At the Dallas County jail, a local company’s attempt last year to end in-person visitations and replace them all with video chats was quickly foiled by local activists and politicians. But in Denton, the same plan recently went off without a hitch. Denton County and the video company Securus are…
Texas might be about to make it a lot easier to graduate from its public high schools, but three Dallas ISD schools have been ranked among the 15 most challenging in the country by The Washington Post. See also: Graduating from Texas High Schools Is about to Get a Lot…
Greg Hardy, pass rusher and asshole extraordinaire, will miss the first 10 games of the NFL season. The former Carolina Panthers defensive end was signed by the Cowboys in March after a 2014 season that saw him miss 15 games. Hardy was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list — read:…
Two Colombian nationals are sitting in Collin County Detention Center after being arrested for multiple home invasion robberies that allegedly targeted individuals of Asian descent. Pier Alexander Pelaez, 44, was arrested Friday in Dallas. Edwin Riascos Romero, 32, was arrested Tuesday in Plano. Plano police say they starting receiving reports…
In 2013, Texas lawmakers made it a lot easier for high school seniors to graduate. This year, the legislature is set to do it again. Before the 2013 changes, seniors would have had to pass 15 end-of-course exams to graduate. That was too much, the House and Senate decided, so…
The 2013 earthquake swarm that centered around the town of Azle in Tarrant County was likely the result of natural gas drilling and wastewater injection, according to a report published Tuesday in the Nature Communications journal. According to Matthew Hornbach, an SMU associate professor of geophysics and lead author of…
Sixty-three percent of Dallas residents who’ve made up their mind about whether or not a toll road should be built between the Trinity River levees oppose the project, according to extensive polling done by The Dallas Morning News between April 10 and April 17. Among registered voters who’ve made up…
The 9-foot-tall brick wall that runs along the southern boundary of the Highlands of McKamy subdivision in Far North Dallas offers many benefits to residents of Rocky Top Circle. It shields their homes from traffic along McCallum Road to the south, keeps out critters that prowl the unused Cotton Belt…
Put down the spoon. Blue Bell has ordered all of its products taken off Texas stores shelves after finding even more listeria in a half-gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough at its flagship Brenham facility. The full recall comes after Blue Bell issued the first partial recall in the company’s…
On February 9, a dog was taken to the animal emergency room in Denton County. The dog had been “injured,” according minutes from the Denton County Commissioners Court, “while deputies of the Denton County Sheriff’s Office performed their patrol duties.”…
A dramatic scene unfolded on the I-30 service road in Mesquite early Sunday morning as a Mesquite Police dash cam captured two officers hauling an apparently unconscious man from a burning SUV. As the police car approaches the wrecked vehicle, you can hear a bystander saying that the man inside…
Soso Jamabo is a funny kid. His viral stunt, the one where the 28th-ranked football recruit in the country told WFAA that he’d narrowed his decision about where to play running back to ITT Tech and the University of Phoenix, showed a self-awareness that was refreshing in the absurd recruiting…
Texas’ unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since July 2007, according to the state. Only 4.2 percent of Texans who were active participants in the workforce in March did not have jobs, down from 4.3 percent in February. March’s state jobs report, issued Friday, was not all good news,…
So much for local control. As was inevitable following the Denton ballot initiative that banned fracking in the city’s limits, the Texas House of Representatives moved Friday to severely restrict the limits municipalities can place on hydraulic fracturing within their borders. “Municipal regulations have begun to erode the state’s pre-eminent…
Despite what you may think about Mesquite, having a ton — OK, 1,900 pounds — of meth in one’s house in that fair suburb is pretty sure to convince law enforcement that the drugs aren’t simply for personal use. Jose Farias Lopez, 24, found that out the hard way Friday,…
A convicted sex offender wanted by police after escaping his halfway house apparently spent a few of his precious hours of freedom in the saddest way imaginable, holed up at a Winstar Casino in Oklahoma. Charles Raymond Sprague left his halfway house shortly after 5 a.m. Wednesday after cutting off…
Sometime after 3 a.m. on February 5, at the Flats at Five Mile Creek apartments, a tow truck driver left his truck idling and walked away. He was looking for parking violations, police said. When the driver returned to his truck, a 27-year-old probation officer named Lance Lemons was sitting…
Unless something weird happens, the Texas House of Representatives is going to pass open carry today. They’ll join the state Senate in approving hip or shoulder-holstered handguns for anyone with a concealed handgun license, sending a bill to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk that he’s already promised he’ll sign. Kory Watkins,…
The Trinity River toll road, that high-speed, six- to 10-lane highway between the levees that even Mayor Mike Rawlings’ appointed “Dream Team” of urban planners said was a truly bad idea, is not dead. It’s just looking a little peaked after a long, crowded City Council meeting where toll road…
Back in February the Austin American-Statesman published a great investigation on so-called Brady lists. These are records kept by prosecutors identifying local police officers with credibility issues that are sometimes so severe that they the DA’s office will no longer accept cases from them or allow them to testify in…
At this late date, exactly where the idea for the Trinity toll road sprang from, and how it metastasized from a pleasant country lane into a beauty-killing concrete monstrosity, is a moot point. The project long ago developed its own queer logic and momentum and became, in a way, untethered…
No detention center has bigger plans for illegal immigrants than the South Texas Family Center in Dilley. The center is run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America and is under expansion. By May 2015, the facility will be able to hold 2,400 people. “If this expansion proceeds, Dilley will…
