Dallas Trinity Trails

Goat Island Preserve is a comma of 348 acres hugging the Trinity River as it meanders through an unincorporated portion of far southeastern Dallas County. It's surrounded by gravel pits and crisscrossed with crude four-wheeler trails but is otherwise a rather wild and seldom visited tangle of land.

County officials are looking for ways to attract more visitors to the preserve, which it added to its open space program in 1993 and promptly left alone. They're proposing $45,000 in modest improvements including a monument sign at the entrance; rectangular limestone blocks to cordon off the parking area and serve as benches; the removal of the remains of a demolished building; and the construction of an asphalt parking lot.

The main attraction, though, is one that the county won't be paying for: a network of mountain-bike trails.

The trails will be the responsibility of the Dallas Off-Road Bicycle Association which, according to a briefing scheduled to be delivered to commissioners on Tuesday, has agreed to partner with the county to design, build, and maintain the trails.

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Ever since prosecutors filed a federal lawsuit last May asking to seize nearly $500,000 of County Commissioner John Wiley Price's allegedly ill-gotten gains, political observers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. An indictment was a month or two away, tops, it was predicted at the time. Any second, Price would be perp walking right through the doors of the federal courthouse.

Eleven months have passed, and that day still hasn't come. But there are signs that it may soon. According to an agreed order signed last week by U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater and unsealed yesterday (h/t Morning News), prosecutors have agreed to put the seizure on hold "until the conclusion of the parallel criminal investigation and any related criminal case resulting therefrom."

At issue is $230,000 from a property on Grady Niblo Road that Price sold to a developer, and another $230,000 in cash found at Price's home in June 2011, some of which belongs to Price's longtime assistant, Dapheny Fain. The feds argue in the civil court filings that the money was illegally obtained.

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Last year, nine years after the Prison Rape Elimination Act was passed, the federal government laid out final rules aimed at stamping out sexual abuse in America's criminal justice system, with specific provisions for juvenile lockups.

Dallas County's Juvenile Department applied for and was recently awarded a federal grant of $90,000 to help comply with the stricter standards and "to build a culture of zero tolerance for sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, and sexual harassment," according to a memo sent to Dallas County commissioners. They are scheduled to vote to accept the grant at their meeting on Tuesday.

The bulk of the grant will go toward hiring a full-time research assistant to gather data and crunch sexual abuse numbers, thereby giving the county a baseline for implementing reforms. The remainder, about $16,000, will be used to print large quantities of educational graphic novels.

Educational how? Well, readers will learn that they may be raped repeatedly by their cellmates; ignored by detention center administrators; ridiculed for being gay; harassed by skeezy probation officers; and groped, either by a 14-year-old girl or the kitchen staff.

They're works of art, really. You can read them in full here. Or, you can peruse the synopses and samples below.

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@KenKatlthoffNBC5

First Assistant DA Heath Harris speaking to reporters about increased security measures at his office.

The murder this weekend of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, two months after assistant DA Mark Hasse was gunned down in broad daylight, has Texas prosecutors on high alert.

The Associated Press reports today that district attorneys throughout the state are taking extra precautions as they head back to work after the Easter weekend. In Houston, Harris County DA Mike Anderson and his family now have round-the-clock security and is looking at how to beef up security at the office.

District Attorney Craig Watkins does not yet have a personal body guard, at least not so far as we can tell. At a press conference today, first assistant DA Heath Harris provided few specifics about efforts to protect Watkins and his staff, citing security concerns.

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Teenagers, volatile bundles of hormones that they are, are going to have sex. That's an iron law of nature, as unchangeable as the fact that lions like to eat zebras. It's also a fair bet that, unless they are taught otherwise, these teenagers are going to have sex in an completely unsafe and irresponsible manner.

Texas lawmakers haven't yet come to grips with this, pushing for ever-greater restrictions on sex education in schools. School districts, whose sex ed curricula are set, per state law, by parent-dominated school health advisory committees, have largely followed that lead. Fully half of the state's 1,028 districts have no sex ed program, according to the Morning News. Many of the rest, DISD included, take an abstinence-only approach. (Update on March 19: DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander wrote this morning to say the district takes an "abstinence-based," not abstinence-only approach, as was reported by the Morning News. The district defines it as "emphasizing the benefits of abstinence; includes information about non­coital sexual behavior, contraception, and disease prevention methods; also referred to as abstinence-plus or abstinence-centered.")

It's not surprising that Texas has among the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation. It also probably shouldn't come as a surprise that, in Dallas County at least, teen STD rates are on the rise.

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We were going to take a pass on this one. We were going to ignore the press release Dallas police sent at 12:39 p.m. informing every media outlet in town that Thomas Lee Watkins III, the 20-year-old nephew of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, had been arrested for allegedly shoplifting a pair of $70 headphones from the Walmart on Cockrell Hill Road while carrying a small amount of marijuana.

Watkins has been getting raked over the coals in recent days over real, substantive issues. His nephew's allegedly sticky fingers didn't seem to merit additional ink. Here at at Unfair Park, we cringe at the thought of being judged by the actions of certain members of our extended families.

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letotgirlscenter.org

Update at 4:43 p.m.: Dallas County Juvenile Department director Terry Smith sends her response: "Actually the county is ready to go and I am unaware of any issues."

Original post: Ground on the Letot Girls' Residential Therapy Center, the $9.8 million facility planned in Northwest Dallas for child sex trafficking victims, broke back in early September. It was initially slated for completion by the end of this year, but since those first few shovelfuls of dirt, progress halted.

"There are some glitches right now with the county," says Claudia Lopez, an office manager at the existing shelter. "Right now, everything is in limbo."

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A new court order in the federal corruption probe into John Wiley Price tilts the case in the county commissioner's favor, maybe just a little, maybe quite a lot.

We all recall that in 2011 the FBI seized $229,590 from a safe in the Dallas County Commissioner's Oak Cliff home. Today's order by federal district chief judge Sidney Fitzwater, on display below, gives Price a little break on maybe one day getting that money back.

But there's a more important stinger buried deep in Fitzwater's order, delivering a significant slap-down to the whole federal strategy so far in the case. In denying the feds' request to keep the money forever and granting Price his request for a delay, Fitzwater takes pointed note of an argument by defense lawyers that the whole money-seizure thing, a civil matter, is being used by the government as a can-opener to pry evidence out of Price and others for use in a separate criminal case still to come.

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Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins was scheduled to testify this morning at a hearing on whether he abused his office to perform a favor for a political donor. As you know by now, he didn't show up, explaining through a proxy that, though he was at work, he was simply too ill.

It took Dallas County Republicans all of two seconds to pounce. The party dispatched a fundraising email (headline: "Dallas County Democrats show blatant disregard for the law. Again.") using Watkins' no-show this morning as a call to open wallets.

The email continues:

How many of us who failed to appear in court would be spared from any legal consequences or repercussions? Watkins, who makes over $160,000 a year working for the taxpayers of Dallas County, doesn't seem to be worried about it.

It's time we, the taxpayers of Dallas County, fire Craig Watkins for his poor job performance and lack of integrity. Donate today, and your contributions will help to build the infrastructure that we need to get Democrats like Watkins out and Republicans in. For as little as $17.76 per month or $220 per year you can become a member of the Patriot Club and help rid Dallas County of these corrupt officials.

They certainly get points for speed, and for the clever use of the nation's birthday as the monthly contribution amount to reflect the year the country declared independence. Watkins and company would never have thought of that one.

lonestaronline.com

When Dallas County commissioners meet on Tuesday, they will decide whether to part with a rather unusual piece of county property: a black, 75-pound pot-bellied pig.

The swine, identified only by his serial number, 12-167125, is being kept at the Kennedy Livestock Center outside Hutchins, where the county stables stray horses, cows, donkeys and other farm animals abandoned by or seized from their owners. No word on how he made it onto the commissioners' agenda, but one assumes that unclaimed animals become surplus property that can be auctioned off.

Bidding for the pig starts at $15 and ends on Valentine's Day, in case you're still looking for a gift. The auction materials give no details on his background other than to say he's "in good condition" and does not come with any warranties.

We have a call into the livestock center to see who this pig is, where he came from, if he has a name and how much he might dress out at. In the meantime, we'll invent a back story.

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