Amid K2 Crisis, Dallas Might Regulate Head Shops Like Strip Clubs

The problem with K2 downtown, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Monday, might be more than the drag on resources it causes for Dallas police and firefighters or the health threat it poses to the synthetic drug’s often homeless users. The drug also could be responsible for an increase in…

Details Emerge in Johnny Manziel Domestic Violence Incident

Late last week, the Dallas Police Department received a report from Fort Worth Police about a sustained domestic assault alleged committed by Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel across DFW on January 29 and 30. Colleen Crowley, Manziel’s ex-girlfriend, had filed a request for a protective order from Manziel in Tarrant…

Dallas Police Chief David Brown Loses a Right-Hand Man

Charles Cato, long thought to be Dallas’ police-chief-in-waiting, is leaving the Dallas Police Department. The long-serving first assistant chief has been named the chief of Mesquite’s police, and will start March 7. During his time with the department, Cato served as the interim Dallas ISD police chief in 2006, was…

Why the Crackdown on K2 Among Downtown’s Homeless Won’t Work

Since the beginning of December, Dallas Fire and Rescue has received more than 200 calls to deal with people who are, apparently, on one of the many substances colloquially known as K2. In media reports, the calls are often said to be addressing overdoses, but the behavior described often also…

Dallas’ West End Rail Stop Is Crime Central Station

Early Saturday afternoon, nine days after he and a friend allegedly carjacked 37-year-old Sarah Hoff in her downtown Dallas parking garage before taking her car and credit card to a Pleasant Grove McDonald’s, DART police found 17-year-old Ira Booker at a downtown train station. According to police, Booker initially tried…

Screw Tickets. Dallas Is Taking Aggressive Panhandlers Straight to Jail.

Darryl Davis is something of a celebrity in downtown Dallas. He’s been roaming the streets for years, hounding passersby for money with an intensity and tenacity that other neighborhood panhandlers can’t or won’t muster. In the past nine months, he’s been ticketed five times for panhandling, according to municipal court…

On the Record with Dallas Chief of Police David Brown

Dallas Police Chief David Brown isn’t afraid of media interviews. Or if he is, he does a great job hiding it. Maybe he sees them as a challenge — he exhibits all the signs of a person who is energized by struggle. Case in point: As the interview goes on, he…

Ethan Couch Back in Texas, Still a Juvenile for Now

Ethan Couch’s kinda strong, kinda strange trip to Mexico is over. After dropping his appeals against deportation earlier this week, the 18-year-old returned to Tarrant County Thursday. He will now face the transfer of his 10-year juvenile probation sentence — handed out after he killed four in a 2013 drunk-driving…

Affluenza-Riddled Teen Ethan Couch Is Coming Home

Ethan Couch is expected to end his long Mexican vacation this week. The 18-year-old killer drunk driver has been south of the border since the beginning of December, following a viral video of Couch playing beer pong being posted to Twitter and the teen’s subsequent missing a probation appointment. His…

Downtown Dallas: Panhandling, Robberies and K2, Oh My!

Judging from the tenor of the Downtown Dallas Resident Council’s Facebook page this week, one might think Dallas’ Central Business District had turned into some sort of urban hellscape. “I just had some STUPID HOMELESS ASS try and rob me while I was parking my truck in West End!!!!!! I’m…

Dallas’ Homeless React to Murder of One of their Own

It barely made a blip on the local news: a homeless man found dead on Sunday morning of what Dallas police described cryptically only as “homicidal violence.” The news made a bigger splash in Tent City, the sprawling homeless encampment under Interstate 45 — now more than 200 tents strong —…

The Weapons of the Bandidos Biker Gang

A trio of national leaders of the Bandidos motorcycle gang have been arrested on federal racketeering and drug charges related to a war the group waged against the rival Cossacks club, according to federal authorities. That war erupted publicly during the now-infamous shootout between members, and police, in Waco in…

Tonya Couch Back in DFW

Tonya Couch, the mother of affluenza-afflicted teen Ethan Couch, is back in Tarrant County after taking a probation-dodging trip to Mexico with her son. She and Ethan were arrested in Puerto Vallarta in late December. They’d been gone for almost a month, having ditched North Texas following discovery of a…

Feds Arrest Bandidos Honchos for Biker War

John Portillo, Jeffrey Pike and Justin Forster, all national leaders of the Bandidos motorcycle gang have been arrested on federal racketeering and drug charges related to a Portillo-ordered war the group waged against the rival Cossacks, according to federal authorities. Beginning in 2013, the Bandidos, under the leadership of Portillo,…

Couch Family New Year’s Resolutions

Amidst all the hand-wringing, disgust and anger, one of the most striking things about the case of Ethan Couch — the kid whose family was so affluent and free of boundaries, his lawyers claimed, that he didn’t know the consequences of his actions — is how undignified the family acted…