On February 5, Dallas Police Chief David Brown delivered some bad news to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. Through the first month of 2016, violent crime was up by 26 percent over the previous year. There’d been one fewer murders, but the number of rapes (13 percent) robberies (21…
Denton County Sheriff William B. Travis is losing endorsements faster than blood pouring from a bullet wound. A state representative, Denton county officials, mayors and mayors pro tem from several cities and a couple of Denton County constables have withdrawn their support, and the future of the sheriff’s campaign is…
The story revisits a federal drug case in which a judge concluded that information used to obtain a search warrant had been fabricated.
Leonys Martin might not be a Ranger anymore — he was signed early in the 2015/2016 offseason by the Seattle Mariners — but the Cuban center fielder’s saga continues to be one of the most interesting things about the team. Friday morning Martin’s former agent Bart Hernandez was arrested on…
Ethan Couch, the affluenza-afflicted drunk driving teen who killed four people in a 2013 Tarrant County crash, is finally getting his day in adult court. Couch’s juvenile probation would’ve expired in April, on his 19th birthday. Friday morning — in front of his father, Fred Couch, and the families of…
United Development Funding is having a no good, terrible, very bad month. A visit from FBI agents yesterday is the latest trouble for the embattled firm. During the first week of February, Kyle Bass, who runs Dallas’ Heyman Capital hedge fund, shorted UDF’s Nasdaq stock, basically betting that UDF’s stock…
Police broke up a phone scam in Georgia, aimed squarely at North Texas, that originated in a Georgia prison. The result is that the Flower Mound Police Department closed 53 officer impersonation cases Wednesday. Each of the cases involved inmates using a Flower Mound officer’s name in an attempt to…
Tent City, the sprawling homeless encampment beneath Interstate 45 just southeast of downtown, has claimed its second victim in a month. Dallas police responded to a stabbing call at Tent City just before 6 p.m. on Tuesday. There, in a patch of dirt near Hickory Street, they found the body…
Avi Adelman is a free man. Dallas Area Rapid Transit informed Adelman on Tuesday that the agency is dropping criminal trespassing charges. Adelman, a self-described citizen journalist and well-known gadfly, was arrested by DART police while photographing an incident at Rosa Parks Plaza, a transit hub in downtown Dallas. “A…
They stand in front of voters at forums across North Texas, laying out their plans, their opponents’ faults and their reasons for seeking the Republican or Democratic nomination in the March 1 primaries. They come in various shapes and sizes, with variety of experience to offer voters. They dress in…
Four decades ago, when he was 16, Philadelphia police wrote Avi Adelman a ticket for violating curfew. In all the time he’s spent chasing cop cars and ambulances with his camera, in his quarter century as the Barking Dog of Lower Greenville, in the 59.85 years he’s spent being Avi…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, already facing three felony charges related to illegal lobbying in Collin County, received even more bad news Wednesday when a Texas State Bar disciplinary committee announced that it would allow to move forward a complaint about Paxton’s acts in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme…
The problem with K2 downtown, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Monday, might be more than the drag on resources it causes for Dallas police and firefighters or the health threat it poses to the synthetic drug’s often homeless users. The drug also could be responsible for an increase in…
Late last week, the Dallas Police Department received a report from Fort Worth Police about a sustained domestic assault alleged committed by Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel across DFW on January 29 and 30. Colleen Crowley, Manziel’s ex-girlfriend, had filed a request for a protective order from Manziel in Tarrant…
Charles Cato, long thought to be Dallas’ police-chief-in-waiting, is leaving the Dallas Police Department. The long-serving first assistant chief has been named the chief of Mesquite’s police, and will start March 7. During his time with the department, Cato served as the interim Dallas ISD police chief in 2006, was…
Since the beginning of December, Dallas Fire and Rescue has received more than 200 calls to deal with people who are, apparently, on one of the many substances colloquially known as K2. In media reports, the calls are often said to be addressing overdoses, but the behavior described often also…
The question of just what it would take to get Governor Greg Abbott to get out in front of a women’s rights issue has been answered. Following the widespread dissemination of now canceled plans by Return of Kings, an online group of men’s rights activists misogynists, to hold meetings across the…
Early Saturday afternoon, nine days after he and a friend allegedly carjacked 37-year-old Sarah Hoff in her downtown Dallas parking garage before taking her car and credit card to a Pleasant Grove McDonald’s, DART police found 17-year-old Ira Booker at a downtown train station. According to police, Booker initially tried…
Darryl Davis is something of a celebrity in downtown Dallas. He’s been roaming the streets for years, hounding passersby for money with an intensity and tenacity that other neighborhood panhandlers can’t or won’t muster. In the past nine months, he’s been ticketed five times for panhandling, according to municipal court…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown isn’t afraid of media interviews. Or if he is, he does a great job hiding it. Maybe he sees them as a challenge — he exhibits all the signs of a person who is energized by struggle. Case in point: As the interview goes on, he…
Ethan Couch’s kinda strong, kinda strange trip to Mexico is over. After dropping his appeals against deportation earlier this week, the 18-year-old returned to Tarrant County Thursday. He will now face the transfer of his 10-year juvenile probation sentence — handed out after he killed four in a 2013 drunk-driving…
Ethan Couch is expected to end his long Mexican vacation this week. The 18-year-old killer drunk driver has been south of the border since the beginning of December, following a viral video of Couch playing beer pong being posted to Twitter and the teen’s subsequent missing a probation appointment. His…
