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Dallas Stars fans in the area will be able to stream the team’s games for free on VICTORY+ next season. Stars analyst Daryl “Razor” Reaugh talks about the deal and what it means for Stars fans.
DALLAS – Dallas Stars fans will have a new option for watching games this season.
On Wednesday, the Stars launched Victory+, a free app for streaming games and commentary.
Victory+ replaces Bally Sports Southwest. The team parted ways with Bally’s parent company, Diamond Sports Group, earlier this summer.
“We worked two years to get to this point. We believe this is the future. We’re happy to pioneer it. We know we’re forging our own trail here, and we’re good with that. Um, it doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be hiccups and speed bumps that we have to deal with. Which is why I said earlier, give us some patience as we work through this. ESPN didn’t look the way they did now in 1980. But certainly, we’ve got a great group. We’ve got people dedicated to this, and we’ve got the fans in mind. So, we’re excited,” said Brad Alberts, the Stars president and chief executive.
The first broadcast on the new app is Sept. 21, when the Stars open the preseason against St. Louis.
The team starts training camp next Wednesday at the Comerica Center in Frisco.
The shocking conclusions of a state investigation into a Dallas County juvenile lockup have cast new light on the stubborn resistance of the county’s Juvenile Board to investigate or release records when concerns surfaced publicly last year.
While state investigators confirmed some allegations and ruled out others, its main findings validated what some of us feared: a cover-up that seems to have stretched to the top of the Dallas County Juvenile Department.
Over the course of several years, county officials skirted state rules by using a “Special Needs Unit” to keep youths secluded in cells for up to five days without due process, according to state investigators. The youths spent “the vast majority of their days” inside the cells — sometimes the full day — without access to education, showers or outdoor recreation.
State regulators called what was happening “systemic neglect” and stated that “multiple facility staff, educators, and administrators (past and present) were aware.”
There are plenty of alarming lines in this report. This is, perhaps, the most disturbing: “There was pervasive falsification of documents regarding observation checks and school attendance rosters implying an intentional attempt to conceal the practice within the facility.”
Darryl Beatty, the former director of the county’s Juvenile Department, may not have had an active role in creating these policies and practices, but he should have been aware and had “ample opportunity to take action,” according to state investigators.
In our view, so did the Dallas County Juvenile Board, the governing body over the Juvenile Department. Allegations had been piling up for some time, from this newspaper and other quarters, about the treatment of youths in lockup. The Juvenile Board’s response all along: It’s the job of the state to investigate, not ours.
“Neither the Board nor I ignored red flags,” Judge Cheryl Shannon, chair of the Juvenile Board, told us in an email. “The Board did not have direct information on which to respond. The Board was left to make decisions based on information received from the media. The majority of the Board decided that the best investigatory approach was to refer all allegations to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.”
It’s curious that the board last year rejected requests from the Commissioners Court, the body that funds the Juvenile Department’s budget, to review anonymized “observation sheets” from the detention center at the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center. The majority of the Juvenile Board fought the request even though two members of the Commissioners Court who asked for records — County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins and Andrew Sommerman — are also Juvenile Board members.
We can’t say what the Juvenile Board knew. What we can say is that there was so much smoke that the board should have also investigated what was going on in its own house, if anything to put an immediate stop to any potential mistreatment or crimes. The state investigation took a year to complete.
We hope those found to have falsified records are fired and prosecuted. Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot told us his office had received records of the investigation and is reviewing them.
The Juvenile Board’s failure to hold the Juvenile Department accountable for the care of young people in its custody is incompetence at best and gross negligence at worst. At any rate, it is inexcusable.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com
DALLAS — The Texas Supreme Court ordered the Dallas City Council to remove three charter amendments from the Nov. ballot, ruling in favor of the Dallas HERO Initiative.
The citizen-led bipartisan initiative claimed the council’s amendments were meant to nullify their amendments. The court agreed, saying the propositions contradict each other and the language would “confuse and mislead voters.”
In June, the Dallas HERO Initiative successfully petitioned to have three amendments added to the November ballot, submitting over 169,000 signatures. HERO said those signatures exceeded the city’s requirement of at least 20,000 signatures for each of the three proposed amendments.
The city secretary certified HERO’s petitions.
HERO’s three proposed amendments would:
In August, the Dallas City Council held several meetings to discuss a special election on proposed amendments.
Several council members did not approve of HERO’s proposed amendments, the Supreme Court documents state, and moved to include three additional proposed amendments.
The council’s proposed amendments gave the council the final say in all city funds and would ensure the city’s government immunity and prevent residents from filing suit, according to the court’s ruling.
HERO and a Dallas resident who signed petitions to get the HERO proposals on the ballot filed suit to block the council’s proposed charter amendments.
On Sept. 11, the Texas Supreme Court issued its ruling and directed the council not to include its propositions on the Nov. ballot.
The Dallas Police Department will soon try out a new system to better pinpoint random bursts of gunfire.
The City Council on Wednesday approved a three-year contract for $336,362 with Crime Gunshot Intelligence Technologies for its gunshot detection program, FireFLY LE. The system works by alerting a police employee when it picks up on the sound of a potential gunshot. That employee will evaluate the noise, and if they tag it as gunfire, patrol is notified to its possible location.
Council members have voiced concerns in recent years about random gunfire in Dallas, with some noting that residents constantly report the problem and complain about feeling ignored. Police usually label random gunfire calls a lower priority.
Police officials have said random gunfire happens across the city and often spikes on holidays. So such gunshots result from celebrating, while others result from people discharging a firearm while intoxicated or as an intentional violent act.
Dallas police reported 8,301 random gunfire calls this year as of Wednesday, with the highest volume in the southern sectors of the city. By this time last year, the department recorded 9,754.
Gunshot detection systems are used across the U.S. but have spurred questions about accuracy, expense and level of impact. ShotSpotter — one of the most popular — is used in more than 150 cities, but has been rejected by areas such as Atlanta and Portland, according to CNN. In Chicago, one of the largest cities to use it, officials have been immersed in debate about whether to renew their contract, The Chicago Tribune reported this week.
Dallas has considered gunshot detection technology before, but the idea was nixed because of accuracy concerns and high costs. Police Chief Eddie García raised worries to council last year, noting the “jury’s still out” on the efficiency of such systems. Instead, he said at the time, he’d prefer more license plate readers.
Tim Kelly, CGIT’s president and co-founder, told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday that FireFLY LE is different from legacy systems in that it’s transportable, not fixed into place — which he believes makes it more economical and ethical. The technology is not targeting one community, he said, but can instead be moved based on where police believe the gunfire is occurring.
Gunshot detection systems typically use microphones and other acoustic devices in neighborhoods to pick up the sound of a gunshot, locate the area where the muzzle blast happened, and then alert police.
Once the FireFLY LE sensor picks up on a bang, Kelly said, the system compares it to a library of sounds — like car backfires, single gunshots and machine guns — to evaluate what it could be. Police make the final classification, and the data would be owned by the city of Dallas, Kelly added.
He called it “a tool in a bigger process,” emphasizing it’s meant to help police recover shell casings, which can then be analyzed to gauge whether that gun was used in other crimes. Residents in vulnerable communities where shootings occur don’t always report gunshots, Kelly said, which makes the system vital for alerting police.
“It’s about providing leads to detectives,” said Kelly, formerly an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Phoenix has used the program for about five years. An Arizona State University study published in 2021 by the U.S. Department of Justice found that after the sensors were in place, patrol officers were more likely to respond to gunshots, responded more quickly and incident reports were more likely to be filed.
“Will it reduce gun violence?” Kelly said on Wednesday. “That’s really kind of a hard question. My personal opinion — not standing alone. It needs to be part of a larger process.”
He pointed to DPD’s use of hot-spot policing. As part of the department’s violent crime reduction plan, every 60 days, police hone in on about 60 “hot spots” — 330-by-330 foot grids — that account for a disproportionate amount of crime.
Dallas police Major Yancey Nelson told the council’s public safety committee this week that the department will start with 24 sensors, which will provide coverage of about 1 to 2 square miles. Police officials opted for a solar-powered option, he added, which allows them to put sensors on top of a building or mount them on a utility pole.
He noted the hot spots targeted by DPD are usually areas that see large amounts of random gunfire. Similarly, Kelly said, FireFLY LE helps focus on small geographical areas. Because the system is transportable it can be moved each time police change hot zones.
“It actually overlays our crime plan perfectly,” Nelson told the committee.
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