Brutal Attack on Trans Woman Far From the Only Stain on This Southeast Dallas Apartment's Ledger

The TV cameras came Monday to the Royal Crest Apartments, another in a long line of Dallas complexes you've heard about for all the wrong reasons. Activists had called a news conference to protest the savage beating of a transgender woman that occurred there Friday evening, after a traffic accident turned violent, hateful. Outside the fence line, near E. Overton Road, reporters formed their semi-circle, asked their questions, got their sound bites about the "mob violence" that occurred at the complex.Inside the fence, past the two cop cars that guarded the complex's main driveway, two women captured Monday's spectacle on cellphones. They didn't say much or give their names. One said only that the TV cameras were late. She said they should have been here a week ago, a month ago, a year ago.I asked the woman with gold-capped teeth what the place is like. She rolled her eyes at me.But I knew, because I'd seen the crime stats and police reports from Royal Crest — dozens of them in the last two years, including assaults with balled fists and loaded weapons, domestic violence, thefts, drugs, calls for family violence and the shooting of a woman just the night before, the cause of which remains under investigation. Some residents think the attack was in retaliation for the beating of Muhlaysia Booker, captured on video and rendered a national headline. Investigators and officers who I spoke with at the apartment Monday weren't so sure.  Continue reading...