For as long as a decade, the feds say, brothers Cesar and Gilberto have been the kingpins of a large and violent drug-dealing syndicate in North Texas, known by law enforcement as the Goon Squad. Theirs was a family business. The brothers worked along with their sister Elva as drug…
In a handful of places in Texas — Austin and Midland and San Marcos, for example — getting caught carrying a small amount of marijuana will get you a ticket and a court date but, barring more serious infractions, won’t involve handcuffs. Dallas has a different approach. “We take you…
Pamela Jones is a teacher at DeSoto’s alternative high school. She’s 35. She has a husband and four kids. She works for Athletes for Change, whose mission to “provide exceptional role models” to young people. If authorities are right, she has an odd sense of what makes a great role…
When Robert Coleman’s house got egged, he called the University Park police. It was a Saturday night in September 2012. Officers came to the crime scene but found no leads, other than the splattered egg yolk. Coleman realized that his patio umbrella was also missing, according to the police report…
In news that further confirms something you knew all along — that fast food restaurant restrooms are just the worst — Andrew Crawford Boden, the Irving man arrested for allegedly hiding a camera in a Grapevine Braum’s restroom, has been arrested again. After the Braum’s camera was found on May…
In court documents, he is referred to as “Ruben.” We don’t know his real name, and we don’t know if he was the first to make contact with the now-27-year-old Gerardo Cisneros, aka “Tatuado” or, simply, “Jerry.” But we do know that in November 2012, Ruben made a call to…
And you thought jury duty in Dallas sucked. Tarrant County residents are being contacted by a man calling himself Lieutenant Allen who claims to be with the sheriff’s office, police department or constable’s office. “Allen” informs the person receiving the call that they have been fined between $2,000 and $4,000…
Monday afternoon, the same day Governor Rick Perry announced a statewide advertising campaign to combat human trafficking, Dallas’ Dereck Johnson pleaded guilty to that offense in United States District Court. According to court documents, on June 1, 2012, Johnson lured a 15-year-old girl away from the Downtown Dallas Greyhound Station…
Open Carry Texas and its most active local offshoot, Open Carry Tarrant County, have succeeded marvelously in their quest to mercilessly troll gun-control advocates. Whether they’ve made any progress toward their stated aim of legalizing openly carried handguns in Texas, however, is another matter. The National Rifle Association, for one,…
Local chef Kent Rathbun has a very practical reason for driving a neon yellow Porsche. “Everyone knows it’s you,” he told The Dallas Morning News a couple of years ago. “That’s a good thing and a bad thing, actually. Part of the reason I like it is because when it’s…
Squad Car Footage from Amy Silverstein on Vimeo. The allegations against the former McKinney Police Department officer are serious: He was driving too fast, with no siren lights on and making a dangerous lane change before crashing into the car of a man who is now suing him. But there’s…
Before Open Carry Tarrant County members and their rifles set foot in a Fort Worth Jack in the Box earlier this month, setting off a series of increasingly absurd showdowns between open-carry gun activists and national restaurant chains, its members were standing on Arlington sidewalks handing out copies of the…
If nothing else, you can at least say this about former state trooper Kelly Helleson: she proved quite willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. That was the case anyways on the night of July 13, 2012, when she helped a colleague with a traffic stop along…
If, like us, you’ve been worried that discussions on substantive policy issues like home-rule and merit pay have distracted from Dallas ISD’s long and storied history of stupid penny-ante graft, then you’re in luck. Federal prosecutors have just brought charges against a former DISD employee who allegedly stole $162,000 through…
Something weird and unsettling happened last year at the Dallas County Sheriff’s Training Academy. Of 27 recruits that enrolled, a mere seven — barely 25 percent — passed on their first try. Weird because the wave of failures was unprecedented. The previous year, all 16 would-be deputies passed. Unsettling because…
Denton High School students were puzzled on Thursday when journalism teacher Greg Bogomol was ignominiously escorted from the building. They were soon tweeting about rumors “that something happened.” Rumors are slippery, unreliable things, as any high school journalism student can attest. Maybe they contain a nugget of truth. Lucky for…
There are good ways to handle a family dispute, and then there are bad ways, the ones that will inspire the prosecutor handling your case to send out a press release with the too-late reminder that “We are all told not to play with fire as small children.” Jeffrey Pruett,…
You can, provided you’re willing to break a handful of federal laws and international treaties and locate a willing buyer, sell a dead hummingbird. A well-preserved specimen of certain varieties will fetch upward of $350 on the U.S. black market, according to federal prosecutors. Who, you might wonder, would pay…
Most people have more or less forgotten the high-profile TCU drug bust of February 2012. Aside from the presence of four football players among the 18 arrested and the relatively rare chance for TV stations to run a mugshot gallery full of privileged college kids, the revelation that a bunch…
Shortly after Danny Cantu’s home was searched by Dallas police officers, he ended up in the hospital with trauma to his face. “Kicked in head,” read the notes in his medical records. He had been admitted with septal hematoma — bruising or bleeding in the nose — and lacerations on…
The criminal case against Columbia Packing and the Ondruseks, aka the Trinity River pig blood guys, sure seems like it should have been a slam dunk. How could investigators possibly botch a case in which there is literally a trail of blood leading directly to the suspected culprits? By trespassing,…
In September, Brice Johnson starting talking to Arron Keahey on MeetMe.com, a networking and dating app. Keahey’s profile said he was looking for other men. Johnson, a 19-year-old from Springtown (a half hour’s drive northwest of Fort Worth) indicated that he was straight in his own profile, but nonetheless started…
