A GANG WITH BADGES: Most Dallas police are like most anywhere, basically timekeepers doing a thankless and occasionally dangerous job which keeps trying to drown them in paperwork. A few are very good concerned citizens making an extra effort to help the community. (Some of those get tired of fighting their own bureaucracy and retire to the private sector, where there is more freedom of action, and no resentment from fellow officers who don't want the burden of such pro-active role models in uniform.)

A few, hopefully a very few, are just plain bad eggs. Now and then a scandal breaks about willful or inexcusably negligent use of phony evidence for big drug busts or something of the sort. The real problem is those who are alleged to abuse their badges for personal gain, directly through what are in effect extortion scams against bars (grease their palm if you want a quick response to a trouble call), or to help some politician or friends thereof in running off some business competition.

The latest tale to break the alternative media (good luck in ever finding this in the Dallas Morning Nothing) deals with just such a charge. True? Maybe. Read for yourself about how Dallas may have been oppressing with both hands for very dirty reasons, to the extent that even the Republican state legislature was horrified and sought to ban them, and how Dallas is trying to ignore the law, at "Dallas City Hall thumbs nose, gives Bronx cheer to Legislature".