Asylum Mobilitarium: November 2014

Rounding out the year 1977 I have an article from earlier in the year from the Dallas Morning News that should be reported again.

On August 5, 1977 the DMN’s famed police reporter (and as a young rookie had the pleasure to meet) Jim Ewell wrote that Dallas police officer George Wilson claimed in a suit that he was slandered by an Oak Cliff youth, his mother and two ministers when they all appeared before the Dallas city council and charged the officer with brutality and that the officer planted marijuana on the youth to justify his arrest.

Officer Wilson who was a 3 member of the DPD, was seeking $40,000 in damages in the suit.

Lt. Charles Burnley, president of the Dallas Police Association which is paying for the officers legal expenses, said that the suit served as a warning to citizens who were making false charges against members of the department and association. Burnley announced the filing of the lawsuit at a City Hall news conference and that this lawsuit was the fifth backed by the DPA since the implementation of the association’s hardline posture on false complaints about police officers 2.5 years before. Burnley stated that “From the standpoint of the association, we’re trying to impress on the people if you’ve got a legitimate complaint, come down here and make it. If you’re going to come down here and tell some untruths and lie about a police officer, we’re going to do our best to make you pay for it.”

Burnley said that an internal investigation cleared the officer of the allegations and that the complaining youth (actually 17 years old) subsequently was arrested and charged with perjury on action instigated by the police department.

The investigation was originally ordered by the police department after a group led by the 17 year olds minister appeared before the council on June 17^th and outlined the allegations about Officer Wilson and a park police officer stemming from the arrest on June 7^th at the Singing Hills Recreation Center in Oak Cliff. The ministers asked the council to act immediately to cool racial tensions in Oak Cliff that were stirred by the officer’s actions.

In the lawsuit Wilson charged that the minister used the term “Gestapo tactics” in public statements about the officer and called him “unprofessional.” Another member of the group appearing in front of the city council stated that Officer Wilson struck the youth’s mother with a car door and assisted the park police officer in inflicting injuries on the youth.

In another investigation, a park board investigation found that the park police officer did not violate city policy and was cleared of all allegations.

In other news the Dallas Fire Department divers in retrieving a car that plunged into Bachman Lake from the Lemmon Avenue bridge, found more than they were looking for. On December 10^th, a Garland accountant and a female passenger, who was the former daughter-in-law of a then Texas state representative, somehow drove through a temporary barricade early Friday morning on the bridge and the car rolled or drove into the cold waters of the lake. The female pulled the accountant from the car and pulled him to the shoreline. She then flagged down Officer John Allen and R.J. Makowski about 2 a.m. on Lemmon Avenue. The officers gave mouth to mouth resuscitation to the male while waiting for the paramedics. The male however never recovered and was announced dead at the scene from drowning.

Fire department divers attached cables to the sunken car to pull it from the lake when they discovered a CB radio antenna sticking out of the water near the car. In further investigation, the divers found a truck with two occupants that apparently had driven off the same bridge at the same spot as the car (thus destroying the guardrail, the reason for the temporary barricade that the car hit) and the truck then went into the water. The two men in the truck had drowned according to investigators. The father of one of the truck’s occupants said that he had not seen is son in about a week.

Okay one would wonder how the city workers who replaced the guardrail with a temporary one, had not looked over into the 8-10 foot deep water and seen the antenna as they were working or thought “ Hey I wonder how this happened?” Or “Heck it looks like a car rolled over the guardrail. I wonder what happened to the vehicle that smashed it?” It would not have helped the two men in the truck but…

In an article that came out just before Christmas 1977 the Dallas city council approved a plan that says that a bar owner cannot transfer ownership of his/her bar in the heart of old East Dallas. Several homeowners groups in the area had for years complained about the bars, some of which had been at the same location for decades, were havens for drunks and prostitution, thus hindering the revitalization of the area for new homeowners that want to restore and rebuild the old homes in the area.

The decision means that a bar owner cannot sell the establishment if he wants to quit the business. The only way that a prospective operator can continue to serve alcoholic beverages at the same location would be to apply for a mixed drink license from the City. The ordinance would also give the Chief of police to turn down any application for a license if the applicant had been convicted of sexual solicitation, public lewdness or promotion of prostitution. Conviction of gambling, carrying an unlawful weapon or possession of illegal drugs would also be grounds for turning done a dance hall permit. Pretty much anything that one might think would occur in an old, seedy bar.

It’s not known if these new ordinances, and the reasons that they could be turned down, reduced the amount of dance hall applications inside the area of Old East Dallas. Probably.