They aren’t NERF guns, but the “sponge guns” the Dallas Police Department will get aren’t lethal either — or mostly not lethal, rather. DPD Deputy Chief Jeff Cotner introduced the guns Thursday at the Safer Dallas Better Dallas meeting a police headquarters. They’ve got a 14-inch barrel, shoot 40 mm…
Thursday, Dr. Raymond Greenberg, the executive vice chancellor for health affairs for the University of Texas System, made it clear why fetal tissue research is so important. Despite all the knashing of teeth from the state of Texas’ Republican leadership, the research is absolutely vital to studying early human development and fighting…
Blackie Sherrod, revered former sports columnist at the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News died Thursday. He was 96. Sherrod, voted Texas Sportswriter of the Year a record 16 times, left the Times Herald in 1985 for the Morning News, building a loyal following through what he called his…
Dallas Police Chief David Brown is on the ropes. Thanks to an increase in violent crime over the first third of 2016, discontented police unions and a City Council that’s seemingly grown weary of his days as chief seem numbered. The media, the Observer included, has been all over crime…
Seeking to build a bulkhead against Donald Trump’s orange-hued rising tied, Ted Cruz took the unusual step of naming a running mate without being within even sniffing distance of the Republican presidential nomination. Trump won five primaries Tuesday night, edging closer to claiming the title of presumptive GOP nominee. Cruz…
Friday morning, four days after the murder of his daughter-in-law, Missy Bevers, Randy Bevers, her father-in-law, brought a bloody shirt into Midlothian’s Dry Clean Super Center. He told the clerk taking his clothes that blood on the white shirt was animal blood. Later that afternoon, according to a search warrant…
Most of Dallas major hospitals look pretty good in the Hospital Safety Score Survey released this week by the Leapfrog Group, a patient safety watchdog organization. Methodist Charlton Medical Center, Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and UT Southwestern University Hospital all got A’s on their report cards…
Thanks to one of the many quirks of Texas law, facilities across Texas industry aren’t heavily penalized for otherwise illegal pollution when that pollution happens because of anything classified as an accident or maintenance. In 2015, that meant 68 million pounds of air pollution, stemming from 3,421 breakdown and maintenance incidents,…
Former Texas A&M quarterback and 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel has been indicted by a Dallas County Grand Jury. He is charged with assault causing a bodily injury to a member of his household, a misdemeanor. Manziel faces up to a year in Dallas County Jail and a $4,000…
This afternoon, it comes. The storm that will wash away the unfaithful and vindicate doomsday prophet Jim Schutze is slated to hit Dallas, bringing with it a torrent of water, hail, wind and tweets about Pete Delkus’ rolled up sleeves. “We’ll have what looks like a line of thunderstorms develop…
Drivers who don’t pay tickets for getting caught by one of Dallas’ hated red-light cameras won’t get a bad mark on their credit reports, Dallas police assistant director Donzell Gipson told the City Council’s public safety committee Monday. Gipson said the city is being forced to find a new way to…
Helena Tantillo, a former Austin tech executive on the outer edges of the federal corruption case against Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, was sentenced Friday to six months in federal prison for lying to FBI agents investigating the case against Price. Tantillo’s company, BearingPoint, employed Christian Campbell as a…
Midlothian police, it seems, are not really any closer to finding out who killed Missy Bevers, the Camp Gladiator instructor found dead inside Creekside Church of Christ just after 5 a.m. Monday. Friday afternoon, for the third time, the released additional footage of the person they believe is Bevers’ killer, vandalizing…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is happy that U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater refused to force the city of Dallas to schedule Exxxotica’s 2016 sex expo at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. We know because he said so. “I am pleased with U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater’s ruling that…
Exxxotica will not be coming back to Dallas — at least for the time being. U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Fitzwater ruled Thursday morning that the umbrella organization for the adult expo banned by the Dallas City Council in February, Three Expo events, had not proved that it was likely…
Maybe, Missy Bevers’ killer was a woman. Maybe not. Maybe Bevers was singled out, hunted down after she made it clear where she’d be before sunrise Monday. Or maybe she walked in on a burglary. All of those possibilities are plausible and all have been cited by Bevers’ family or…
In January the Observer noted with a certain amusement that a bunch of JFK stuff was being hawked by New Jersey’s Goldin Auctions. These included a bullet fired from the gun that fired the bullet that killed the guy (Jack Ruby) who killed the guy who killed Kennedy (Lee Harvey…
As it has in each of the last four years, Dallas ISD’s School for the Talented and Gifted has been named the best high school in the country by U.S. News and World Report. The district’s Science and Engineering Magnet, which shares the Yvonne A. Ewell Magnet Center building with…
In the worst sign yet for his NFL prospect, former Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel has been dumped as a client by his agent, Drew Rosenhaus. Tuesday afternoon’s announcement came after the Dallas County District Attorney announced that accusations that Manziel beat his ex-girlfriend, Colleen Crowley,…
A couple of days a week, Missy Bevers taught a boot camp exercise group called Camp Gladiator outside Creekside Church of Christ on East U.S. Highway 287 in Midlothian. Monday, the 45-year-old arrived at the church just after 4 a.m. for her 5 o’clock class. Because of the rain Sunday, she…
Arguments and evidence — including a video showing some public butt sniffing — flew at Monday’s temporary injunction hearing in the Exxxotica adult expo’s lawsuit against the city of Dallas. The city’s lawyers, Tom Brandt and Scott Bergthold, told U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Fitzwater not to even look at…
The official count of Zika cases in Dallas County now stands at six, the county’s health and human services department announced Friday, not long after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that the mosquito-borne virus is capable of causing microcephaly and other birth defects. Friday’s confirmed infection…
