Articles about Crime
Could Yesterday’s DART Arapaho Center Station Shooting Have Been Prevented by More Cops?
News reports, like the one from WFAA above, say that the Transportation Security Administration and Dallas Police are offering to help DART Police secure their stations, following yesterday’s shooting, the latest in what seems like a string of violent public transit incidents. This would involve having more officers posted on DART trains and at DART stations.
Would that have made a difference for Eric Johnson, who lost his life when a DART police officer exchanged gunfire with a man who’d been turned away from riding a bus for trying to board with an expired pass?
When we’re faced with tragedies like this, it’s natural that we want to do something to prevent such a senseless act from occurring again. But isn’t the plain fact that we live in a big city, with a lot of other people, some of whom are prone from time to time to commit awful acts?
Things like this are going to happen. After all, there was already an officer on the scene.
And, as WFAA reports, one of yesterday’s victims claims he was struck by a bullet fired by the officer, not the suspect.
Media Horde Descends Upon Arapaho Center Station
That is, if a “media horde” can be defined as two TV crews, a Morning News reporter, a Morning News photographer, and me. I was the only one not asking commuters how they felt about yesterday’s deadly shooting. I was just trying to commute, while wondering why someone would open fire on a cop rather than spend less than $5 on a day pass.
Randy Travis Arrested For Being Drunk at Church
Randy Travis' mug
Denton County Sheriff’s Department arrested country singer Randy Travis at 1:30 a.m. today and released him later in the morning.
The Denton Record Chronicle reports that Travis was found in his car intoxicated with an open bottle of wine outside First Baptist Church of Sanger. He owns a ranch not too far away in Tioga.
The Morning News version notes Travis’ recent problems, how he had to walk offstage during a performance last year. But they make no mention of his having stolen his dentist’s wife.
Leading Off (2/6/12)
DART Light Rail Ridership High, But Bus Numbers Falter: Last year was the busiest year ever for Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail, but ridership on bus lines as well as the oldest light rail lines decreased by a combined 5 million trips (paywall). Why the drop? Officials say it is due to 1) DART bus passengers switching to new light rail service, and 2) the reduction in the frequency of blue and red line trains during rush hour. Both claims I believe, point again to how simple public transit really is. People will take public transit if it is fast and convenient. That’s why DART’s bus system needs an overhaul.
Horse Thieves Hit Camp For Disabled Kids: In the latest installment of crooks who are worse than crooks, two horses have been stolen form Camp El Har, a camp that offers therapy for kids with various disabilities, like autism. Now owners of two other horses on loan to the camp have removed their animals out of fear of further thefts, which has forced the camp to postpone its classes indefinitely.
Will ‘Black Atheist’ Billboard Ruffle Feathers? A group called African Americans for Humanism and the DFW Coalition of Reason will unveil a billboard today which voices support for atheists during African American history month. But while the billboard has already prompted some push-back from South Oak Cliff pastors, pre-event controversy also led to an unexpected act of community service: members of the DFW Coalition of Reason turned out at Pastor Kyev Tatum’s church garden Sunday to help harvest their greens, which will be donated to local food banks. Tatum reconciled the art of charity like this: “the devil might have picked it, but the good lord sent it.”
How Plano Kicked Its Heroin Habit, How Dallas’ Thomas Jefferson High School Is Kicking Its Own
The Santa Clarita Valley Signal ran this illustration, which I doubt the Plano Chamber of Commerce will want to borrow for its promotional materials.
Santa Clarita, California, has in recent years been having trouble with heroin use among its young people. So the community’s newspaper, the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, turned to leaders in Plano to seek advice on how they beat their own well-documented teen heroin epidemic in the 1990s.
Plano Police Chief Gregory A. Rushin says it’s a never-ending fight:
“We haven’t scaled back at all,” Rushin said, adding every officer brought in and assigned to fight heroin remains committed to that fight 15 years later.
“We added numbers to that (heroin) unit, and we have not reduced any of those numbers,” he said.
“In this battle, we’ve seen no end in sight.”
Plano’s efforts were known as the awesomely named “Operation Rockfest,” because (one assumes) when you’re trying to connect with the kids to get them to stop doing illegal drugs you’ve got to talk to them on their level and some cops had heard that the rock music was popular with the kids.
Leading Off (1/23/11)
Why Did Police Officer Not Turn on Lights When Speeding? The police officer who struck and killed Beverly Kirk early Sunday morning was speeding, but the cruiser’s lights or sirens were not on. They should have been, because when another officer killed a 10-year-old boy in 2008 under similar circumstances, then-Chief David Kunkle made it policy that officers must turn on their lights and sirens when they are breaking traffic laws.
Dallas Economy Underperforms State Average: This story about the Dallas Fed’s report on the Texas economy is behind the paywall, but this scribd.com link should get you to the meat. The takeaway, Houston boasts the state’s strongest economy, thanks to a healthy energy market, while DFW (Dallas/ Fort Worth-Arlington) has underperformed the state average over the past five years.
Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Second Best: That’s right, according to some guy at CNBC, the Super Bowl-bound Patriots have better cheerleaders than the team that introduced the sideline gimmick. What’s wrong with our ladies? Well, not allowing the cheerleaders to have their own social media accounts doesn’t help.
Why Twitter Is Awesome: The Little Elm Riots Edition
My granny used to say that nothing good happens after 10 p.m. Clearly, she may have a point, for at 10:01 PM, I see this from @DFWScanner, a Twitter account I follow for my own amusement, because it is much quieter than an actual scanner (although I have an iPhone App that gets me just about every scanner frequency, too):
Riot – Little Elm PD working a riot at McDonald’s, 2670 FM 423. Reports of 100+ people fighting in the dining room of the restaurant.
It was apparently calmed not long after. I have a call in to the Little Elm police to see what exactly started such a large fight, but in the meantime – any guesses?
Pro-Tip of the Day: Stopping a Beer Thief
When fighting off a beer thief hellbent on absconding with the frosty libations your employer has available for purchase, go for the glass eye.
Burglar Allegedly Calls Victim’s Girlfriend to Let Her Know What He’s Stealing
God bless Dentonites. From a burglary report in the Record-Chronicle:
The victim’s girlfriend told police she’d received a call Saturday night from the suspect, who said he was inside the apartment and wanted to know where the victim kept his cash, according to the police report. The suspect then listed off the items he and an accomplice were taking, including cash, a laptop computer, knives and an iPod, according to the woman’s account to police.
She said the accomplice sent her photographs of the stolen items and of damages they caused to the apartment, but she could not produce the images to the officer because she deleted them, according to the police report.
The suspect says the victim is “always making things up.”
Saddest Headline of the Day
NBC Channel 5 brings us this headline: “3 Miniature Horses Fatally Stabbed in Dallas.” It’s the saddest, most disturbing headline of the day, possibly the week, maybe even the year (but we’re just 12 days into the new year, so it’s probably too early to call that). Anyway, the poor things were found in their owners’ yard. The family only had the horses for a couple of months. And that story makes me sad.
Seth Winder Creates a Conundrum for the Criminal Justice System
Brantley Hargrove brings us the sordid story of Seth Winder, the man accused of brutally murdering and dismembering his lover, Richard Hernandez, in 2008. The case received plenty of national attention. First, detectives working the case appeared on the A&E show The First 48. Then Winder’s stepmother wrote a book about him “slipping into madness.” But Winder’s attorney, knowing how rarely an insanity defense works, decided to go to trial. Hargrove was there, and points out that the justice system is now faced with a Catch 22 of sorts.
“Winder is a paranoid schizophrenic, and without antipsychotic medication he is too insane to be prosecuted. But with medication he becomes someone else entirely, capable even of calm rationality. He would have to be induced into a state of synthetic sanity before he could stand trial for a crime that he allegedly committed while unmedicated.”
If you haven’t seen the cover of this week’s Observer, it’s pretty bizarre. But the story is an interesting read.
Some of Biggest Crimes in Texas History, Illustrated
A few months ago, I was reading through a random crime story in a magazine when something distracted me. The courtroom illustration next to the story was pretty incredible. Until that moment, I had never really thought about courtroom illustrations. It occurred to me: courtroom illustrations are strange. In an age of ubiquitous cellphone cameras, hand-painted renditions of the characters in a court room seem like remnants from another time. I wondered if there was anyone still doing it. That’s when I learned about Gary Myrick, from Fort Worth, who has been illustrating our criminal justice system for more than 35 years. I wrote to him, hoping I might be able to do a story about his impressive career. Turns out, someone else had the same idea. That someone was Texas Monthly’s John Spong.
Here is Spong’s story about Myrick along with several illustrations from Myrick’s collection, including pictures of Cullen Davis, Henry Lee Lucas, Pamela Fielder (this one includes Myrick’s rendering of a bullwhip introduced into evidence), Darlie Routier, Dena Schossler, and Charles Harrelson (father of Woody Harrelson, convicted in 1982 of killing a Federal judge).
Are Gangs of Thugs Taking Over NorthPark Center?
No. Absolutely not.
But there have been some scary emails circulated claiming something like that, and one about a violent incident at the mall last week appears to have some bit of truth to it. Park Cities People has more details.
Jay Gray Was Officially Drizzunk
We told you about Jay Gray’s legal woes awhile back. The former NBC Channel 5 reporter got nabbed for DUI after leaving the house of Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer. The lab results show his BAC was .182%. Deadspin has more.
Jakadrien Turner, Despite Exciting Deportation to Colombia, is Just Another Bored Teenager
The Atlantic Wire pored over the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Jakadrien Turner, the Dallas teenager who was mistakenly deported to Colombia last April after she gave a false identity to officers in Houston. The takeaway?
She never discussed the deportation. Though, she often alluded to missing home and a “weird situation.”
But like many 15-year-olds, Turner spent a lot of time complaining of boredom. As far back as May 26th and as recently as September 28, Turner updated her Facebook status about the monotony of her Colombian life. For example, September 28: “Bored AS F***.” September 26: “bout to hit up the park bored man….” And on Twitter we see the same sentiment.
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