Crime’s Down — Except at Home

The Dallas police updated the city council’s Public Safety Committee on crime stats again today — and, once more, crime’s down in Dallas, save for residential burglaries. Those have increased from 9,686 in year-to-date 2007 to 9,739 thus far in ’08. Homicides are down too, from 142 to 106 year…

Craig Watkins, TV Star

For those so interested, the agenda for today’s Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting includes the county’s contract with Touch Productions, which will produce a documentary series for the Discovery Channel about Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins and efforts to exonerate innocent prisoners using DNA evidence. The county’s all for…

Defecting from the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office

Just a few months after we launched Unfair Park, we profiled Dallas public defender Mike Howard, then running the tell-all site Wretched of the Earth, on which he’d write about counseling the indigent on the county’s dime. But Howard yesterday sent out a virtual change-of-address notice: He has left the…

Meat Avi Adelman

Say what you will about Avi Adelman, but far as one employee at the Kroger’s on Mockingbird Lane and Greenville Avenue is concerned, the man is a bona fide hero. Guess it’s what happens when you grow up the son of grocers, as the Barking Dog did. Jump for the…

Wheels? Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Wheels.

It’s been mentioned a couple of times on FrontBurner, including today: Folks wake up in the morning, only to find their car or SUV is missing all four wheels. The D boys have mentioned a few locations — Preston Hollow, University Park, Abrams Road and Northwest Highway, Lovers Lane and…

Oh, We Thought Operation Oasis Involved Some Kind of Wonderwall

From the sheriff to the police commissioner, who really, really likes his gig. But that’s not the question. This is quite the star-studded infomercial and fund-raiser for Operation Oasis, the local nonprofit that, among other things, works to integrate ex-offenders back into society. There’s Dallas police chief David Kunkle, Safer…

The Most Dangerous Time in Dallas

Just a tip: The best time to get yourself killed in the City of Dallas is between 6 p.m. and midnight on a Wednesday, if I’m reading my January-July YTD homicide statistics right, and I’d like to think that I am. (So you can forget what I wrote in May,…

Dallas-Based Texas Syndicate Leader Gets Life in Prison

For a man about to spend at least the next 40 years of his life in prison, Roy Arredondo hardly seemed nervous. Arredondo, the reputed leader of a Dallas-based cell of the Texas Syndicate prison gang, was sentenced this morning in Dallas federal court to life for his role in…

The DPD Could Use Your Eyeballs

The Dallas Police Department, riding high off the arrests made from this YouTubed video, has posted two more — including this freshly baked footage of four men burglarizing a residence in broad daylight. (It appears to have been shot by a neighbor, who, one would hope, was dialing 911 with…

Good Lord, If We Sued Every Time Someone Called Us That …

From the Courthouse News Service, this bit of legal ephemera out of Denton County, where Jeff Soele Real Estate alleges that Lake Lewisville’s Xtreme Marine and salesman Mike Flowers are just a little too extreme for his tastes: DENTON, Texas (CN) — The “new 2006 demo boat” a customer bought…

Josh Howard Has a Court Date — Not a Basketball One, Either

Sure, things can get a little slow in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, but, seriously, Josh Howard. Arrested? For drag racing? In a black Lexus? Yup: “The 28-year-old has been charged with drag racing, exceeding the posted speed limit, and reckless driving to endanger.” Guess it coulda been worse. Lesse — September…

We Aren’t Marshall: Volkswagen Wants Case Moved to Dallas

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall is a popular venue for patent infringement lawsuits; as The New York Times pointed out in 2006, right after that famous Echostar-TiVo trial wrapped, “more patent lawsuits will be filed here this year than in federal district courts…

Craig Watkins Takes More Shots at Henry Wade in AP Story

Henry Wade First thing that comes up when you search for “Dallas” in Google News for the past month is this freshly minted piece about former Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade. The headline blares: “After Dallas DA’s death, 19 convictions are undone.” Craig Watkins says of his predecessor: “There…

Way to Support the FBI There, Deborah Lee Stinson. Allegedly.

Interesting media release this afternoon from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, about how 55-year-old Dallas-based FBI “support employee” Deborah Lee Stinson and her 27-year-old son Mark have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The entire narrative, as usual, is after the jump, but the feds allege that from January…

In Dallas, You May Not Be Murdered. But Your Stuff’ll Get Stolen.

Yesterday, during our weekly staff meeting, the question was raised concerning the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2007, a preliminary version of which was released last week. We wondered if perhaps we’d missed it in The News; all I can find concerning the report’s release is this very general Associated…