Stormy Magiera, no longer a Dallas officer

​In the end, the posting to the Dallas Police Department's Facebook page, made moments ago, probably comes as no surprise. But as of today, Stormy Magiera is no longer a Dallas Police officer. The announcement comes days after the officer, decorated by Chief David Brown in November for saving the residents of a burning building, was arrested for getting into a fight with her husband, fellow Dallas Police Lt. Mike Magiera, at their home in Murphy. According to today's announcement: "The Internal Affairs Division's investigation determined that Sergeant Magiera escalated the disturbance and caused injury to a family member."

Magiera began the new year as she left the old one: under investigation. DPD tonight reveals that mysterious incident at Forest and Audelia on December 28, the one where Magiera said she was attacked by a man with a knife who got away with her gun, was all a lie. "Sergeant Magiera had been attempting to obtain a controlled substance (hydrocodone) without a prescription," says the release, which also notes this is far from the end of that. "Sergeant Magiera has two more pending criminal allegations related to this incident."

And there is more, much more, not to mention her lawsuit against the city involving allegations of sexual discrimination and retaliation. The entire adios, which also just arrived from DPD HQ, follows. It notes: "Under civil service rules, officers have rights to appeal disciplinary action."

This is not the sole announcement made by DPD tonight. Another, involving the just-finished review of Mickey East's case files, also follows. Long story short: Cases are being filed; more are on the way. And East, who took home case files, will be disciplined. At a later date.More >>

​One month ago Dallas Area Rapid Transit released its 2011 Customer Satisfaction Survey, with nine out of 10 riders insisting they would recommend DART to others. But Pages 19 and 20 of the 23-page report are filled with concerns over security aboard DART buses and trains: Only 78 percent of those surveyed said they felt safe at stops and stations, a five-year low for the transit agency; and only 70 percent said they see DART cops riding the rails, a new low. "This may have a direct correlation to customers' decline in feeling safe on DART trains," said the survey.

DART said it had several fixes in mind: "modifying deployment plans to increase police presence," installing closed-circuit cams at stations by the middle of the year, strengthening the ties between DART police and local and federal law enforcement agencies. "One particular effort with Dallas Police," said the release accompanying the survey, "is aimed at reducing crime involving juveniles." This, after 19-year-old Octavius Lanier was killed by kids, between the ages of 12 and 14, at the MLK Station in November; and 20-year-old Dominique Wilson was shot and killed in January at the Pearl Station.

A little farther north, of course, was the scene of yesterday's incident that began when a man, thought to be around 25, boarded a bus at the Arapaho Center Station and had a run-in with a driver. Cops were called; shots, ultimately, fired. And in the end, two are dead: the gunman and a passenger waiting on a platform, caught, perhaps, in the crossfire. A DART officer was also wounded.

And once again DART will be asked: Are you doing enough to make the trains and buses safe?

"This, in my opinion, has gone too far," council member Dwaine Caraway tells Unfair Park this morning. Till now, he says, he's been fine with letting the council's appointed members to the DART board deal with issues of security; now, he says, it's time for the council to ask questions of DART President Gary Thomas and Chief J.D. Spiller, among others. "I will turn up the heat and my voice: They have to do something. They must. Today. They need to have a new plan and implement it. An emergency plan. They need to keep the people safe. If it's a fact of money, stop building and keep the people safe. They're gonna build and build, but who's gonna ride if it's not safe?"More >>

​It's been close to two years since former Dallas Cowboy Kurt Vollers pleaded guilty to his role in a pot-distribution "conspiracy" run from 2006 till '08 out of an apartment on N. MacArthur Boulevard, and more than a year since John Newton, the leader of the so-called Newton Drug Trafficking Organization, netted himself 24 years in federal prison. Vollers was to have been sentenced in March of 2010, but for whatever reason he didn't find out his jail time till today. And it's no small stint: Per the U.S. Attorney's Office, Vollers has been sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater to 30 months in federal prison; he has till March 20 to surrender. As the feds recap it today, short and sweet:

Vollers actively assisted Newton by, among other things, facilitating the delivery of marijuana to the Dallas area, facilitating the storage of marijuana, repackaging bulk marijuana for sale, distributing marijuana to buyers, facilitating the transfer of money from buyers to Newton and counting the proceeds from the sale of marijuana.

On the bright side, feds once spoke of possibly giving Vollers 40 years max and slapping him with a $2 million fine.

Via.

Riley Rawlins with his mother Monica

​Several Friends of Unfair Park have been asking, repeatedly: When will Dallas Police arrest the 19-year-old woman who, on January 7, hit 17-year-old Riley Rawlins as he crossed Royal Lane, near Audelia Road, to meet some friends at the Sonic there. It's a question that's been repeated again and again since the incident, especially since, according to police, the woman didn't have insurance or a license and admitted to hitting the Lake Highlands High School junior -- and then dragging him 400 feet. Craig Watkins, the Dallas County District Attorney, was noncommittal when asked by The News a few days ago whether an arrest was coming:

"If we do indict it, it's going to be a coin toss," District Attorney Craig Watkins said last week. He said questions about the driver's speed and whether Riley was jaywalking are complicating the case.

But, at last, an arrest has been made. This just in from the Dallas Police Department:

The suspect in the January 7, 2012, fatality accident, in which Riley Rawlins was killed while crossing the road at 9900 Royal Lane, was arrested at her home today and transported to Lew Sterrett Jail. She has been identified as Soraya Villanueva L/M/7-25-93. She will be charged with Criminally Negligent Homicide with a bond set at $125,000.

​I don't recall Dallas PD ever sending out a series of videos, but below is a brief trilogy dispatched by Senior Corporal Kevin Janse moments ago. Says DPD, the man seen in the first video is merely posing as a student at West Coast University's Dallas campus on Stemmons. He can be seen wandering the halls before breaking into a woman's room, lifting her wallet and stealing her credit card.

That event happened on December 20. That very same day, the man in the video can be seen using the credit card at NorthPark Center -- buying movie tickets, shopping at the AT&T store. Only this time, he has a child with him. Writes Janse: "It is believed the suspect used the child at several of the stores to divert attention away from him while he committed this theft and forgery." DPD says anyone with information should call 214-670-6233. In case you needed to be reminded that you are always being watched. More >>

Collin County

​The woman you see at right, in a mugshot posted to the Collin County website, is Sergeant Stormy Magiera, a Dallas Police officer since September 2000. According to an email dispatched by the DPD this morning, Magiera was detained by Garland Police and arrested by Murphy PD on a warrant out of Murphy. The charge: "Assault Causes Bodily Injury-Family Violence," a Class A misdemeanor for which bond has been set at $1,500.

If the name sounds familiar, that's because it is; Magiera, as a matter of fact, has been on administrative leave for a month, following a 1 a.m. incident on December 28 at the intersection of Forest and Audelia. As DPD described it at the time in a media release that still lives in my in-box:

While at the light the officer was approached by a suspect with a knife demanding money. The officer and suspect became involved in a struggle. The officer fired their weapon at the suspect and the suspect fled on foot. It is unknown if the suspect was struck by gunfire. The officer sustained minor injuries in the struggle.

But only a few days ago it was revealed that perhaps Magiera wasn't being entirely truthful about the incident -- and that the man with whom Magiera got into the tussle escaped with her Sig Sauer .357, which was later recovered. The officer, a November recipient of the department's Medal of Valor after she helped rescue residents of a burning South Dallas apartment in 2011, has denied any wrongdoing; as she told The News, "You either love me or you hate me, and there's no in between. And I'm OK with that." But now she will be the subject of yet another Internal Affairs investigation for reasons that remain unclear; several messages have been left for Murphy PD.

We first wrote about Magiera two years ago, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that her discrimination suit against the city could go forward. The suit stemmed from a 2005 incident that resulted in her claiming sexual harassment and retaliation, including her being removed as a field training officer because, said one supervisor, "she lacked the proper temperament."

Like Oz. But real.

​Back in November the Dallas County Commissioners signed off on part2 Productions' pitch to shoot a season's worth of Hard Time in the Dallas County Jail on behalf of the National Geographic Channel, which would have taken some 120 days and netted the county upward of $120,000. Alas, we find out via the briefing agenda for commissioners court tomorrow that deal's off -- "due to scheduling conflicts."

Which works out well: As you'll see below Electric Sky Productions, a British production company that brought its 3D equipment into the county jail for a look-inside tentatively called Outsiders, is ready to come back and stick around for a while. Per the pitch:

The planned production is a ten (10) part documentary series exploring life inside Dallas County Jail. The production would also follow inmates through the court process. In each episode, the cameras would catch the real day-lo-day experiences, challenges and the pressures officers face dealing with a variety of unpredictable inmates from new arrestees to maximum security. The series would allow the public to be immersed into the reality of life inside jail and the courthouse to help viewers understand the issues involved in running such a facility.

The earlier short will air on Discovery Channels' 3Net in the spring. Not sure when or where the tentatively titled Inside Dallas Jail will air, only that Electric Sky's getting a price break: Where part2 was to pay $1,000 a day, the Brits are only on the hook for $750. All the details are below. Shooting starts February 13. Pardon ... filming begins February 13. So we're clear. Long story short: Get tossed in county jail in the coming months, and chances are you'll be asked to go on TV. Which is better than appearing in Electric Sky's other Dallas-based doc: The Castration Cure.More >>

Dallas Police Dept.

William Palmer

​By 8 a.m., the news vans had started to arrive, parking on the street behind the cop cars, the Medical Examiner's white sedan, the city of Dallas vehicle marked "Crime Scene." They sank their tripods into the soft mud surrounding the house on Peavy Road, a nice-looking two-story with a two-car garage, a sun roof and a tire swing hanging from the big tree in the front yard. By 9, technicians wearing blue latex gloves and blue footies over their shoes were loading the bodies into vans from Southwestern Medical Center. A detective in a neon green rain slicker lifted the yellow crime scene tape to let the vans down the driveway, then stretched it back across.

Looking at this scene, there were a lot of unanswered questions about who and what and why. But the police just demystified things pretty thoroughly, giving this account during a press conference at DPD headquarters:

A man named Willliam Palmer showed up at the house on Peavy this morning, they said. His wife, Donya, 47, was staying there with her parents. Donya and William separated about a week ago. When Donya came out around 6 this morning to retrieve something from her car, William attacked her. She ran back inside the house for help and made it to the living room, but he caught her, and then he stabbed her.

More >>

Scene of the crime

​A little before 1 today reports began circulating about a manhunt near Lake June and Buckner -- something to do with an armored-car heist and police officers putting nearby schools on lockdown. One station even said it saw two men being taken off in handcuffs. Maybe so. But not for this.

Earlier this afternoon, Senior Corporal Kevin Janse asked media to hold tight; the DPD spokesman was heading thataway to find out what happened. Moments ago, Janse, who writes a lean media release, sent word explaining how the heist went down at around 12:50 this afternoon.

According to Janse, Dunbar Armored sent two guys to PLS Check Cashers on Lake June to make a drop-off. They got there a little before 1. The driver and his partner scouted the area to make sure it was clear of "suspicious activity." Good to go. One of the Dunbar guys got out and headed to a side door to make his delivery. But at that very moment, a white Nissan Altima pulled up. There were two men inside, each wearing a mask and a hoodie; DPD can't say what they looked like. "Unknown race/age," says the spokesman. But: "males." One of them hopped out of the passenger side, holding a gun.

The driver of the armored car saw it unfolding. Too late: "The suspect got to him too quickly," says the DPD spokesman. The man in the mask demanded the money bag; the man from Dunbar handed it over. The two stick-up men fled, then ditched the car a few blocks away. DPD found the Altima, which, Janse says, "had been reported stolen out of Duncanville PD." Cops never found the men responsible for the heist. Janse writes: "It is unknown if they had another vehicle at that location or not."

No one was injured. DPD's on the case; so too is the FBI. No word yet on how much they got away with.

Came across this video posted to YouTube yesterday by the friend of the show who maintains the essential Dallas Trinity Trails blog. I'll let Ben describe what he captured:

Dallas County Sheriff Deputy cornering and chasing dirt bike motorcycle on the Trinity River levees near Industrial Blvd and Corinth. The dirt bike tried to flee into the woods only to find he was trapped. He rode back and forth for a minute looking for a way out. In that time, the deputy positioned his squad car blocking the road under the trestle. If it were a vehicle or quad bike the deputy would have caught him. The deputy had no chance against a dirt bike.The rider approached the car and appeared to taunt the deputy before taking off back up the levees towards downtown Dallas.

This is the north levee of the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas, at the new Santa Fe Trestle Trail trailhead. The DART rail line linking Dallas with Oak Cliff is directly overhead.

Private motorized vehicles are forbidden from driving on the levees. This is due to potential erosion issues and safety. Fines are high if you are caught.

Yeah, Schutze.