Let’s set aside for a moment the niceties of due process and innocent-until-proven-guilty and take Dallas police at their word. We’ll take without further cross-examination the claim that they conducted a five-month investigation of Eternal Eden, a regular, all-night rave at Northwest Dallas’ Jaguars strip club, and that undercover officers…
People in other, more normal cities bought each other cool gifts like Beats headphones and men’s Uggs for Christmas. Popular toys and games in the rest of America were Legos, Cards Against Humanity and the Xbox, all fine choices. But in Dallas, for some reason, there appears to have been…
The Case: DeLeon vs. Perry features two sets of plaintiffs fighting for two distinct rights. Cleopatra DeLeon and Nicole Dimetman are already married. The couple seeks to force the state of Texas to recognize their Massachusetts union and grant them the rights afforded to opposite-sex married couples from other states…
Whether it’s a police union rep or an activist who says their neighborhood is terrorized by the police, pretty much the safest opinion either side can have is that all cops should wear body cameras. Activists like the idea of cameras because they argue that the footage will bring more…
The new year will ring in with two major skirmishes in the nation’s culture wars, as the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments in one case challenging Texas’ restrictive new abortion law and another seeking to overturn the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. The…
Anyone foolish enough to expect that his move to Junius Heights would quiet neighborhood gadfly Avi Adelman was sorely mistaken. Lower Greenville’s longtime Barking Dog has merely shifted his territory about a mile to the southwest, which is how he wound up at Ross and Haskell avenues last Monday. Adelman…
Ron Pinkston — president of Dallas’ largest police officers’ union, the Dallas Police Association — is not going to resign. He says so, and Stephen Benavides admits as much. Benavides and the group he often represents, Dallas Communities Organizing for Change, called for Pinkston to quit after he blamed protesters…
Are strippers employees, or just independent contractors working for tips? A lawsuit filed against Dallas’ all-nude Jaguars settled on Wednesday, leaving us no answer, at least in this case. The plaintiffs in the suit, 182 women who worked for the club’s outlets in Texas and Arizona, will divvy up $1.54…
Two days ago in this space, Observer managing editor Patrick Williams (a.k.a. Buzz) rehashed the moments that defined life in Dallas during the past 12 months — Ebola, dick pics and all. Everything Buzz cites is important and true, but the list, like all year-end recaps, suffers from a recency…
Mike Rawlings is going to finish the job he set out to do after his 2011 election whether the nattering nabobs of negativity like it or not. That’s the message set out in the mayor’s end of year address, posted on his office’s Vimeo channel over the brief Christmas respite…
The news just keeps rolling on, and not every story has a neat ending. Sometimes it pays to stop and take a look back to see what’s happened with stories we reported during the year. That time is the day after Christmas, when all the new newsmakers are sneaking in…
It’s that time of year when Buzz gives the real reporters a break and takes a look at the top stories of the past 12 months. This year, we’re changing things up a bit and offering recognition to the many unsung heroes and events that made the year memorable –…
One thing is clear from Dallas attorney Marcos Ronquillo’s first mayoral campaign press release: He’s looking to make his May 2015 contest with incumbent Mike Rawlings a single-issue showdown, a third referendum on the Trinity toll road. “The proposed Trinity River toll road project has been controversial from day one,”…
Three friends were riding their bikes along Turtle Creek after a night out early Saturday when, they say, a French couple in a black Volkswagen pulled up behind them and started honking. While that sounds like typical Turtle Creek driver behavior (minus the French accent), they say the motorist then…
Late Monday night, Rolando McClain’s house went up in flames. The $1.5 million, 7,500 square foot home located in a tony neighborhood on Lake Tuscaloosa in Alabama was unoccupied, but was destroyed by the fire. Alabama officials initially said that any fire involving a vacant, expensive home is suspicious. Now,…
Shane Garner’s alleged scam was simple: Set up a reputable-sounding company, i.e. the Credit Alliance Group. Flood the Internet with promises that he can help hard-working Americans escape from crushing debt. Convince the people who respond that they need to pay the company up front so it can negotiate down…
Ron Pinkston and the Dallas Police Association are on high alert following the killing of two New York Police Department officers in Brooklyn on Saturday. Over the weekend, the association’s Twitter account quickly joined what’s been a frenzied attack by conservative media and law enforcement officials on New York City…
Christina Tutt was in the kitchen preparing dinner when her husband arrived home from the store and told her the garage was on fire. In an eye-blink, she gathered the four children and hustled them outside where they stood in the cool November evening watching as the flames jumped from…
Sunday morning, Dallas police officer David Kattner was arrested for allegedly using his authority to coerce a woman into having sex with him while he was in uniform. An arrest affidavit obtained by The Dallas Morning News says Kattner called a woman and told her to follow him to the…
In July, all of the TRUTH-haters in the media reported that Deion Sanders’ disaster of charter school was being “shut down.” But we were wrong. Prime Prep is still open and participating in sports. Not only that, Prime Prep has proudly become the only school in the country to equip…
It’s illegal for payday lenders to pursue criminal charges against borrowers who can’t repay their loans, debtor’s prison being out of fashion nowadays. Under rules passed by the Texas Legislature in 2011, they can’t even threaten to file criminal charges. And yet, according to a report released last week by…
This photo, taken from the passenger seat on my way home to Oak Cliff Saturday night, raises a number of questions. Chief among them: How exactly did the car get into the bike lane on the Jefferson Viaduct? There’s no auto-accessible entrance on the downtown side, and the spaces between…
