Crime Time

Your Blotter: Man with gun disarmed; a Ponzi scheme; 180 years for sex assault

Here are some headlines we didn't want you to miss from the Crime and Safety page at Star-Telegram.com:

Read more here: http://blogs.star-telegram.com/crime_time/your_blotter/#storylink=c

Weatherford man disarmed, arrested after pulling gun at taco stand

(This one's getting a lot of comments from readers.)

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/06/4829929/weatherford-man-disarmed-arrested.html#storylink=cpy

Former Dallas Cowboy involved in $25 million Ponzi scheme

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/06/4829677/former-dallas-cowboy-involved.html#storylink=cpy

Bedford man sentenced to 180 years in prison for sexually assaulting 8-year-old

Compiled from the works of Bill Miller, Yamil Berard and Mitch Mitchell.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/06/4829789/convicted-sex-offender-sentenced.html#storylink=cpy

 

Fort Worth school goes into lockdown when guard's gun found in restroom

A Fort Worth police officer assigned to McLean Middle School found a handgun in a teachers’ restroom on Friday.

The school went into lockdown, but school officials later learned that the gun belonged to a security guard who was picking up cafeteria money.

Apparently he was using the restroom when the gun was misplaced.

Jessamy Brown has this report.

-- Bill Miller

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/05/03/4824289/security-guard-leaves-gun-at-fort.html#storylink=cpy

Report: CHL carrier kills suspected robber in SE Fort Worth; debate ensues

With all the attention on Boston and Kaufman County, we almost overlooked yesterday’s report by Deanna Boyd on a suspected robber getting shot by CHL carrier in southeast Fort Worth, according to the earliest reports.

It’s a short article — practically what we call a "brief" — but it has sparked rigorous debate on guns, race, politics...

A buffet of ideas awaits you. Jump in here.

— Bill Miller

Plano legislator wants tax-free holiday -- for guns and ammo

Texans love their independence -- and their guns.

Now state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, (shown here) wants to give Texans a little more of both.

He has filed the "Texas Gun Ownership Reinforcement Act," a bill to create a new tax-free holiday where consumers won't be charged taxes on guns, ammo or hunting supplies on March 2 -- Texas Independence Day.

It's also viewed as a pro-gun statement as Congress revs up debate over firearms.

But Marsha McCartney thinks it's a bad idea.

"Perhaps they should worry about how to make our community safer, rather than how to sell more guns for the gun lobby," said McCartney, a spokeswoman for the Texas chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "This is one of those silly bills that gets a lot of attention."

Anna Tinsley has this report.

But what do you think? Drop your comments below.

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/02/26/4645781/texas-lawmaker-wants-a-sales-tax.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/02/26/4645781/texas-lawmaker-wants-a-sales-tax.html#story

Concealed carry: Tarrant County has second-most active licenses in Texas

Some 18 years after the Legislature made it legal to carry a concealed handgun in public, Texas now has 585,860 active licenses statewide, according to a Star-Telegram review of Department of Public Safety data.

Harris County, the state's largest, is home to the most licenses, with nearly 90,000.

But Tarrant County, with the third-highest population, now has the second-most active licenses, at 42,114 -- or one for every 49 people.

"The number of people seeking concealed handgun licenses is going to keep growing," said Curtis Van Liew (shown here), who began teaching concealed handgun classes locally in 2010. "Most people say they feel the need to protect themselves now."

This is Anna Tinsley's report and you can read all of it here.

Anna covers politics for the Star-Telegram, but she also filed this gun-related report:

Don't mess with Texans' gun rights, GOP officials declare

-- Bill Miller

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/01/25/4575609/dont-mess-with-texans-gun-rights.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/01/24/4573972/tarrant-trails-only-harris-county.html#storylink=cpy

Collin County Sheriff says new gun laws unconstitutional

The gun debate continues.

Now, Collin County Sheriff Terry Box says he won't enforce what he considers to be unconstitutional gun laws.

And he won't force his deputies to do so either.

The sheriff made his comments to NBC Channel 5. See the report by Kevin Cokely at NBCdfw.com.

Newtown's aftermath: N.Y. newspaper publishes names of handgun license holders

A newspaper's publication of the names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties has made quite a stir on the Internet, according to The Associated Press.

The Journal News, which covers three counties in the Hudson Valley, on Sunday published, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood."

The project, a result of the mass school shootings in Newtown, Conn., was accompanied online by maps that have the names and addresses of hundreds of handgun permit holders.

By Wednesday afternoon, the maps had shared about 30,000 times on Facebook and other social media. Many of the commenters expressed outrage.

Roy Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism think tank, said publishing the data was "too indiscriminate."

"You get the connotation that somehow there's something essentially wrong with this behavior," he said of the gun permit database. "My predisposition is to support the journalism. I want to be persuaded that this story or this practice has some higher social purpose, but I can't find it."

Read more in this report from the AP.

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/26/4508240/newspapers-handgun-permit-map.html#storylink=

Two indicted on federal drug charges, one for allegedly supplying drugs that killed Grapevine girl

Misael "Irving" Perla, 24, of Dallas (left) is one of two men named this week in a nine-count federal indictment covering a slew of drug charges.

Specifically, he is accused of providing the drugs believed to have killed Cassidy Seward, 18, of Grapevine. She died Aug. 28 at a Grapevine hospital of "mixed drug toxicity" involving heroin and methamphetamine, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner's office.

The other man, Hugo "Juice" Sanchez, 23, (right) was indicted on one count of possessing a firearm illegally because he is a convicted felon and another count of having a gun while trafficking drugs.

Bill Miller has more in this report.

 

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/12/19/4497861/pair-indicted-in-two-drug-deaths.html#storylink=cpy

Sandy Hook's aftermath: Why so many mass shootings?

The debate over gun control was well under way before the massacre Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn.

It gathered steam in the hours after the shootings that claimed 28, most of them children under age 10.

But aside from guns, what else is at the root of the violence that’s becoming more common?

How common?

Well, a timeline published Friday by The Associated Press starts at the bottom with the infamous 1966 slayings of 16 people from the clock tower at the University of Texas. The shooter, Charles Whitman, became a household name.

Then several years pass before you have a couple more mass killings: one at a McDonald’s in California, 1984; and then the Killeen Luby’s massacre in 1991.

There are a couple more in 1996 and then — BAM! — in 1999 we get the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo.

The list grows tremendously after the turn of the century: Virginia Tech in 2007; Fort Hood, 2009; the shooting in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others, 2011; The Aurora, Colo., movie theater last July; and now Friday’s carnage in Connecticut.

And to all this, we ask, why?

Why do we have so many people — most of them young men — who haven’t enough soul to decide right from wrong and act out in violent and unrestrained manners?

Too many video games?

Mental illness?

Absentee parents?

A society that has trouble with absolutes?

Easy access to guns?

All of these? None?

See the AP’s timeline here.

Then weigh in.

-- Bill Miller

 

Texas school superintendent: Disarming faculty, staff invites mass shootings

We had an interesting conversation earlier this evening with David Thweatt, schools superintendent in the small town of Harrold, about 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth.

His one-campus district in 2008 approved a policy that allows some teachers and staff with concealed carry licenses to be secretly armed while at school.

He said this definitely hedges against mass shootings like the one Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Here’s our article from that interview.

But, like most newspaper articles, we had more info than our available space, so we'll share it here.

For example, Thweatt said the so-called "guardian plan" is patterned after the Federal Air Marshal program, in which plain-clothes officers guard airline flights, but passengers are not supposed to know who they are, or that they’re armed.

Likewise, the school district in Harrold does not announce which teachers are "packing."

The program is set up under the same Texas laws that allow school districts to have uniformed police officers on campus, Thweatt said.

Participating teachers, however, must be approved by the school board to conceal weapons on school grounds.

There is also extra training to ensure accurate shooting.

Participants are required to use ammunition that will stop a human but not penetrate walls, Thweatt said.

These measures, he noted, are intended to limit collateral damage.

Still, the strategy draws criticism.

A common challenge, Thweatt said, is the possibility of an angry student, in a fit of passion, wrestling a concealed handgun away from a teacher.

But that’s not an issue, Thweatt said, as long as students don’t know which teachers have guns.

There has not been an incident, and Thweatt doesn’t expect one. In his opinion, declaring a campus "gun-free" is inviting a mass shooting.

"What we know about these people is they know where to go to get a bigger body count," Thweatt said. "I think they’re mostly after infamy and it’s just evil."

 -- Bill Miller