In some parts of town, you can tell when the calendar needs flipping when the guns start firing; apparently, nothing says “Happy New Year!” like shooting a pistol in the air. And while there haven’t been any serious injuries due to the celebratory pop-pop-pop in recent years, according to Dallas…
It’s always a good idea ’round this time of the year to make a list of accomplishments, if only to figure out what you need to get done in the coming year. So happens, of course, that Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins needs to get re-elected in 2010, and,…
While waiting for Macerich officials to return our calls concerning Valley View Center, where I spent some of this afternoon, there’s this story out of Phoenix worth a look-see, if only as a cautionary tale. Because if the movies have taught us anything, it’s that couples stopped by the police…
Sorry, but one last bit of bookkeeping before I hit the nog: We’ve known for a while when Don Hill and the missus, former City Plan Commissioner D’Angelo Lee and two others found guilty in the federal City Hall corruption trial are being sentenced; we’ve had February 26 circled on…
Another front-page story last week in The Dallas Morning News criticizing the Dallas Police Department’s crime-reporting methods had the paper in a self-congratulatory mood, with the editorial board demanding “an independent external audit or a formal FBI review of Dallas’ crime-reporting procedures” and Steve Blow applauding his colleagues for revealing…
Downtown Dallas was on fire last night — at least, its trash cans were. Six or seven of them, to be more exact. That’s what firefighters say. We saw four for sure — the first one around 9. The trash can at the corner of Griffin Street and Ross Avenue…
No doubt you’ll hear plenty more about the city’s billion-dollar lawsuit between now and the spring or summer of 2010, when the Supreme Court of Texas rules on whether the city is immune from rescue workers’ claims stemming from a 1979 referendum concerning pay raises and two subsequent lawsuits now…
We kicked off yesterday by previewing Dallas’s “billion-dollar” case before the Supreme Court of Texas: City of Dallas v . Kenneth Albert, a 13-year-old consolidated suit involving hundreds of firefighters demanding thousands in back pay. The city says it’s immune from being sued; the attorneys on the other side, of…
On Monday, Tim Rogers posted a lawsuit that several, um, massage parlors — among them, The Passion, Cleopatra Day Spa and 333 Body Works — brought against the city of Dallas in which they claim they had their certificates of occupancy yanked without due process. Tim also posted a piece…
Exactly 30 years ago last January, Dallas voters passed a measure that gave a 15 percent pay raise to police officers, fire fighters and rescue workers; included in the ordinance was a caveat that there would remain in place a “pay differential between the grades in the sworn ranks.” Which…
A couple of hours ago, Rudy Bush posted a lawsuit 13 Dallas Water Utilities employees have filed against the city, in which they allege all manner of racial discrimination. According to the docs, the litigants — who are either African-American, Asian or Hispanic — had, in 2008, taken their complaints…
A few hours before Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to talk health care yesterday, he held a briefing in the Judiciary Committee hearing room to discuss “the human sex trafficking crisis.” Among the invited speakers was Dallas Police Department Sgt. Byron Fassett, who,…
So here’s the crime-stats story Dallas First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans warned the city council about Friday evening. Looks like he had good reason to want to get ahead of Steve Thompson and Tanya Eiserer, who looked at a single week’s worth of police reports — July 1 through…
That’s probably what Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council are wondering this morning, because, on Friday, Dallas First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans sent to council a memo warning them that The Dallas Morning News would “against present an article this upcoming weekend critical of an aspect of…
Business Resources Corp., a new locally based historical documents preservation company formed out of the merger of two others, isn’t happy with the way Dallas County went about hiring a Virgina company earlier this spring — so much so that on Wednesday, it filed suit against the county in Dallas…
Speaking of missives sent from the U.S. Attorney’s Office …A press release just landed in the in-box concerning the tale of one Tommy Eugene Barber, a 32-year-old Dallas man who today pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle to two counts of securities fraud. And what did Barber…
Twenty-nine-year-old Matthew Ruff, a bio-medical engineer, interned last year at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He also pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal child pornography charge, which will result in at least a few years in federal prison, lifetime supervision and up to a $250,000 fine should the court accept his…
After the jump is an e-mail I received this morning from a Friend of Unfair Park, who received it this morning via a neighborhood crime watch mailing list. It concerns a carjacking in the parking lot of the Albertsons at McKinney and Lemmon Avenues. Though the e-mail says the incident…
When last we looked at the city of Dallas’s crime stats on November 13, there was just one number on the rise: homicides, up from 134 at the end of October 2008 to 141 at the end of October ’09. But when Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle presents the latest…
Speaking of local real estate deals …A few days ago a Friend of Unfair Park who’s in the commercial real estate business asked, “Ever heard of Eric Brauss?” Couldn’t say that I had. He then pointed me to Today Realty Advisors’ Web site, which details the dozens of transactions the…
Aside from that unsolicited non sequitur intended to illustrate Americans’ lack of faith in the judicial system, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins’s tête-à-tête with Stephen Colbert last night was notable only for how relatively straight it played. Colbert tried to draw Watkins offside early with a comment about his…
Four of the five defendants convicted last month of bribery and extortion in the City Hall corruption trial gained traction in their arguments regarding two counts as U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn agreed this morning to further consider overturning the jury’s verdicts on counts 18 and 19: conspiracy to commit…
