Brett Randall sat in the passenger seat of his friend’s car early Thursday morning, waiting to head into work. A gray car approached. Knowing they were in trouble, the driver would tell Dallas police later, he began to drive away from the parking spot he’d been in. A man in…
Continuing a trend that began with 10 local cases last year, Dallas County Health and Human Services announced Thursday afternoon that Dallas County has been hit with its third case of mumps in 2017. Like each of the previous two cases this year, the mumps case announced Thursday was transmitted…
Ahmed Motaz Al Olabi and his wife Basimal Labbad boarded an Emirates Airlines flight from Dubai to Dallas on Friday with a dual purpose: to see their sons, and for Ahmed to have a surgical procedure to get rid of his obstructive sleep apnea. What awaited them was President Donald Trump’s executive…
Armed with a stack of signature-covered petitions and dressed in his usual dapper suit, Dwaine Caraway announced at Dallas City Hall on Wednesday afternoon that, after a two-year hiatus, he is coming back for the District 4 city council seat he held from 2007-2015. “We had a lot of momentum…
We are so screwed. The Texas economy is totally dependent on trade with Mexico. Trump’s determination to stir up his flash mob by insulting Mexico is going to absolutely kill us. But our top Texas elected officials are Republicans who are so afraid of far-right challengers that they can’t do…
Dallas Police and the Dallas FBI’s violent task force are on the hunt for two bank robbers the agencies believe have committed eight robberies in Dallas since mid-December. The two men are also suspected of robbing a bank in University Park and another in Fort Smith, Arkansas, during this same…
Tyrone Paxton was shot dead in broad daylight in mid-morning on April 19. His body fell next to the road at 2800 Cleveland St. in Southeast Dallas, alongside a vacant, grassy lot overlooked by nearby apartment buildings and their parking lots. Dallas homicide Detective Derick Chaney believes as many as…
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, scheduled to go on trial later this month on federal corruption charges, is still king of the city’s old black protesters. But the old black protest machine’s days as a major political force in the city probably are numbered anyway, no matter which way…
Tuesday morning, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott laid out his agenda for the 2017 Texas legislative session in his second state of the state address. Abbott named four emergency items, the issues he’s directed the legislature to take up early in the session. Before the legislature does anything else, Abbott said,…
Monday evening, the Irving-based Boy Scouts of America announced that it would begin admitting scouts based on their gender identity, rather than the sex listed on their birth certificate. The BSA’s decision comes a month after the family of Joe Maldonaldo, an 8-year-old transgender boy from New Jersey, filed a legal…
The killer slowly walks through the halls of the Creekside Church of Christ in Midlothian. The figure is wearing police tactical gear and is holding what appears to be some sort of hammer. It’s just after 4 a.m. and the church is empty, allowing the intruder to walk through the…
The hits, apparently, are going to keep on coming for Dallas’ woebegone police and fire pension system. On Monday afternoon, a group of six former Dallas cops sued the system’s board in U.S. District Court in Sherman, alleging that the trustees’ decision to temporarily stop withdrawals from members’ Deferred Retirement Option Program…
School vouchers, by another name, are apparently just as sweet to Texas’ Republican leadership and the state’s advocates for school choice. Monday afternoon at the Texas State Capitol, Dan Patrick joined with parents and state senators to announce Senate Bill 3, the 2017 legislative session’s biggest school choice bill. Rather than…
The forest, in the case of the United States of America v. John Wiley Price, is almost impossible to see for the trees. There is so much evidence, history and context swirling around the trial of Dallas County’s longest serving county commissioner that even starting to understand how we got…
Of course Dallas cops and firefighters are furious over the public tone of the pension fund fight, because so much of it accuses the ordinary members of the fund of somehow being at the bottom of the debacle. All of the talk about pension fund millionaires, for example, makes it…
Late Friday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks issued a preliminary injunction banning the state of Texas from implementing a rule, drafted last summer, that would require the burial or cremation of any tissue resulting from an abortion performed in the state. In granting the injunction sought by Whole Woman’s…
Ahmed Motaz AlOlabi and Basimal Labbad became two of 50 travelers detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at DFW, along with scores more at airports across the country, in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to keep foreigners from seven majority-Muslim countries out of the United States.
We know you’re busy, so here’s a roundup of the week’s events from the news desk of the Dallas Observer. Rawlings to Immigrants Detained at DFW: “On Behalf of the Citizens of Dallas, We’re Sorry” At an impromptu press conference at the Omni Dallas, Rawlings said he was “deeply distressed”…
On Saturday night Mayor Mike Rawlings voiced his opposition to the president’s executive order limiting immigration and refugee resettlement, which was causing chaos at DFW International Airport. At an impromptu press conference at the Omni Dallas, Rawlings said he was “deeply distressed” at the ongoing situation at the airport, where 50…
Last Friday amid Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, Adamson High School teacher Payal Modi decided to take out her frustrations out on a video projection of the ceremony. Armed with a water pistol, Modi took on the leader of the free world, pointing and squirting her gun at the president’s image while…
This week there was some hope that the city of Dallas and the troubled Dallas Police and Fire Pension System were on their way to reaching a deal to save the pension from potential insolvency. Early Wednesday morning, however, that mediation broke down, leading to some of the strongest signals yet…
Thursday’s meeting of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board was an abominable disgrace. Most members of the board turned their backs on taxpayers and fought instead to shield their cronies at the State Fair of Texas from public scrutiny. But, remember: There’s one good thing about abominable disgraces. These are…
