The mayor of Fort Worth says there is no relevance or importance in the fact that Atatiana Jefferson, killed by a Fort Worth police officer Saturday, had a gun. The mayor is wrong. According to the murder warrant for the former police officer who killed her, Jefferson, 28, pointed her…
The same questions being asked now of the Fort Worth Police Department, mayor and city manager in the shooting death of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson were asked last June in a lawsuit against the city filed by former Fort Worth Chief Joel Fitzgerald, who is demanding reinstatement after being fired last…
While he called statements made by Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price and interim police Chief Ed Kraus “positive,” the lawyer for the family of a woman shot and killed by a Fort Worth police officer said responsibility for the killing lies with the entire department, not just a single officer…
The family of Atatiana Jefferson, the woman shot and killed by Fort Worth police during a wellness call early Saturday morning, spoke out for the first time since the shooting Monday morning, calling for a federal investigation of Jefferson’s death. A still-unnamed white police officer shot Jefferson, who was black,…
Through the dark clouds brooding over the Amber Guyger trial, sunlight actually broke through in a few wonderful moments, some now internationally publicized, some you may have missed. Let me give you an example of one that may have gotten by you. Right after the sentencing, Dallas Police Chief U…
Two high-ranking and long-serving members of the Dallas Police Department are finalists for the top job at the Frisco Police Department, Frisco announced Wednesday. DPD Executive Assistant Chief David Pughes and DPD Major and acting Deputy Chief Max Geron are joined by Frisco Deputy Chief David Shilson on the short…
The first meeting of Dallas’ new police oversight board fell into chaos Tuesday night as activists stormed the microphone after being denied a public hearing. The board overhaul was approved by the City Council earlier this year after years of debate, resulting in a compromise that created a new office…
Mark Washington tried to make the best of a bad night in downtown Nashville Tuesday night. Confronted by Nashville police in a Shell station at which he’d been arrested multiple times for refusing to leave, Washington decided to try on a new identity. According to WKRN-TV, Washington told police officers…
Following less than two hours of deliberation Wednesday afternoon, a Dallas County jury sentenced former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger to 10 years in prison for the murder of Botham Jean. Guyger killed Jean, a 26-year-old accountant, after she entered his apartment in the Cedars, believing it was her…
Former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger’s trial, the object of local and national media’s fixation for the better part of a week and a half, has moved in fits and starts. Before the trial proper even started, it took attorneys on both sides more than a week to cull…
Friends and family, politicians both foreign and domestic, as well as supporters of every stripe, all donned the color red and converged on the Renaissance Dallas Hotel on what would have been Botham Jean’s 28th birthday. Red was his favorite color. “He lived his life in such a way that…
For months, Dallas has debated the fate of former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger. On Sept. 6, 2018, she shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Jean, believing, she said, that Jean was an intruder in her apartment. Instead, Guyger had entered Jean’s apartment, which sat directly above hers. As of…
Protesters gathered outside the Dallas Police Association building near sunset Friday, holding signs reading “Mata Gotta Go” and “Resign Mata,” calling for the firing of the DPA president. The activists say Mike Mata broke police protocol after one of the department’s former officers, Amber Guyger, shot and killed Botham Jean,…
Saturday at Frank Crowley Courthouse had a vibe easily recognizable to anyone who’s ever worked the weekend shift in an office building. Head to any floor in the building except the seventh, and Dallas’ hub of criminal courts activity was bereft of action. Get off the elevator on the seventh…
The story on Tuesday, the second day of former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial, was one of the mundane and the visceral. Cops and apartment managers talked for hours about procedures, floor plans and door locks, drawing the outline of a picture that’s yet to come fully…
The second day of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial focused on the 911 call Guyger placed after shooting Botham Jean and body camera footage from the Dallas Police Department officers who responded to the scene. First on the stand was the 911 dispatcher who answered the call…
The story of Day 1 of former Dallas Police Department Officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial was one of flash and substance. Those tuning in to the trial hoping they’d get something different, or maybe a little salacious, were treated by the prosecution. Those looking for answers to some of the…
A single phone call made all the difference the night former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean, Assistant Dallas County District Attorney Jason Hermus said Monday during opening statements in Guyger’s murder trial. Before it, Hermus said, Guyger was having a normal commute home from…
For decades, Dallas cops didn’t go on trial. From 1973, when a Travis County jury convicted Dallas Police Department Officer Darrell Cain of murder after Cain shot 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez in the head in the back of a patrol car during an interrogation, to April 2014, when a Dallas County…
So far The Dallas Morning News podcast on the Botham Jean/Amber Guyger murder trial has all the stylish podcast elements — spooky theme music, random sound bites, breathy voice-overs — with the exception of one big one. Suspense. In the best podcasts I have listened to (“Buried,” the disappearance of Carey Mae Parker), you…
Federal officials announced Wednesday that they’ve arrested a Dallas-based man on sex trafficking charges. Tremont Blakemore may have trafficked hundreds of victims, according to the feds, keeping them under his control through violence, intimidation and frequent threats. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s investigations arm began looking into Blakemore in…
The case of Austin Shuffield, the bartender accused of a brutal, caught-on-video assault in Deep Ellum this spring, will move forward without the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. “Due to the bias the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has shown in the prosecution of this case, the defense filed a…
