Reporting arrests versus reporting convictions

I often wonder why it is that the news reports arrests, but doesn't follow up with the results of arrests, unless it's a high profile case. Anyone can be arrested: me, you, grandpas, grandmas. It doesn't mean a person is guilty.

Actually, we all know why the news reports arrests. It's easy gossip and it's a "look-a-here" tactic to get eyes on a page. Arrests are also easy information to come by; it's not so easy to get the results of an arrest, be it a dismissal or conviction, or one of the many other words to describe a judicial outcome.

Here's an example of the difficulty in finding records. In Nolan County, during 2019, there was a series of drug busts resulting in 27 arrests. First, I looked on the Nolan County Online Records Search page to see what sentences the accused received. I couldn't find any records about the charges. By the way, if you want to look, go to Guest Login>Continue to use the site without an account.

Then, I went to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Inmate Information site. I found that eight of the 27 were currently in prison, one on unrelated charges. This was just a topical perusal, using the names as spelled by the news outlet.

I looked up a couple of the suspects on the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal History Name Search page. It's $3.25 per search, so I only looked up about ten people. Some got six months probation, some were paroled, and some of them appear to have not been charged. A few had gone to prison for other offenses.

Looking on court websites led to more frustration and a headache. 32nd District Court, 1st Multi-County Court, 11th Court of Appeals, PACER, TAMES, etc. & etc.

Anyway, I wanted to demonstrate that an arrest is only a half-told story and that getting "the rest of the story", as Paul Harvey would say, is not always easy, and sometimes seemingly impossible.

Here are the rabbit holes I went down while researching this article:

-State Bar of Texas Ineligible Attorneys 

-State Bar of Texas Discipline Report April 2021

-Litigation Strategies LLC, former attorney John Young's latest endeavor

-Texas Taxable Entity Search, an oldie, one of my favorites

Update on internet

- Behold, the internet -

The latest and greatest in my search for a country connection is a little Netgear hotspot gadget. It's about the size of a handheld transistor radio (hahahaha, whatever that is, mine was red in 1978). I bought it refurbished or second-hand because a new one costs too much. I buy a $55 AT&T pre-paid wireless card for 100 gigabytes per month. It sounds simple, but it was hard to figure out. 

First I took the device to an AT&T store and they set me up on a $65 plan. I was told it was unlimited. That was $10 more than I had seen advertised, but I thought it would be worth it not to run out of data. 

It was not worth it, it was not unlimited, and the price kept changing every month, up. Finally, when I was automatically charged by-the-byte for going over whatever random number they decided was past unlimited, I cancelled it.

I went to Walmart, got the card, set up the hotspot, now I'm rolling. That was not an easy process, though. It took a couple of days of trying over and over to get it going, and I can't even tell you what the magic combination was that finally worked. It just finally did. So far it's good, when I run out there are no overcharges. No internet, but no overcharges.

I was pretty excited when I read that internet was to be expanded to rural communities by using electric structures already in place (poles) to run fiber cable, but then I read that it was going to towns that already have good internet. Even small towns like Rotan or Loraine already have fast and large data service. I still think that incentivizing AT&T to replace their ground fiber would be a real good start.