Last month, we told you that the Arlington Police Department submitted an application to the Federal Aviation Administration in 2012, asking to please be allowed to use the two small remote control drones they bought. The drones were purchased for a little over $200,000 from Leptron Industrial Robotic Technologies, with…
At first glance, Reddit’s Dallas thread may seem like an innocuous online forum where users engage in remarkably civil dialogue and provide easy content for Dallas’ finest journalists, graciously allowing them to get to the bar before noon. But an in-depth investigation by Unfair Park has revealed a contingent of…
Sometimes, through a lack of foresight or general carelessness, the state legislature passes laws that, while well-intentioned, are so poorly worded as to criminalize things that the criminal justice system probably shouldn’t concern itself. (See: felony penny theft). The latest example could be Senator Dan Patrick’s SB 249, which the…
Tammy Lowe, a 53-year-old Grand Prairie teacher, surrendered to police in January, five days after she allegedly struck and killed 6-year-old John Raidy in a horrific hit-and-run. She was charged with injury to a child and failure to stop and render aid. Now, those charges are about to be dismissed…
Update, 3:52 p.m.: The Dallas Morning News’ Jennifer Emily tweets that the case against Hill has been dismissed. Judge Levario cited Watkins’ refusal to testify as part of her basis for dismissal. Original post: Craig Watkins wasn’t sick today, and contrary to the inexplicably wrong tweets from one TV news…
Club Extasis, the nondescript Grand Avenue night club where Orr-Reed owner John Hargrove was brutally beaten to death in the early hours one January morning, has always had a vacant look to it, at least during the daytime. The bars across the door were a permanent fixture, and the neon…
As the sun sank and the cold set in, Dallas PD mobile command centers idled in an empty lot behind a McDonald’s off Lancaster Road and I-20, a stopover on a trucking line for long haulers. Plainclothes and uniformed officers massed near one of the trailers, walled in by the…
We were going to take a pass on this one. We were going to ignore the press release Dallas police sent at 12:39 p.m. informing every media outlet in town that Thomas Lee Watkins III, the 20-year-old nephew of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, had been arrested for allegedly…
Dallas police patrol the area around Kidd Springs Park at various hours, in part to crack down on the frequent car burglaries, in part to be on the lookout for people using the park to drink and do drugs. That’s what one officer was doing at about 8:30 Tuesday morning…
File this one under things we’re surprised to learn didn’t happen 50 years ago: the folks at Texas Motor Speedway announced today that the National Rifle Association — as in the rabidly pro-gun lobbying group — is now the title sponsor of the NASCAR race there this spring. But no…
On Friday afternoon, Lieutenant Regina Smith walked away from the Lucille Baller fiasco with a five-day suspension for bringing discredit to the Dallas Police Department. It seems a fair enough sentence for conduct that, while demonstrating hilariously bad judgment, did no real damage to anyone save for those of us…
Dallas police officers Randolph Dillion and Jon Llewellyn were passing through an apartment complex on West Camp Wisdom Road at about 9 p.m. on December 9, 2011 when they spotted Melvin Williams from their squad car taking something — drugs, they suspected — from a man in a parked car…
One of human evolution’s oft-ignored benefits is a man’s ability to conveniently piss on whatever tree, shrub, brush pile, patch of concrete, patch of grass, building facade, or garbage can happens to be at hand. It’s liberating. But with great freedom comes danger. One potential pitfall was made clear to…
I’ve got a really tough day ahead…not looking forward to the decisions I will have to make on some officers careers— David O. Brown (@DPDChief) March 1, 2013 If you follow Dallas Police Chief David Brown on Twitter, you were greeted this morning with the ominous announcement above. We’re still…
SMU still hasn’t released many details about what happened at the Sigma Phi Epsilon house on the night of February 10, just that a student was “assaulted and held against his will” and that the fraternity, which also counts 19-year-old John David Mahaffey as a member, had been temporarily suspended…
In the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook, Don Dunn, the superintendent at Van ISD, 70 miles southeast of Dallas, sent a memo to parents explaining what the district was doing post-Sandy Hook to ensure students’ safety. These included adding school resource officers, brushing up on emergency drills, locking…
Gentlemen. Let’s get really real for a moment, shall we? It’s very unlikely that a woman on Craigslist wants to have sex with you. Or rather, it’s very unlikely that a woman on Craigslist wants to have sex with you for free. And when two women from Craigslist are proposing…
For about four months in 2007, Lakeith Fowler had a good con going. That May, the 32-year-old had hooked up with a supplier who began shipping case after case of the latest Nike sneakers at dirt-cheap prices. Fowler marked them up and sold them from his retail store, The World…
Yesterday morning, Highland Park High School was evacuated after school officials found a threatening note in a boys’ bathroom. It was the same boys’ bathroom where three similar notes had been found the month before. In all four cases, a search of the school revealed nothing. The danger became a…
When Mike Edwards opened a Condom Sense at Parker and Independence in Plano last month, he touted it as a way to pump new life into an aging strip center and help reinvigorate local retail. But as CBS 11’s J.D. Miles so, um, artfully put it, neighbors and religious leaders…
On Tuesday afternoon, shortly after hearing journalist Laura Ling address the Dallas chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women in Far North Dallas, Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell was pulled over by Dallas police. We know this because he Tweeted about it: Just got stopped by a Dallas…
Yesterday morning, a man walked into the Victoria’s Secret at Mockingbird Station, grabbed $2,000 worth of shirts, sweatshirts and sweatpants, then ran from the store into a waiting Dodge Durango. It was, the Morning News noted, the fourth such theft from the location in about as many months. They are…
