It’s been more than two weeks since three San Antonio police officers found Melissa Perez in a mental health crisis. Three of the officers called to the scene fatally shot her. The shooting appears to be unjustified and could have been avoided. The three officers involved were quickly charged with murder. Perez’s family has filed a lawsuit against SAPD saying the incident is just the latest example of a culture of excessive force at the department, and there’s ample evidence that it doesn’t properly supervise its armed officers. Disciplinary records of two of the officers raise questions about how the city holds its officers accountable. Texas Public Radio Accountability Reporter Paul Flahive has the latest developments in the story.
Mass Shootings
A converted yellow school bus has been making an unusual trek across America. This week it stopped in Texas—in Santa Fe, Uvalde and then El Paso— which are all locations of horrific mass shootings. The school bus is part of a new effort to raise awareness about gun violence and the call to pass gun law reforms. David Martin Davies caught up with Guac’s Magical Tour in Uvalde.
Omnibase Nightmare
A Texas program that was created to assist people to pay their debt from old traffic tickets is failing in that mission. The program is called Omnibase, and critics say it’s trapping low-income people in a spiral of debt and red tape. It’s also making Texas roads less safe because many are forced to drive with a suspended driver's license. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, there are more than 981,000 Texans with outstanding Omnibase holds, meaning they aren’t able to renew their driver’s licenses until they satisfy their court debt. More than 610,000 of them have licenses that have expired that can’t be renewed until they satisfy their underlying tickets to get the holds lifted. From Dallas KERA's Christopher Connelly has more.
Disaster Hubs
As Climate Change fuels more frequent and more extreme weather disasters, the idea of neighborhood-level resilience hubs is spreading across the country from New Orleans to Los Angeles. They're being set up by both nonprofits and local governments, including in Houston where hurricanes, flooding, deep freezes and other natural disaster are never far from the mind of the residents.
Houston Public Media Environmental Reporter Katie Watkins got a tour of an emergency hub.
Texas Asteroid Crater
Just outside of Odessa there’s a small national natural landmark identifying one of the only known asteroid craters in the country. It doesn’t look like much. There are rocks jutting out of the ground and signs warning visitors to watch out for snakes. But about 60,000 years ago, when woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers roamed the Earth, this was the impact site when an asteroid slammed into what is now known as West Texas. A researcher is taking a closer look at Odessa’s Meteor Crater to see what she can find to help humanity respond to future asteroid strikes. Marfa Public Radio’s Mitch Borden takes us there.
Ukrainian Soccer Camp
For years, a group in Abilene has hosted summer soccer camps for refugee children who’ve resettled there. But this summer, they took their game on the road. As KACU’s Heather Claborn reports, the volunteers just returned from Warsaw, Poland, where they held a soccer camp for Ukrainian refugees.
Meow Wolf
A new immersive art experience called Meow Wolf is opening at Grapevine Mills mall this week in the DFW area. KERA’s Michelle Aslam got a first-look tour of the exhibit, and she got a little lost along the way.
