Maybe we need to accept a certain bottom line here and prepare to deal with it. Dallas is becoming a much cooler city — almost more cool than it has a right to be — because of the coming change in who’s in control. But the change-over is not here…
What happens if you’re an apartment-dweller who catches a wrecker driver in the act of illegally towing your car? You get attacked, according to a personal injury lawsuit filed in Tarrant County on Wednesday. Damion Gilbert says in his suit that he had already once caught Excalibur towing about to…
Dallas Police Senior Corporal Marqueon Skinner has had better days than June 30. That evening, Skinner contacted Ashley Hughes through a Craigslist advertisement, according to a written statement he would later give police. Hughes, who admitted to Arlington police that she’s a prostitute, agreed to have oral sex with Skinner for…
Dallas streets are bad. It’s axiomatic at this point. When the city asked residents what it should prioritize in its new budget, the resounding first choice was road repair. The city’s awkwardly beautiful video explaining next year’s budget touts the extra $16 million to be spent on “improving streets.” Everyone…
Months ago, Dallas school board member Miguel Solis shipped me a copy of a 1999 book called Show Me a Hero by former New York Times writer (now senior columnist at Huffington Post) Lisa Belkin, about a late 1980s affordable housing/desegregation fight in Yonkers, an inner-rim suburb of New York…
Last fall, Dallas County announced that it and the Dallas Police Department were going to pluck the lowest of low-hanging criminal justice reforms and implement cite-and-release, a policy that gives cops the option of issuing a citation to people suspected of certain class A and B misdemeanors — notably possession of…
One of the biggest grass-roots triumphs in Dallas County last year was the successful push by prisoner advocates and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins to preserve the right of Dallas County jail inmates to meet visitors in person rather than over a video camera. A new contract for jail visitation…
You, my fellow citizen, can do a study of the development potential associated with a single DART light rail line through downtown. I’m serious. You can do this. All you have to do is walk east to west through downtown on Bryan Street and Pacific Avenue along the existing DART…
Twenty-nine people have committed suicide in Texas county jails since September 2014, more than in any of the last three years. That’s too many, says a bipartisan group of state officials. Led by Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Democratic state Senator John Whitmire, a group of Texas lawmakers announced…
Clarence E. Sullivan arrived in Ellis County in 1890 to seek his fortune. Though barely 18, he was already well-tempered by life. A runaway buckboard had killed his parents when he was a child, leaving him to be raised by an older brother who scratched out a meager living outside…
In February, a missionary agency made a startling report about one of its members. “… Mr. [Jordan] Root admitted that he has been sexually attracted to prepubescent female children for many years and that during his service with SIM [Serving in Mission] he has been viewing nude photographs of children…
A couple of weeks ago, we told you about a push led by Downtown Dallas Inc. to bring more cops into Dallas Central Business district to combat what DDI sees as rising nuisance crimes. The meta-culprit for many of the crimes — like panhandling, public sleeping and public urination —…
Sid Miller is one of the Observer’s favorite public officials. As Eric Nicholson said in February, he’s “the Platonic ideal of what the Texas agriculture commissioner should be. One glance at his official campaign portrait, which looks like it might have been taken at the Stephenville Walmart but which actually…
The selling point for a professional “city manager” system of city government — we’ve got one of the biggest ones in the country here in Dallas — is that everything will be run in a professional or “businesslike” fashion, not all loosey-goosey and a mess like it would be if…
Last Thursday, during a routine stormwater inspection, city staff came upon an unsettling discovery: 300 to 400 dead fish in a West Dallas drainage pond on the landward side of the Trinity River levee near the Pavaho Pump Station. Workers plucked what fish carcasses they could safely reach — almost…
One great thing about America is that random companies can’t take your car away without any warning if you failed to register it with the state. Sure, it’s illegal to drive with an out-of-date registration sticker, but that’s no excuse for corporate-sponsored vehicle theft. At least in theory, it’s not…
Dallas County used to be pretty damn proud of how it handled truancy cases. In a 2005 letter to then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, District Attorney Bill Hill wrote with evident satisfaction of the swiftness and ferocity with which students were punished for chronic absenteeism. In 1996, a year after Texas…
Congrats to everyone reading this outside of a FEMA camp based in an abandoned Wal-Mart for making it through the first month of Jade Helm 15 unscathed. For those of you who’ve been interned, and yet still inexplicably have web access, our prayers are with you. Thanks to the brave…
The state of Texas’ obstinacy about changing a Conroe man’s death certificate continues to have positive consequences. Last week it led to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the interim commissioner of the Department of State Health Services, Kirk Cole, being brought up on potential contempt charges. The state caved…
Wednesday’s decision by the Dallas City Council to allow Love Field vendors to charge higher prices in exchange for those vendors guaranteeing a higher minimum wage for their workers was standard-issue horse trading. Vendors got what they wanted — the ability to charge 10 percent more than street prices for…
David Jensen is a guy I have written about over the last six months who lives in a West Dallas warehouse in the path of a big new apartment development that is favored by the city. He showed up at City Hall Wednesday to try to stop the city from…
The bucket of seven starving baby kittens fell onto the radar of local animal rescuers by chance. Carla Adkins, a teacher who began volunteering as a rescuer after she kept encountering stray dogs near her home in Oak Cliff, was at the Dallas Animal Services shelter on Tuesday, checking on…
