Dallas police and the county prosecutors are testing the city’s 4,140 backlogged rape kits. That’s good. What’s less good is the strain the inevitable DNA matches the tests find will place on District Attorney Susan Hawk’s office. To prepare, Hawk announced Wednesday she’s expanding her office’s sexual assault unit, adding…
Governor Greg Abbott’, three weeks after effectively telling drug overdosers to drop dead by klling a bill to protect Good Samaritan 911 callers from prosecution for small-time drug possession, took another intexplicably regressive potshot at the Legislature’s attempts to make Texas’ criminal justice system just a bit more humane. Among the measures…
Darryl Hamilton, the man who played center field for one of the most important teams in Texas Rangers history, was shot to death near Houston sometime Sunday afternoon. According to the Pearland Police Department, Hamilton and Monica Jordan were found dead after officers responded to a 911 call at 4:45 p.m…
Sebastian Blain, the French defense contractor who was charged with assaulting two bicyclists on Turtle Creek Boulevard late last year, was found not guilty by a jury this month, court records show. At his trial, Blain testified that he was acting in self-defense, according to his attorney. George Wendt and…
Martin Urbina told police he didn’t remember shooting his friend. The last he could recall, it was not long after midnight on Thursday and he and the friend, Gilberto Perez, were sitting on his West Dallas front porch. Perez walked to the side of the house to take a piss…
Five North Texans have been arrested, and two more indicted, for their alleged roles in Medicare fraud schemes that the U.S. Department of Justice says netted more than $700 million. “This action represents the largest criminal health care fraud takedown in the history of the Department of Justice, and it adds to…
It was a rough Monday night in Pleasant Grove. And by night we mean the 10-minute period between 11:30 and 11:40 p.m. And by Pleasant Grove we’re referring specifically to a half-mile stretch of Lawnview Avenue. According to police, there were three separate incidents, all involving guns: one attempted car…
In the wake of James Boulware’s attack on Dallas police headquarters, one of the local police unions is sort of blaming the media and a nameless man who once filmed police and is not shooter/would-be bomber Boulware. The Dallas Police Association released a statement shortly after the attack on…
From the Dallas County sheriff comes this awesome video of Deputy Katrina Caldwell stopping James Boulware and his armored van. Dallas cops were chasing Boulware south on Interstate 45 early Saturday, away from police headquarters on Lamar Street, where Boulware had fired at officers and left pipe bombs. From the DSO: “Video…
Featuring boarded-up, bullet-hole riddled windows, Dallas Police’ Lamar Street headquarters in the Cedars reopened Monday, after a weekend attack that saw 14 officers engage with James Boulware. Boulware attacked the building early Saturday morning, spraying it with semi-automatic rifle fire and planting pipe bombs in its parking lot. He was…
At about 12:30 Saturday morning, according to police, witnesses near Dallas Police headquarters in the Cedars saw what they believed to be multiple people shooting at the building. Patrol cars approached the armored van the shots were coming from. The van rammed the patrol cars and someone inside fired more…
Does the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office really need a military-grade mine-resistant SUV designed to withstand insurgent bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan? Almost certainly not, but with the federal government literally giving them away as part of its program to militarize local law enforcement agencies, it seemed a shame to pass up…
In 2004, after a man’s death from a controversial choke hold (the “lateral vascular neck restraint”) prompted Police Chief David Kunkle to revisit the department’s use-of-force guidelines, the Dallas Police Department bought its first batch batch of 400 Tasers. They were intended as an intermediate option, a relatively humane way…
The McKinney police officer who pulled a gun on two unarmed teenage boys and tackled and pinned an unarmed teenage girl was the victim of his emotions, his attorney said Wednesday. “With all that happened that day, he allowed his emotions to get the better of him. Eric regrets that…
One of the two women charged with operating an illegal butt injection clinic in Deep Ellum has been arrested for murder. Wykeshia Reid died on February 15 after allegedly receiving injections at the clinic. Reid said she didn’t feel well after the injections, Clarke told police earlier this year, so…
Joe Gonzalez tried to out-OJ OJ Simpson Wednesday afternoon. Driving a white vehicle, Gonzalez, 42, led Fort Worth police on a low-speed chase that included his heading the wrong way down an exit ramp, onlookers stalled in traffic getting out of their cars and taking photos and, finally, a SWAT…
Connect-a-Jet was going to do for private aircraft what Expedia.com and its competitors did for commercial air travel. No longer would luxury-minded fliers be forced to dispatch their indentured servants to personally charter that flight to the Caymans — which, we’re told, is how private jet reservations typically work. Instead,…
Bilal Abood, the Mesquite man arrested Thursday as part of a counter-terrorism investigation, hasn’t committed any act of violence. Nor, so far as the government seems able to prove, has he threatened to commit an act of violence; if prosecutors have evidence to the contrary, they didn’t present it to…
Ladies of Irving, beware. A serial groper — or gropers — is on the loose. According to an Irving PD news release, at least eight women and girls in recent months have reported “being inappropriately touched on the buttocks” in the southeastern part of the city…
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the terror attack that ended with a security guard getting shot in the ankle and two gunman with assault rifles being taken out by a Garland cop’s service pistol, according to media reports. “We tell America that what is coming will be even bigger and…
Christopher Omigie, according to federal investigators, was perceived to be someone who had mystical powers in the tribal tradition of his native Nigeria. He was a witch doctor, feds say, viewed as being capable of divining people’s futures and, if necessary, warding off law enforcement. It’s only natural then that…
Give former Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Justin Moore credit, the man sure knows how to make an exit. Cops pulled him over after he was seen weaving in and out of traffic at more than 100 mph near Ledbetter Drive and Highway 67 in Dallas in January. Moore refused…
