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.

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.

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.”

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.

N.B: The current issue of D Magazine also has an article worth reading about the ways in which Dallas ISD’s Thomas Jefferson High School has been combatting the widespread use of “cheese” heroin. Along with employing stricter enforcement of the law, they recruited a “street team” of students who helped administrators understand the scope of the problem. Unfortunately they may have blown the whole enterprise by not dubbing the group “The Rock Squad.”

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.

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?

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.”