In June, after months of debate and a glaring need, the Dallas City Council passed an ordinance regulating the 300 or so boarding homes that provide — or sometimes merely purport to — shelter and support to the mentally ill. The ordinance addresses a wide range of issues, from sexual…
The budget ax brought down by the state legislature in 2011 gouged a huge chunk from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which lost more than a fifth of its funding. The result was layoffs and a reduction in staffing and hours of operation at a number of state parks…
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…
On Friday afternoon, a bit more than a week after fairly high-ranking officials in the Russian government began lobbing allegations of unspeakable child abuse against a Texas couple, authorities have ruled the death of their adopted Russian son an accident. The Ector County sheriff’s and district attorney’s offices held a…
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…
The website and Facebook pages for The Master’s Hand Medical Center in Grand Prairie, which later changed its name to the Master’s Hand Spa, have been taken down. The traces that are left on the Internet indicate it offered weight loss treatments, botox, lipo-laser, as well as massages and other…
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…
State Representative Helen Giddings was one of several Democratic lawmakers invited to the Governor’s Mansion Monday afternoon for a reception hosted by the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. But she never showed up. Giddings declined the invitation to protest the requirement that she undergo a background check before being admitted to…
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…
On March 22, 2011, SMU officials issued a safety alert to students and staff advising them to be on the lookout for Daniel Hux, a recently expelled student who had been barred from campus. The fliers didn’t go into detail about why Hux wasn’t allowed at the university, and SMU…
On Tuesday, beer drinkers in three states filed federal lawsuits against Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer and the purveyor of Budweiser, Bud Light Lime, Michelob Ultra and other innovative beer and beer-like products. A Dallas-area drinker has now joined their ranks. Michael Seidenstein, a 30-something man who owns property…
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…
Last week, the number of drilling rigs operating in the Barnett Shale, the massive natural gas reservoir that underlies much of North Texas, dropped to 27, the lowest figure in a decade. But the boom’s not over quite yet. There may be less drilling going on at the moment, but…
Last Tuesday, Dallas County District Judge Emily Tobolowsky temporary halted Heritage Auctions’ planned sale of the 1959 Masters green jacket. Augusta National, the famed Georgia golf club that hosts the tournament, had sued Heritage to have the auction stopped, claiming that the jacket had been stolen by former employees and…
Vashana Eugene Mims was last heard from at about 9 p.m. on February 5, when he called a family member to check on his kids and announce that he was on his way home. But he never made it. His family filed a missing person report with the Dallas police,…
The $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday — assuming Congress doesn’t reach an alternative deficit reduction deal — was designed to be so stupid and indiscriminately painful that any rational human being would do whatever possible to avoid it. But rationality is not…
In the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection victory last Novembers, Republican lawmakers in several swing states — Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconson — introduced bills that would change the way the state’s electoral votes are awarded, from a winner-take-all system to a proportional one in which presidential candidates are…
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…
Just when you thought Robert Jeffress was going to let his jilting at the hands of Tim Tebow slip away, forgotten, after just one news cycle, the First Baptist mega-pastor took to the pulpit on Sunday and questioned the quarterback’s manhood. “I am grateful for men of God like these…
The city of Dallas is “maybe a year or two” away from considering a plastic bag ban, assistant city manager Jill Jordan told City Council members on Monday. First there will be a study to figure out its potential impact and exactly how many bags plastic bags there are in…
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…
Melissa Kingston worked late on Tuesday night, finally leaving her office at Friedman and Feiger at 8 p.m. or so. On her way home, she decided to make a quick detour to the Spec’s liquor store at Central and Walnut Hill. She had just pulled up to a stop sign…
