Maybe North Texas has already sprawled too far. Tuesday morning, Frisco police issued their latest alert about a coyote attack, continuing a wave that first struck the city last year. This time, cops got a call at about 7 a.m. that a jogger had been attacked about 20 minutes earlier…
No matter who one asks, be it members of the Dallas City Council, Dallas Police Department brass or Dallas’ police unions, all involved agree that DPD has to do a better job of retaining and recruiting police officers. For the department to increase the ranks to 3,700 or 3,800 officers…
Dallas Police Department officers are looking for a teenager they believe shot and killed an former Highland Park High School student during an apparent drug deal gone wrong. According to a description from witnesses who accompanied the victim, Joseph Pintucci, to the garage, the 18-year-old’s shooter is Latino, between 18…
Citizens Matter. Yeah, right. We all know what that means. Citizens Matter is what the group opposed to reforming the Dallas Citizens Police Review Board is calling itself. So the name is contrapuntal to Black Lives Matter. Citizens Matter means White Lives Matter. And, look, far be it from me…
The siren song of early-morning Whataburger appears to have been a bit too much for former Cowboys running back Darren McFadden, according to the McKinney Police Department. Employees at the Whataburger on West University Drive in McKinney called police shortly after midnight early Monday to report a man sleeping in…
A 15-year-old male is under lock and key in a Dallas juvenile detention center charged with the rapes of five women and the murder of one, awaiting a court hearing at which a judge may do what no one else has been able in 15 years — turn the kid…
Steven Mark Chaney is innocent, Texas’ highest criminal court ruled Wednesday, ending a three-decades-long ordeal for the Dallas man. Chaney, the court said, did not kill John and Sally Sweek, a Dallas couple found stabbed to death in their apartment in 1987. Prosecutors, who told jurors at Chaney’s 1987 trial…
“What is your first memory of racism? How did it affect you?” “What most frustrates you about current race relations in America?” “Do you think your race changes the intensity of your reaction to Botham Jean’s shooting than for a person of a different race? If so, how?” These questions…
University of Texas at Dallas senior Jacob Anderson has been banned from the school’s campus, university President Richard Benson announced late Wednesday afternoon. Earlier this week, Anderson agreed to a controversial plea deal in McLennan County following allegations that he raped a fellow student while president of a Baylor University fraternity…
As the Dallas Police Department continues to fight high attrition rates and low staffing levels, department officials said Monday they want to get rid of one of DPD’s most onerous requirements for new recruits. Assuming the Dallas City Council signs off on the change, the department will take on recruits…
Dallas confronts an enormous moral and psychological challenge in the case of former Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger, charged with murder in the shooting death of Botham Jean, a young accountant killed Sept. 6 in his own apartment. This is one we have to get right, and it won’t be…
A Dallas County Grand Jury indicted former Dallas Police Department Officer Amber Guyger on murder charges related to her shooting and killing her neighbor, Botham Jean, in early September. Guyger shot Jean in his apartment, believing he was a burglar. Guyger entered Jean’s apartment on Sept. 6 after completing her…
A 32-year-old Dallas Police Department senior corporal has been arrested on revenge porn charges, DPD announced in a brief statement Thursday. Tarrant County authorities have charged Alexander Cleland with Unlawful Disclosure or Promotion of Intimate Visual Material, a Class A misdemeanor. Cleland turned himself in to Tarrant County officials in Keller…
After more than a year of makeshift enforcement for crimes like gambling and prostitution, the Dallas Police Department is finally set to roll out its reconstituted vice unit later this week, Assistant Chief Paul Stokes said Monday. Twenty-one officers will staff the new unit, three-quarters of the number that worked…
We have one of those doorbells you can see out of. You know what I mean. With a TV camera in it? You can talk to people through your doorbell. We were early adopters. When we first got our two-way doorbell, they were still fairly uncommon. We could still get…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton got a big lift in his fight against securities fraud allegations Wednesday, as Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that special prosecutors’ compensation in the case exceeded legal limits. Last year, a Collin County court agreed to pay almost $200,000 in legal fees to the three…
Call it wild speculation, but I think we’ve just been struggling as a community to figure out the wildly troubling case of Amber Guyger and Botham Jean, a terrible event in which a white Dallas cop shot and killed an innocent black man in his own apartment last Sept. 6…
A little more than two months after activists shut down a Dallas City Council meeting while calling for police reform following an officer’s killing an unarmed man in his own apartment, the city has plans for a toughened up Citizens Review Board for the police department. According to a memo…
North Richland Hills, The Colony, Wichita Falls and Archer City all have been recent targets of flyers by Patriot Front, a Texas-based white supremacist group. Some of the flyers say, “Keep America American” and encourage people to report “any and all illegal aliens,” calling them criminals. Some are as inconspicuous…
Irving Police Chief Jeff Spivey paid a visit to the Islamic Center of Irving recently to talk about the legality of reporting child sexual abuse after allegations of child molestation rocked the North Texas Muslim community last week. Spivey said he went to the Irving Mosque to discuss the duty…
Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall fired police Maj. LaToya Porter on Thursday afternoon following a yearlong investigation into misconduct by Porter related to the department’s sergeant’s exam. Porter helped the department create the exam and operated a test-preparation company that charged fees to train officers hoping to take the…
The Florida man alleged to have sent pipe bombs to President Donald Trump’s political opponents and critics around the country threatened U.S. Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke earlier this year, his campaign confirmed to the Observer on Wednesday afternoon. “We received Facebook messages from [Cesar] Sayoc threatening Beto in April,” O’Rourke…
