visitation and phone services to jail inmates, after County Judge Clay Jenkins and inmate advocates objected to a proposal that would have ended face-to-face visits while letting the county profit off families visiting their…
For Dan Elliott, his life’s work and now-generous income was born out of a horrendous family tragedy 25 years ago. “I got ‘the call’ from my mother, who told me that I needed to go tell my younger brother that his fiancee had been murdered,” says a stoic Elliott. “Someone…
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…
