Dallas County being sued for false imprisonment

Specifically, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Lupe Valdez, for false imprisonment issues.

The plaintiff? Lancaster ISD orchestra director Theresa Dobbs, who made national news headlines two years ago after being “forgotten” in Dallas County’s Lew Sterrett Justice Center, aka the Dallas County Jail, for three days before finally bonding out.

For those of you not familiar with the story, in late 2005, Dobbs got a ticket for driving without a seat belt after being busted in a mall parking lot. She intended to fight the ticket, but entered the wrong court date in her day planner. Well, at the end of August, and the start of the Lancaster ISD school year, a zealous Dallas County constable’s officer, Ronald Bostic (perhaps overzealous, to put it mildly), showed up at Lancaster High School with a warrant.

Then, it got Kafkaesque. Due to paperwork mixups, misfilings, a screwy system, etc., she got forgotten about for three days. Basically, a clerk didn't retrieve her paperwork from a tray, and she wasn't placed on the daily municipal court docket. The morning and afternoon “cattle calls” for bail hearings? She never got called.

It gets worse. A friend came by, thinking she was there, to bail her out. The sheriff’s department said she wasn’t there.

Finally, she asked a person in the next holding cell, when that person got out, to contact the “outside world.”

Lupe Valdez has already faced enough problems over Lew Sterrett that I cannot believe she wouldn’t settle this, even if Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins is advising otherwise.

Add to that a $17 million county budget shortfall, and I don’t get why the county won’t settle.

But, nooh. (And I’ve heard that Valdez not Watkins, is the holdup on a settlement anyway).

Instead, with general election season just around the corner, this baby’s going to trial in July.

Not being a registered Democrat, AND someone who thinks the idea of electing sheriff’s is stupid, this is all enough to make one seriously consider pulling the level for Lowell Cannady.

As a point of snark, somebody has started a MySpace page for Lew Sterrett.