Dallas Hires its First Female Police Chief: Your Roundup

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Actually, I use humor all the time. People fail to pick up on it.”

—Governor Greg Abbott to KOKE-FM radio on Wednesday, according to the Austin American-Statesman. Abbott had just cracked a joke about dancing on the steps of the Capitol should all twenty of his special agenda items pan out. But the radio host didn’t get the joke, so Abbott was forced to explain that he’s “a paraplegic in a wheelchair” and won’t be dancing anytime soon.

BIG NEWS

A Dallas police officer drives near the scene where eleven Dallas police officers were shot and five have now died on July 8, 2016.Ron Jenkins/Getty

New Leader—The Dallas Police Department has hired its first-ever female chief, according to the Dallas Morning News. Ulysha Renee Hall was named the Big D’s top cop on Wednesday, and will officially take over in September. She comes to DPD from Detroit, where she was the deputy chief of police. Dallas has been working with an interim chief ever since David Brown retired last October. According to the Morning News, three DPD insiders applied for the job—Deputy Chiefs Malik Aziz and Rick Watson and Assistant Chief Gary Tittle—but Dallas chose an outsider, which it has done often in the past few decades.”The Dallas Police Department—that’s about to be my family,” Hall said at a news conference in Detroit, according to the Morning News. “We are a family in blue already, but as their new leader, we’re going to be just like family.” As the Morning News notes, women now lead the three most powerful law enforcement positions in Dallas—the Dallas County Sheriff is Lupe Valdez and the District Attorney is Faith Johnson. “What I need women to know [is] that we kind of do it a little different, a little better, a little bit more nurturing by nature,” Hall said. “We add that special something to law enforcement that truly, truly calms that savage beast.”

MEANWHILE, IN TEXAS

Cool Down—A federal judge ordered a Texas prison to provide air conditioning for its most heat-sensitive inmates, the latest development in a long legal battle by inmates seeking air conditioning. According to the Houston Chronicle, U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison ruled on Wednesday that the state must provide cooler living spaces for 475 elderly, disabled and other heat-sensitive inmates at the Pack Unit outside Houston, not exceeding 88 degrees, and a thousand other inmates must have easy access to cooler areas indoors. The prison also has to develop a heat-wave policy. Wrongful death lawsuits have separately been filed on behalf of eight inmates who died from heat stroke in Texas, and at least 20 prisoners have died from the heat since 1998. Ellison ripped into the Texas prison system in his 100-page order. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” Ellison wrote. “To deny modern technology to inmates today for the simple reason that it was not available to inmates in past generations is an argument that proves too much. No one suggests that inmates should be denied up-to-date medical and psychiatric care, or that they should be denied access to radio or television, or that construction of prison facilities should not use modern building materials. The treatment of prisoners must necessarily evolve as society evolves.”

Cash Cow—Governor Greg Abbott has some really rich friends. He pulled in a ridiculous $10 million toward his re-election campaign in just ten days, including $1 million from Michael and Mary Porter of the Cross Creek Ranch in Doss, a tiny Gillespie County town northwest of Fredericksburg, Texas Monthly‘s R.G. Ratcliffe reported on Wednesday. The Porters are cattle ranchers, and they haven’t been particularly politically active in the past. Other than $5,000 donated to Abbott in 2014, their only other political contribution was $50,000 to state Representative Doug Miller in 2016. “My wife Mary and I care deeply about the future of Texas,” Michael Porter wrote in an email to Texas Monthly. “We believe Governor Abbott has put forth a vision to keep Texas exceptional, and we wanted to do our part in supporting that effort. While we understand the interest this has drawn, we would respectfully decline to comment on further questions.”

Party Protest—A group of teens held a unique protest in Austin yesterday, donning colorful quinceañera and tiaras on the steps of the Capitol to oppose Senate Bill 4. About fifteen girls attended the protest, which included a dance and speeches, according to the Dallas Morning News, wearing sashes that read “No hate,” “Equality” and “United Families.” A quinceañera, of course, is a formal “sweet sixteen”-type birthday party celebrated in Latino culture. “SB 4 makes simply being brown a crime,” 17-year old protester Magdalena Juarez said, according to the San Antonio Express-News. “We will resist by celebrating our families and our culture. We will resist by standing in unity.” SB 4 bans so-called “sanctuary cities” in Texas, and critics of the law say it enables local law enforcement to racially profile Hispanic people and will result in unnecessary deportations. It is set to go into effect in September.