On Saturday afternoon, a panhandler, whom police later identified as 59-year-old Isaiah Caldwell, was working the traffic coming off Interstate 35 on Marsalis Avenue in East Oak Cliff when another panhandler, a 42-year-old woman, arrived at the same spot. She quickly offered a suggestion: Rather than compete with one another…
The couple started arguing on Saturday, around 3 in the morning, in a house near Fair Park. The man told the woman he hadn’t forgotten their past arguments, all the times she had “disrespected” him. He shoved his palm hard against her face and forced her down against a desk…
Kelly Helleson will no doubt think twice before performing any roadside cavity searches on evidently law-abiding citizens. In January, the Texas Department of Public Safety fired the state trooper for her unusually thorough probe of two Irving women, a decision that severely limited her opportunities to conduct such searches. Now,…
Over the past several years, in shopping malls and storefronts across the country, entrepreneurs have begun operating what are called sweepstakes parlors. They look and smell like miniature casinos, and they’re lined with terminals featuring electronic games that bear an uncanny resemblance to slot machines, video poker and other games…
City Council chambers erupted in applause Thursday afternoon as the Plan Commission voted to deny controversial drilling permits to natural gas producer Trinity East. It was a victory for drilling opponents, to be sure; it means the permits will take 12 votes to get past the City Council, instead of…
For the third time in four days, Dallas police held a press conference about the string of rapes in Lake Highlands. Still no answer for who was responsible for three rapes over the past month, but the investigation has made progress, DPD Major Jeff Cotner told the press this afternoon…
Head down Central Expressway at or near rush hour, and you’re guaranteed to spend awhile sitting in traffic. There’s no guarantee, though, that any other route will be quicker, so drivers are left to sit and wait and wonder. You won’t have to wonder for much longer. DART is rolling…
The Arlington Police Department recently got permission from the FAA to use the two small, battery-operated drones they purchased last year using grant money from Homeland Security. Presumably, the drones will mostly be used to hover over Jerry Jones while he’s at work, clipping him in the head with a…
Occupy Dallas, the local champion of the 99 percent, persists in vestigial form as small band of activists who stage occasional temporary demonstrations. The semi-permanent-City Hall-squatter’s-camp version of the movement died in November 2011 when it was raided by police as part of a nationwide crackdown on Occupy. Since then,…
Russell Weinstein was waiting on a train at Arapaho Center DART station one afternoon last February, en route to the first day of a new job, when he was caught in the middle of a shootout between police and and a gun-wielding bus passenger. Weinstein was relatively lucky. Another bystander…
It’s been almost eight years now since the tiny Denton County town of Clark took on a corporate sponsor and officially changed its name to DISH, Texas, after the satellite network. In return, the town’s 55 homes got free cable service for 10 years, plus a DVR. It must have…
It’s possible that there exists, somewhere, a human being manlier than former Cowboy Darryl Johnston. Maybe some real-world version of the Old Spice guy. But Johnston, a legendary fullback with a square jaw, three Super Bowl rings and the uber-masculine nickname “Moose,” is certainly a close second. Johnston all but…
Congressman Steve Stockman represents what the evidence tells us is an especially crazy swath of Texas in the suburbs of Houston. There’s really no other way to explain why voting-age Americans could choose to send such an individual to Washington as their duly elected representative. Last month, it was the…
Early this morning, around 3:30 a.m., a 22-year-old SMU marketing student was returning to his apartment complex in the 5900 block of University Boulevard when, just inside the gate, he was approached by two women. They were both in their mid-20s, he said, had bleached blond hair, black shirts and…
The Mexican cartels, never ones to rest on their ingenuity, are always coming up with new and inventive ways to smuggle large quantities of drugs into the United States. Take the drug cannon, modeled on the T-shirt launching devices used at NBA games, or the brilliant drive-a-Jeep-over-a-border-fence gambit. Now, Wired…
The future of affirmative action in American universities could be decided within weeks, in a Supreme Court case with Texas roots. But a new report from the investigative journalists at ProPublica suggests that the story of Abigail Noel Fisher’s fight against the University of Texas ultimately has very little to…
It was way back in December 2011, in the wake of a seemingly endless series of public hearings and community meetings, that the Dallas City Council gave its blessing to the Sylvan Thirty development in West Dallas and Mayor Mike Rawlings gave the command: “Let’s let the dirt fly.” Finally,…
Austin’s plastic bag ban has been in effect for three weeks now, and the city has so far managed to avoid economic Armageddon. Austinites, it seems, are still able to buy groceries, go shopping, and order restaurant takeout. They just have to carry their purchases in reusable bags. It’s an…
Plans for the Trinity Forest Golf Course, the much-touted game-changer for southern Dallas, are taking shape as the project marches toward an expected groundbreaking this fall. All that remains, really, is figuring out how to pay for it. To get the city’s buy-in, not to mention the $12 million it’s…
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was first passed in 1986, when the thought of storing an electronic message online for any length of time must have seemed absurd. So Congress, in its foresight, gave law enforcement incredibly easy access to emails older than 180 days old. No search warrant is…
Back in January, a grand jury declined to indict 19-year-old Ryan Romo, the former Highland Park High School student accused of rape by a younger classmate. The girl alleged that Romo raped her in the back seat of his car following an October Ghostland Observatory concert at the Palladium Ballroom…
Aurelius Capital Management, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund and perpetual pain-in-the-ass for distressed companies like Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, sued the massive utility in federal court Tuesday for $725 million. It claims Energy Future made some sweetheart intra-company loans even as it was technically insolvent. Aurelius, by the way, has a…
