Texas prosecutors aren’t giving juries the opportunity to put people to death and, even when they do, jurors aren’t going for it. Those are the big takeaways from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s annual roundup of Texas’ death row development. Only nine of the 21 executions scheduled…
A Dallas County grand jury has indicted former Dallas City Council member Kevin Felder. Felder is charged with failure to stop and render aid, a third-degree felony, according to county records. Felder was arrested in February after an altercation with an 18 year old riding a scooter in South Dallas…
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, as everyone scrambled to figure out what a Donald Trump presidency would look like in reality rather than in their worst nightmares or wildest dreams, one thing no one could have predicted was the rise of a certain East Texas congressman. Louie Gohmert,…
The Dallas County Commissioner’s Court unanimously voted in favor of Dallas County continuing to be a place of initial resettlement for refugees. The resolution follows similar support from the city of Dallas and Fort Worth.
Several hundred people rallied outside of Rep. Colin Allred’s offices in Richardson on Tuesday evening in support of the congressman’s planned vote for impeachment. For more than an hour, they chanted anti-Trump slogans and waved signs at passing cars. Some drivers sped off, others laid on their horns in solidarity…
Holiday gift shopping often entails walking the tightrope between creativity and desperation and, occasionally, falling off into one or the other. Companies, too, seem to enjoy threading the thin line in hopes of continuing to sustain our interest long enough that we pony up and buy whatever they’re peddling this…
In a broad sense, this is all Beto O’Rourke’s fault. If the former U.S. representative had just listened — to activists, party insiders, polls or basically anyone not living in his own head — and run for U.S. Senate rather that president, Texas Democrats would already be in general election…
Social media is doing its best to destroy the news industry. Temperamental algorithms shift page views — oxygen for publications like the Observer — up or down, seemingly on a whim. Anonymity means abuse flows freely from trolls to journalists, further wearying reporters working in newsrooms that have already seen their…
On Tuesday morning, three police cruisers shepherded two trucks through the empty streets of South Dallas. Every few blocks, the caravan stopped in front of a homeless encampment and a small army of men in white coveralls jumped out to clear it away. Tommy Renfrow, who had pitched his tent…
Hallelujah, the angels sing, after all. Well, my version of angels. My better angels are those local public officials who have integrity, intelligence and guts. They’re better than the ones who don’t, right? Last week a posse of better angels stepped up, including a few who were unelected citizens, and…
Dallas has the fifth highest rate of traffic fatalities in the country. This week, the City Council approved the creation of a task force to address the issue and adopted goals to reduce fatalities in the future.
East Texas congressman and friend of the Observer Louie Gohmert is, as one might imagine, having himself quite the time during the U.S. House’s impeachment hearings. Several times a day, whether any of his colleagues like it or not, Gohmert gets five minutes alone with the House Judiciary Committee microphone and…
The mayor wants an answer to the city’s astronomical murder rate — twice San Antonio’s, four times Austin’s — right away from the city manager. I can think of a quick way to get there. Release the record of 911 calls from Jim’s Car Wash. Wait. I’m serious. This is about…
There’s a condition, one you’ve probably heard of if you’ve happened on any right-wing media over the last three years or have any acolytes of the president in your social circle, called Trump Derangement Syndrome. The idea is that Democrats and progressives have been driven to the brink by President…
Last year, Dallas’ police and fire departments teamed up with Parkland Hospital to rethink how they responded to 911 calls involving mental health crises. They placed a social worker inside the dispatch center to triage calls and sent out a special team staffed with a mental health professional whenever possible…
There’s a chance, if someone isn’t from Texas and doesn’t watch much cable news, that he or she blessedly hasn’t had much exposure to East Texas’ U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert. For those babes in the proverbial woods, seeing Gohmert on TV in all his reddening glory must come with a…
New words from Carolyn Davis — killed five months ago by an alleged drunk driver as she awaited sentencing on federal corruption charges — explain just how she believed things worked at Dallas City Hall. Davis’ statements, contained in a fresh court filing in the federal government’s bribery case against…
River Ranch Educational Charities, the scandal-plagued operator of the city-owned horse park in southern Dallas, is refusing to pay out a $25,000 settlement to a woman who was thrown off one of its horses in 2017. The woman, Rhonda Allen, was there on a staff-supervised ride with her daughter and…
North Dallas City Council member Lee Kleinman would have me believe that his being near the end of an eight-year term limit on the council has freed his tongue. I am trying to remember Kleinman with a tongue that was unfree. In any case, he was typically iconoclastic this week…
Racially-based redlining practices divided Dallas and cities across the country for decades in ways that still impact neighborhoods today. An exhibit about the history of this practice and its effects, as well as what to do about it, will be on display in Dallas City Hall’s main lobby until December 31.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson has only been on the job for about six months, but he’s already seen enough. Late Tuesday, the mayor called out Dallas City Manager TC Broadnax, demanding a plan to address violent crime in Dallas before the end of 2019. “While I believe Dallas remains relatively…
Tuesday’s conversation about scooters at Dallas City Hall was, like a lot of discussions at City Hall, unmoored from time. The complaints about the two-wheelers — and there were many — were the same as two years ago, when the scooters made their Dallas debut, and at every point in…
