Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category

The Dallas County district attorney’s office use of preserved DNA evidence to help free innocent people will be the subject of a TV documentary.

Dallas County commissioners have approved a request from District Attorney Craig Watkins to allow filming, in his offices, for the Discovery Channel program.

The contract, approved Tuesday, will be with a company based in England — Touch Productions Ltd.

Watkins established the conviction integrity unit so prosecutors, aided by law students, can examine hundreds of old cases where convicted criminals have requested DNA testing.

Details were not immediately available on when the planned two-hour program will air.

This was posted on FoxNews:

Illegal immigrants are returning home to Mexico in numbers not seen for decades — and the Mexican government may have to deal with a crush on its social services and lower wages once the immigrants arrive.

The Mexican Consulate’s office in Dallas is seeing increasing numbers of Mexican nationals requesting paperwork to go home for good, especially parents who want to know what documentation they’ll need to enroll their children in Mexican schools.

“Those numbers have increased percentage-wise tremendously,” said Enrique Hubbard, the Mexican consul general in Dallas. “In fact, it’s almost 100 percent more this year than it was the previous two years.”

The illegal immigrant population in the U.S. has dropped 11 percent since August of last year, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. Its research shows 1.3 million illegal immigrants have returned to their home countries.

Some say illegal immigrants are leaving because a soft economy has led to fewer jobs, causing many laborers to seek work elsewhere.

Others argue that a tough stance on immigration through law enforcement has spread fear throughout the illegal population.

“There’s no question there’s a variety of suggestions that people are in fact returning,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “Remittances, which is the money immigrants send home to Mexico, have gone down dramatically over the past year. Again, probably part the economy, but also part enforcement, leading to fewer people being here.”

Advocates for immigrants are disturbed by the trend. Albert Ruiz, an organizer for the League of United Latin American Citizens, agrees that more undocumented immigrants are going home — but says families are being torn apart in the process.

If a father is deported, Ruiz says, his family members in America are forced either to fend for themselves or follow him to a country where they’ve never even lived.

“So the mother is saying we should return home with the breadwinner of the family to Mexico, and the children are saying, I don’t want to leave, I’m a U.S. citizen, I don’t know that country,” said Ruiz.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon plans to help returning nationals by providing food, medical care and temporary shelter if needed. But reports are already out in Mexico that the large number of illegal immigrants returning home could drive down wages and put pressure on social services — the same concerns many Americans have with illegals living and working in the U.S.

Today Gov. Rick Perry ordered a new “Blue Alert” system to help find and arrest suspects when a law enforcement officer is killed or seriously injured in the line of duty.

Similar to Amber Alerts for cases of child abduction and Silver Alerts used for missing senior citizens, Blue Alerts will use Texas Department of Transportation highway message signs to display information such as a suspects vehicle description or license plate number.

The Blue Alert system will also coordinate with the Department of Public Safety and Perry’s Division of Emergency Management to get the information to television and radio stations for broadcast.

The program “will be a powerful tool that leverages the eyes and ears of many toward the apprehension of criminals who threaten our protectors,” Perry said.

The program would use several criteria to determine if a Blue Alert is warranted:

Talk radio host Russ Martin went back on the air Monday and is expected to stay on the radio for the foreseeable future, according to David Henry, the general manager of KLLI-FM (105.3).

Martin was arrested July 18 on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with a July 14 altercation involving a 27-year-old woman at his Southlake home.

The woman, whose name has not been released, says she was engaged to Martin. She told police that he became enraged after phoning home and learning she had failed to follow up with an IRS agent about a package delivery.

Martin and his attorney have declined to comment on the substance of the allegations against him.

He left the airways after his arrest. He was originally scheduled to return last Tuesday, but the station decided to hold him off the radio.

Monday, he returned to the air, speaking primarily about local news events. A co-host joked about his arrest, but Martin did not comment about his legal troubles.

After a string of burglaries in the Uptown area of Dallas, one case in particular has garnered a lot of media attention when it was disclosed that one of the items stolen was a woman’s engagement ring that was given to her by her fiancé before he was killed in action in Iraq.

A laptop, some shoes and an array of electronics were just a few items that were taken from Missy Haddad’s Uptown apartment in early July. However, it was her engagement ring that was her most cherished item stolen, which is likely why the Dallas police couldn’t wait to let her know what they had found.

While a 5 a.m. phone call usually isn’t a good sign, Tuesday morning it was a call bearing good news.

Within hours, she had the 2-carat stone back on her hand. It was an engagement ring that her fiancé, Lt. Peter Burks, gave her just months before he died in Iraq.

The ring was one of a number of things stolen in recent rash of burglaries in Uptown. Police discovered the ring, along with a large amount of stolen property, inside of the Hurst home of Dustin Kienzlen.

While it took police work to track down the ring, Haddad said she believes a guardian angel likely had a little to do with it as well.

“He was like, ‘No way they’re keeping that. That’s ours and I worked hard for that,’” Haddad said. “It means a lot.”

Kienzlen was charged with one count of possession of stolen property. Investigators said they are trying to determine if he was working with others as part of the crime spree.

For those of us in the biking world, a frequent Sunday afternoon hangout was brutalized last night by a 29-year-old man who was arrested early Thursday after fleeing from police and crashing his car into the Dubliner Irish Pub on Greenville Avenue.

Michael D. Andersen was being held in the Dallas County Jail on charges of driving while intoxicated and evading arrest.

Shortly before 3 a.m., an officer saw Mr. Andersen’s black Nissan pickup hit a curb along the North Central Expressway service road, blowing out the right side tires, Dallas police say. When an officer attempted a traffic stop, the pickup sped away.

The pickup turned onto Goodwin Avenue, running several stop signs before turning again onto Greenville and crashing into the popular pub, damaging the interior.

Mr. Andersen has previously faced charges of DWI and marijuana possession.

Christian Phillips, 18, has finally been released after being held in the Lake Worth jail for almost 3 days.

The poor kid was simply doing community service by delivering cookies to police departments when the Barney’s at Lake Worth took him into custody because they suspected he had laced the cookies with marijuana and LSD.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office tested the cookies and proclaimed they were safe to be dunked in milk.

Phillips was released tonite.

This situation just goes to prove my point that if you need a criminal defense attorney you probably aren’t in a position to be shopping for one. Have one lined up in advance with his/her number on speed dial on your phone.