Category: Tarrant County

Last fortnight’s news – for the two weeks ending 2025 07 20

Here’s a couple of weeks’ worth of interesting items from the news here in North Texas. No musical accompaniment this time, though we did spend a lot of time today listening to the late, lamented Asylum Street Spankers.

From Dallas:

From Fort Worth:

From Dallas County:

From Tarrant County:

From the suburban cities and towns:

From the suburban counties:

From throughout the North Texas region:

Local editorials and op-eds:

And miscellaneous news (including museums and zoos):

Last week’s news – week ending 2025 07 06

Mondays are the day I usually set aside to write these posts, but I was distracted yesterday by the news out of Kerrville. This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Tangerine Dream.

News from Dallas:

News from Fort Worth:

News from Dallas County:

  • KERA: Family of man who died of water intoxication in Dallas County jail files civil rights lawsuit. Spencer Swearnger died in 2023 after drinking an excess of water from his cell toilet. He had mental health problems and might have been suicidal. But, also, his was the third water intoxication death at the jail since 2020. Just because the Dallas County Jail isn’t as awful as the Tarrant County Jail doesn’t mean it’s good.
  • DMN: People are being held in Dallas County jail weeks beyond sentences amid systemic failures. This is a consequence of the problems with the county’s case management system, which was installed back in 2023. I appreciate that the Sherriff can’t release people without the proper paperwork, but the jail either needs to get on the same system as the court or to get an API connected so they can get orders in a timely fashion. This is not acceptable and I’m unhappy that my tax dollars are paying both to keep people in jail beyond their time and for the settlements that are coming because former inmates are quite properly suing over being held in the jail too long.
  • KERA: State commission sanctions Dallas judge Amber Givens. She was sanctioned for allowing her coordinator to impersonate her back in 2019 and admonished over actions she took in cases she’d been recused from, which gets into a rabbit hole about local court scheduling and overloaded dockets. This is not the first time I’ve seen Givens’ name attached to headlines about problems in her court. She’s probably due to be primaried.

News from Tarrant County:

News from the suburbs:

News from the suburban counties:

In other regional news:

Some editorials in local outlets:

Miscellaneous news:

Last week’s news – week ending 2025 05 25

Let’s jump in with some news from Dallas …

… and then on to Fort Worth …

… and then to Dallas and Tarrant Counties …

… and the suburbs and suburban counties

… and the region at large …

… and other interesting things I read about the area or the state.

Last week’s news – week ending 2025 05 18

This is my first shot at something I’ve wanted to do for a while: a weekly catch-up on interesting local news. I’ve done this kind of thing for a friend for several years now, but what interests his readers isn’t always what I think would interest someone from Dallas or Fort Worth. Bear with me as I get my hands around what local news looks like to local readers.

Dallas news:

Fort Worth news:

Dallas County news:

Tarrant County news:

News from the suburbs and suburban counties:

Regional news (including some stories from the Lege):

May 3 Election guides – 2025 05 03

On Election Day, a few more stories. If you didn’t vote early, please get out and vote!

Let’s start with couple of additional relevant voter guides for you: The Dallas Free Press’ Dallas Voter Guide and The Book-Loving Texan’s Guide to the May 2025 School Board Elections, which was being updated with new districts this week.

In other election news:

May 3 election guides – 2025 04 22

Today is the first day of early voting for the May 3 elections and our local media sources have some campaign guides and recommendations for you.

As always, I recommend you start by looking at Vote 411, by those notorious pinko commies, the League of Women Voters. It will tell you what’s on the ballot. I only have two elections: Dallas City Council and Richardson ISD trustee. Some folks will have a lot more.

The big voter guides:

Some general news about May’s elections:

However you’re going to vote, get out there and do it. Election Day is May 3 if you can’t get out there early.

The week in Metroplex news – 2025 04 04

Some area news that happened over the last week or so:

Judge Clifford Davis

This month I learned about Judge Clifford Davis, one of the heroes of the Civil Rights era who helped desegregate Fort Worth area schools. His death earlier this month at the ripe old age of 100 caps a well-lived life. He litigated the cases that desegregated Mansfield and Fort Worth ISDs; he was the first elected Black judge in Tarrant County (in 1983); he established the first drug diversion court in Tarrant County. Fort Worth ISD named a school in his honor. I wish I’d learned more about Black Texans like him when I was in high school in the early 1980s.

Across the stories I read about Judge Davis, Black figures in Fort Worth and Tarrant County spoke of his mentorship, his fairness, and his commitment to justice. The Texas Monthly obituary gave me a great sense of the man and the tribute by Tarrant County Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. gave me a sense of the good his mentorship did for others who followed in his footsteps. May Judge Davis rest in power, especially in this time where we have to fight to hold the gains he made.

Sources:

Jailhouse blues

Calling the Tarrant County Jail a problem spot is something of an understatement. Prisoners die there at a rate of about one a month; almost 70 have died in total since the current Sheriff, Bill Waybourn, assumed his position in 2017. He was most recently reelected in November, which surprised me a little given how much coverage and how many protests there had been over all the deaths in the jail. That said, nothing had gone wrong so far in 2018 until the beginning of February. Now we have two deaths.

The first, during the first week of February, died by suicide. He’d been screened following some questions during his intake but was cleared by the county’s mental health group. He was found and hospitalized and died a couple of days later. The second one was last week, where an inmate was sent to the hospital and died three days later. No cause of death has been released in her case.

Tarrant County is also still dealing with the fallout from deaths in 2024 and preceding years. The most notorious of the cases from last year was the death of Anthony Johnson, Jr., a former Marine who died by homicide in May. Johnson was known to be bipolar and to have schizophrenia, but ended up asphyxiated during a fight with jailers. His family is now suing Tarrant County and 15 of the jailers involved, though last week the judge in the federal court dismissed Tarrant County from the suit on grounds that the jail’s procedures did not cause Johnson’s death. The family has asked to amend their suit with an eye to keeping Tarrant County on the hook. One of the issues is unreleased footage of Johnson’s death, which the court has not seen.

Since 2022, Tarrant County has paid $4.3 million to end jail lawsuits. Sheriff Waybourn claims that most of the people who die in custody die of natural causes.

If you read all the sources, notice the way the Star-Telegram covers these deaths as opposed to the way that KERA and the DMN cover them. Some of the difference is that the DMN isn’t covering hometown power brokers the way the Star-Telegram has to. The rest of it is editorial and stylistic.