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…
Throughout his Cowboys career, Joseph Randle toed the line between lovable flake — think Mickey Rivers — and toxic malcontent — think Greg Hardy. When he said DeMarco Murray had “left meat on the bone” following Murray’s posting perhaps the best single season by a running back in Cowboys’ history,…
Back in the good old days of cartoons, it was considered howlingly funny for a cartoon character to be old, bald, not very bright and legally blind. Have him walk into a door and fall down sharply: The audience was spitting up popcorn, falling out of their chairs. We’ve made…
Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson confirmed Thursday that four additional individuals were being tested for the Zika virus, following Dallas County’s first two cases of the mosquito-borne virus being discovered Tuesday. The two confirmed cases include one person who recently traveled to Venezuela and another person…
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…
Wednesday afternoon a consultant from Ohio spent more than two hours in a meeting room at Love Field Airport with the Dallas City Council to help them find ways to become nicer people. I went to it, because I was hoping I might pick up a few tips for myself…
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…
If I were a better sport, I’d laugh. Yesterday The Dallas Morning News, which has been carrying on an editorial crusade against a Dallas landlord family, published a story under the headline, “City of Dallas’ case against low-rent landlord faces setback.” A setback? Really? Makes me wish I could get my…
When Deputy Chief Gary Tittle formally announced the Dallas Police Department’s new downtown panhandling crackdown on Monday, he was careful to define the target of the operation as “that aggressive panhandler, the one approaching an individual demanding money, asking for money, impeding their walkway on the sidewalks, getting out into the street,…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of the Zika virus, contracted through sex, in a Dallas County resident in 2016. The virus, which causes a relatively minor illness in adults, has tentatively been linked to birth defects in the children of infected women. At…
Fine, talk about Iowa all day, I don’t care, it’s a free country, but let me tell you something: All of that huge split they’re talking about today in the country’s presidential politics — I think of it as the gulf between the wacko, extremist, nut-ball, ignorant people and the…
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…
On Thursday night, after a couple of months of discussion and one scaldingly hot take by Dallas Morning News columnist James Ragland (“I vote YES on recess”), Dallas ISD trustees on Thursday night required all district elementary schools to provide recess, a minimum of 20 minutes through the remainder of the…
Over the past year, as Dallas has confronted tornadoes, flooding and 15,000 screaming neighbors who showed up to cheer Donald Trump, we here at the Observer have been forced to confront our civic mortality, and to embrace apocalyptic fervor with a zeal that we normally reserve for stories about pot…
Ethan Couch, you probably have no idea how people really feel about you. You think they hate you, right? You think they think you’re scum. Maybe you think they’re jealous of you for being rich. If you have been reading the online comments, then I guess you might be justified…
The most iconic feature of Dallas’ skyline is the geodesic sphere atop the Reunion Tower. The 259 high-output LEDs around this ball form patterns for holidays, sports victories and various remembrances. But someone has to keep the sphere in shape — cleaning windows, inspecting the light nodes and changing the…
It was a crisp but bright day in late December, and James was taking advantage of the sunshine to dry his pants on a chain-link fence paralleling St. Paul Street just south of downtown. At the bottom of a small embankment, squeezed between the Interstate 30 service road and Dallas…
Heading into the Iowa caucuses, the contest that could cripple his presidential run, Ted Cruz’s campaign is in flux. Having seemingly peaked in the Hawkeye State around the turn of the year — taking the lead in multiple polls from GOP frontrunner Donald Trump — Cruz has focused the attention…
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…
I believe when you and I spoke recently about what needs to be done with Fair Park, the city’s sadly neglected 277-acre exposition park, I did make a clear distinction between the State Fair of Texas (big and wonderful) and the board that oversees it (small and stubborn). After an…
The fault lines running through the charter school debate Wednesday afternoon at Dallas City Hall were striking. The City Council chambers were filled with kids from one of Uplift Education’s schools, the one that’s been left in a lurch by council rancor over approving a seemingly routine zoning change. Joyce…
