This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from the Metroplex: updates on the Dallas cyberattacks and two other hacks with DFW connections you may not have heard about; Dallas is not exactly defunding DPD; the Fort Worth Mayor’s new job; censorship and transphobia in the schools; baseball and cricket; the last Black-Eyed Pea; and how to move and install a 4 1/2 ton historical artifact in your museum.
The last major public-facing computer system in Dallas is now operating again after almost seven weeks offline. The Dallas Public Library’s physical book database reopened last Friday and the library started encouraging patrons to return their books over the weekend. This encouragement was reinforced by automated daily emails of an increasingly threatening nature, including billing patrons for books that had been overdue since the library went offline.
We returned all our books after close of business Saturday and when our local branch reopened, it took them a couple of days to start to catch up. I spoke to one of our librarians, who said that if there were still books missing by next Wednesday (our library is closed Sunday/Monday and will be closed Tuesday for the holiday), it would be time to speak to a librarian. Because of the number of books being reentered into the system, the librarians expected some of them to go missing. By Thursday afternoon, the seven or eight books I had returned had been scanned in and my account was unblocked with no fees owed. I’m very pleased with my local branch.
Meanwhile, the city of Dallas is about to spend $4 million on a cyberattack detection system (DMN; Local NPR coverage). The city was already working with the vendor to upgrade security before the attack, but it clearly wasn’t enough. In addition, the city is now considering “up to $25 million in IT improvements” in next year’s billion-dollar bond package. That number is provisional and may increase between now and next May, when we’ll vote on the bonds.
Dallas isn’t alone in dealing with information security attacks. One of Fort Worth’s city websites was hacked last week. This was a much smaller problem than the Dallas attack; it was limited to the facilities maintenance system; and it wasn’t a ransomware attack. Based on their communication with the city, the hackers are in it for the lulz and as a protest against Texas’ transphobic laws.
Also, back in April, an Austin recruiting firm that worked with pilot applicants for Southwest and American was hacked. The airlines were told about the hack in early May but more than 8000 applicants were only notified this week, to the displeasure of the union. The hackers obtained sensitive data like SSNs, drivers’ and pilots’ license numbers, and passport numbers. Southwest and American moved their recruitment in-house and are offering the applicants two years of identity theft protection.
A second ongoing story here in Dallas is DPD’s efforts to try to do more with less. The city has been trying to free up officers to handle high priority calls since last summer. The DMN has a piece on changes in parking enforcement; parking calls are now under the auspices of the city’s transportation department. DPD is definitely saving staff hours and money, but all the calls still have to be dealt with.
As part of the same initiative, starting next week Dallas residents will have to report minor offenses online or at a substation kiosk instead of calling 911. DPD will no longer show up for low-priority calls including “minor accidents with no injuries when the vehicles are operable, motor vehicle burglaries, credit or debit card abuse, harassing calls or texts unrelated to family violence, identity theft, reckless damage, graffiti, burglary of a coin machine, lost property, theft and shoplifting under $2,500.” Most of these offenses don’t need a 911 call, but not having officers show up at all for some of these offenses may be cutting too close to the bone.
Chief Garcia is also partnering with ATF and the US Attorney’s office on “focused deterrence”. The initiative will provide resources for at-risk offenders, but if they commit new violent crimes, the US Attorney will prosecute their crimes at the federal level, where penalties are harsher and parole isn’t an issue. The article glosses over it, but I’m interested in how the at-risk offenders are identified. What the chief describes as “an impartial data analysis” may not be so impartial.
Although all of these efforts are designed to reduce the need for DPD officers and focus their efforts on serious, violent crime, nobody is calling shifting parking enforcement to the transportation department, limiting the offenses that officers respond in person to, and working with other agencies and developing community resources to prevent at-risk offenders from reoffending “defunding the police”. Nobody tell Greg Abbott what we’re doing or we’ll be in trouble.
In other news:
- Speaking of that 2024 bond issue mentioned above, here’s a story about a community coalition pushing for affordable housing as a priority. That $25 million for IT improvements is coming out of some other part of the original bond budget and affordable housing was a loser in the latest draft. The Dallas Observer has more on the coalition and its goals.
- Did you know that the Mayor of Fort Worth has a second job? Read about how Mayor Mattie Parker’s job as part-time Chief of Staff for Cook Children’s Medical Center poses some ethical questions.
- More on the death of Eugene Gates, Jr., the Dallas postal worker who died on the job: as mentioned in this article, the Lakewood post office where he worked is sending carriers out earlier in the cool of the morning, at least partially due to outside pressure. Meanwhile, with temperatures skyrocketing, the Dallas Observer draws a line between Gates’ death and the new state law that bans mandatory water breaks here in Dallas, among other city ordinances it nullifies. You know a law is mean when the DMN comes down on it for cruelty.
- Suburban school district update: Mansfield ISD has a new book removal policy that’s less bad than the one originally proposed. Mansfield has new board members since the May elections, some of whom were funded by Patriot Mobile. Meanwhile, further north in Keller ISD, where Patriot Mobile funded most of the board, that board passed transphobic policies around bathrooms and pronouns. Unsurprisingly the ACLU objects.
- Related, here’s Franklin Strong on the Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids campaign. I didn’t know, but am not surprised, that the Republican Party policy is aimed at keeping bookstores from selling “filthy books” and not just to kids.
- Also related, in a disappointing move, the Texas Boys Choir and Singing Girls of Texas, which are affiliated with a public charter school in Fort Worth, now require an unaltered birth certificate matching the gender of the choir from each applicant before an audition.
- Here’s a backgrounder on the rules around sealing court cases in Texas filtered through the lens of the case of the area psychiatrist whose misconduct case set the precedent for the current rule. This is a short piece and very much worth your time if you’re interested in Texas judicial procedure. (Also, it’s our Six Degrees of Clarence Thomas piece for this week.)
- The pastor of the church where DA Henry Wade used to worship has thoughts on the anniversary of the decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade.
- Here’s a superficial AP explainer on why the Texas Rangers are the only MLB team without a Pride night. It seems to boil down to “Texas is Republican” and the answer to the question of why Houston is different is a bit of a shrug. The article mentions that when the Rangers had queer groups come to the park for a fundraising game in 2003, there were protests. While I guess I can imagine that happening in Houston, the Astros wouldn’t, or didn’t, eliminate Pride-themed promotions over it. Reading between the lines, the locals and/or owners are more bigoted and there’s less pushback against homophobia in the metroplex. Not surprising, but still disappointing.
- This Axios newsletter has an update on the cricket matches coming to Grand Prairie, including a ticket link. I wish I knew enough about cricket to make it worthwhile to attend a match or that one of my British or Aussie friends was here to instruct me on the niceties. On the other hand, I don’t want to spend cricket match kinds of time outside in the Texas summer, and honestly worry about the cricket players.
- The last Black-Eyed Pea in Texas is in Arlington. I thought Black-Eyed Pea, like Luby’s, was all gone.
- How the Kimbell Art Museum moved a 9,000 pound piece of ancient art. This is a fluff piece on the Kimbell’s Maya exhibit but it’s interesting reading about how these historic artifacts are treated and watching the time-lapse video of the installation.