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Most Recent in Politics:

1The Cost of Carve-Outs

2Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

3Meet Maria Espinoza, the Texan Elevating ‘Angel Moms’ to the National Stage

4Democrats Finally Play Hardball on the Border Wall

5‘We Got Nothing:’ Few Wins for the Christian Right in the 86th Texas Legislature

6‘All it Took was 25 Years’: Legislature Ponies Up Cash for Underfunded Texas Parks

Most Recent in Environment:

1‘All it Took was 25 Years’: Legislature Ponies Up Cash for Underfunded Texas Parks

2Carbon Sequestration Isn’t The Long-Term Solution. Is it a Short-Term One?

3Report: Oil and Gas Producers May Be Pushing the Permian Basin Past Federal Air Quality Limits

4The EPA Told Texas to Crack Down on Dangerous Air Emissions in 2015. The State Never Did, and Now It Won’t Have to.

5The Flood Next Time

6Port of Corpus Christi Pushes Ahead with Oil Terminal Project, Environment Be Damned

Most Recent in Border:

1Meet Maria Espinoza, the Texan Elevating ‘Angel Moms’ to the National Stage

2Democrats Finally Play Hardball on the Border Wall

3Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

4With Proposed Tariffs on Mexico, Trump Attacks Texas

5When Crossing Over Becomes a Deadly Game

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Death Penalty Reform Bill Gets Watered Down to ‘Nothing’ Before Passing Senate

2With a Bizarre Assist by Democrats, Police Groups Kill Bill to Limit Arrests for Fine-Only Offenses

4‘The Penal System Today is Slavery’: Lawmakers Finally Start to Talk About Unpaid Labor in Texas Prisons

5Four Years Later, Sandra Bland’s Arrest Continues to Sow Distrust in Law Enforcement

6Immune from Justice

Most Recent in Education:

1The Cost of Carve-Outs

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Texas House Considers Free College For Students Experiencing Homelessness

4‘The Wolf is in the Henhouse’

5‘We’re Not Stupid’: Texas Teachers Take on Dan Patrick and the Legislature over Dismal Education Funding

6In Violation of Texas Law, Most High Schools Aren’t Giving Students the Chance to Register to Vote

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Yet Another Rural Texas Hospital is in Jeopardy After Anti-Tax Activists Kill Funding Proposal

2Texas Legislature Improves Suicide Prevention in Schools, but Makes Little Progress for Adults

3Inside Texas’ Failed Experiment to Replace Planned Parenthood with an Anti-Abortion Group

5Texans with Disabilities are Struggling to Find Health Care Attendants. Lawmakers Didn’t Do Much to Help.

6Texas Legislature Set to (Slightly) Expand Medical Marijuana Access

Most Recent in The Interview:

2The Interview: Mass Resistance

3Meet Jim Allison, Texas’ Newest Nobel Laureate (and Three-Time Cancer Survivor)

4Dolores Huerta is Still Knocking on Doors and Registering Voters at 88

5The Interview: Veronica Escobar is Poised to Make History

6Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps

Most Recent in Books:

1‘Human Matter’ Dredges up the Dark History of the Guatemalan Civil War

2With Sprawl and Serial Killers, Houston Noir Packs a Mean Punch

3When Crossing Over Becomes a Deadly Game

4Beasts of the Border

5Invasive Species Have Reshaped Texas. Now What?

6A New Crime Novel Asks Tough Questions About Revenge and Redemption

Most Recent in Features:

1Washington Crossing the Rio Grande

2Ghosts of the Baker Hotel

3At Home in the World

4Plight at the Museum

5The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018

6East Texas Photographer Captures 50 Years of Haunting, Ordinary Magic

Most Recent in Essay:

1Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

2The Trouble with Yoga

3Heads in the Mud

4The Day the Windows Shook

5Women’s Work

6I Grew Up on the Texas-Mexico Border, but Now I Barely Recognize It

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

2Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

3Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

4Eye on Texas: Ghosts of the City

5Eye on Texas: Fiesta Protesta

6Eye on Texas: Remembering Draylen Mason

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

2Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

3Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

4Parallel Planes

6Poem: ‘Resistance’

Tag Archives: Law enforcement corruption

by Forrest Wilder

The 10 Best Observer Stories of 2016: ‘Above the Law’

Pamela Elliott was the new sheriff in town. But instead of law and order, she brought chaos.

Fri, Dec 30, 2016 |

Editor’s Note: Rural America is too often forgotten or ignored by the media. Journalists and major media outlets are in the big cities. Reporters usually ...Read More

by Melissa del Bosque and Patrick Michels

Homeland Insecurity

Want to run drugs, smuggle migrants and get away with it? Join America’s biggest law enforcement agency.

Mon, Dec 7, 2015 |

What good are more boots on the ground if the men and women wearing them also work for the cartels? What benefit is an 18-foot wall when criminals can bribe the...Read More

by Melissa del Bosque

Former Border Sheriff Sentenced for Money Laundering

Thu, Jul 17, 2014 |

Guadalupe “Lupe” Treviño, the former sheriff of Hidalgo County and once one of the most powerful lawmen on the border, was sentenced to five years in jail ...Read More

by Melissa del Bosque

Embattled Border Sheriff Lupe Treviño Resigns

Fri, Mar 28, 2014 |

Embattled Hidalgo County Sheriff Guadalupe “Lupe” Treviño—one of the border’s most powerful law enforcement officials, whose office has been roiled wit...Read More

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño

by Melissa del Bosque

Border Trial That Exposed Police Corruption Ends In Guilty Verdict

Tue, Aug 6, 2013 |

The jury deliberated for three hours this afternoon before finding former lawman Jorge Garza guilty of conspiring to possess more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana...Read More

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