dankusner

OPINION

Gentrification, and dog, gone wild

Monday started in a northwest Dallas park talking to a trail walker about a broken water fountain.

It ended in a southern Dallas neighborhood with a stray dog tearing my jeans while sinking its teeth in my right calf.

In between, I freaked out a few nannies in a branch library for asking a few too many questions about furloughs and entertaining infants on brutally hot days.

I ran into a housing nonprofit CEO at a barbecue joint.

And I followed a few cops into the floodway as they questioned a man nicknamed Wolf, who city employees say lives in the abandoned Argos concrete plant across the street, for refusing to leave his perch beneath the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.

I woke up planning to work on something else, but everything I needed to write that column is on the city’s website, which was down Monday.

As metaphors go, the city being offline is a bit too on the nose.

So, instead, I got in the car without a destination, my favorite way to spend a day.

It took a few side trips and pit stops to get there, but eventually I wound up on South Corinth Road, near Roosevelt High School.

I made a random left turn onto Warsaw Drive, which runs parallel to the Roosevelt football field, and landed in the driveway of a three-story half-million-dollar house owned by a Flower Mound-based LLC that has Modern Treehouse vibes.

That house, which sold in November, wasn’t here two years ago.

Neither were several other modern homes built, or being constructed, along Avenue B or Faulk or Crete or Sicily streets down here in Cedar Crest, where the ride can be rough and shuttered churches and vacant lots used as dumping grounds sit next to construction sites.

“They’ve all gone up in the last year,” said 22-year-old Lania Mixon, who lives on Sicily.

She was sitting on the front porch talking on the phone when I stopped by.

She was relieved to find out I wasn’t trying to buy the place.

Mixon has enough new neighbors as it is.

Like the couple in the big house across the street.

They seem nice enough, she said.

Except residents say they keep to themselves, as does the woman around the corner in the funky new wood-slat complex with the fake lawn.

The newcomers didn’t answer their doors Monday.

The lifers were happy to talk.

Mixon’s great-grandmother used to own this house, which the Dallas Central Appraisal District estimates was built in 1945.

Her whole family was raised or still lives here — “mom, cousins, grandma, her siblings.”

And so on.

And not a day goes by, she said, that some developer or investor doesn’t call or stop by to ask about buying the house, Mixon said.

Been happening for years.

Except now it’s worse than ever.

“I wish they’d call to offer to help fix the house rather than buy it,” she said.

“You know these old houses. Always something wrong.”

Which doesn’t escape the council member for District 4.

The very morning after my visit, Maxie Johnson’s office dispatched a media release announcing that Volunteers of America Texas will use $2 million in tax increment financing funds to fix up the older homes being overshadowed by new builds.

An additional $4 million, he said, will go toward rehabbing nearby 10th Street, whose neglect might be the most historic thing about it at this late date.

“I see a lot of two-, three-story houses sitting over those old homes, and I don’t support that,” Johnson told me Tuesday.

“We should be able to preserve these neighborhoods. Some developers don’t like that approach. In fact, I don’t even talk to developers unless I have someone from the neighborhood at the table with me. I am not going to support pushing out residents with new builds and high prices. I believe we should be pro-neighborhood and pro-business at the same time. You can do both.”

Mixon figures that sooner or later, this neighborhood will tilt toward the new.

In 10 years, she guessed, it won’t look the same — the houses, the people.

She said one of the newcomers came from California.

“Every time a house is finished, someone moves in, like they’re just waiting for it,” she said.

“They never sit empty.”

Except, maybe, for a couple of new builds on Faulk, which longtime residents say are being rented out as Airbnbs, bringing with them visitors who make a lot of noise for a few days before moving on.

As Mixon and I spoke, a couple of loose dogs ran up and started barking, loud enough that we couldn’t hear each other.

She said she didn’t think they’d bite.

A man who lives on Crete, dressed in Sherwin-Williams painters’ clothes stained after a day’s work, came out to curse and chase off the dogs.

He introduced himself as 70-year-old Mario Lopez, and said he, too, gets about 10 calls a day from developers, builders and investors trying to buy his house and the rent house he owns across the narrow street.

“Ten calls a day,” he said.

“At least .”

He said he’s lived here for 40 years, long enough to remember when this was an undesirable neighborhood.

“It was pretty bad,” he said. “It’s OK now. But these new houses …”

Lopez said he saw this coming a decade ago, back when he was painting the new houses that began transforming swaths of Oak Cliff and West Dallas that are no longer recognizable to longtime residents who pushed for area plans seemingly written in invisible ink.

He pointed over his fence, toward Sicily, where it dead-ends into a thicket of trees separating it from Corinth.

“There are two empty lots there,” he said.

“And if that guy sells, I may have to. Because I won’t be able to have something like that right next to me. The taxes alone! But we’ll see.”

We parted ways when Lopez’s young grandson came out to play.

A few steps toward Sicily, I thought I’d been shot in the back of the leg.

That dog came out of nowhere; so, too, the steady stream of expletives that caused Lopez’s wife to rush out with a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol filled with eucalyptus leaves.

“We are fighting against these wild dogs, stray animals,” Johnson said Tuesday morning.

“I’ve been talking to animal services, and we have a meeting about that soon. Streets, strays — a lot of things that influence public safety. The council is on recess. But I’m still working for these neighborhoods.”

Just be careful, I told him.

Because these streets bite back.

The New York Times says the Trump team is looking for the sources of its reporters who wrote about the new Air Force One.

The Trump administration sought the phone records of several New York Times journalists and their relatives — including one reporter’s mother — in its effort to unmask the confidential sources who had provided information for articles about the security capabilities of President Donald Trump’s new Air Force One jet.

The Justice Department told the Times late last week that it had issued subpoenas to third-party phone service providers seeking several journalists’ phone and text messaging records.

That effort was in addition to the subpoenas issued July 10 that sought to compel reporters to testify before a federal grand jury.

The government’s actions amount to an extraordinarily aggressive and unorthodox attempt by the Trump administration to unearth the confidential sources of independent journalists whose reporting had angered the president.

The additional subpoenas — which also sought information about calls and messages on the phones of two of the reporters’ spouses — were described in a motion filed Saturday by lawyers for the Times, seeking to quash the requests.

The motion was unsealed Monday morning by Judge Arun Subramanian of U.S. District Court in New York City.

The government began a leak investigation into the Times’ coverage days after the news outlet reported earlier this month that federal officials harbored significant concerns about the security capabilities of Trump’s new, Qatari- donated Air Force One jet.

Trump was enraged by that reporting, and the White House directed the FBI director, Kash Patel, to oversee the investigation.

The president had flown on the Qatari-built jet to Turkey, touting its gilded interior to reporters, but then departed on the older Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service.

Asked Sunday about the security issues, Trump said that the new jet would be “maxed out” in “about a month or so,” suggesting it could get additional defensive capabilities to match the standards of the older jets used for presidential travel.

All the subpoenas have been paused until Subramanian rules on the Times’ motion to quash.

A hearing is scheduled on the matter for Thursday in New York City.

In its motion Saturday, the Times said that the Justice Department had violated its own guidelines for media subpoenas when it waited a week to notify the Times about the phone record requests, calling the delay “deeply concerning.”

The news outlet also laid out a series of events that it said amounted to a “bad-faith effort to intimidate the journalists and chill their ability to report on the administration.”

The Times said that two of the government’s subpoenas sought phone records dating back to Jan. 1, many months before the Times reported on the Air Force One security concerns.

“That time frame strongly suggests that the department is using this investigation not to focus on any purported concerns arising from the July 8 and 9 articles, but instead to forage for information about the journalists’ source relationships more broadly,” the newspaper wrote.

Rose Garden

WASHINGTON

Trump displays Rose Garden statues by Dallas businessman

President Donald Trump has installed a number of new statues in the Rose Garden, including three on loan from Dallas businessman Harlan Crow, a spokesperson for Crow confirmed.

The statues recently added to the Rose Garden include depictions of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, as well as a sculpture called “Freedom’s Charge,” which honors Revolutionary War soldiers.

The Franklin, Hamilton and “Freedom’s Charge” had been installed at Crow’s Old Parkland corporate campus in Dallas, the Crow spokesperson confirmed.

The White House has not previously disclosed where the statues originated, saying only that they were on loan from “generous private American patriots.”

The White House declined to comment on Crow’s loan of the statues.

A spokesman wrote in a statement that the president is pushing “to beautify and honor our Nation’s Capital during America’s historic 250 anniversary celebrations.”

The newest piece is, reportedly, a statue of Thomas Jefferson that depicts the third president seated with a draft of the Declaration of Independence. It was sculpted by George Lundeen, who said he received a congratulatory call from Trump this month.

“I just wanted to thank you. The sculpture looks really beautiful,” Trump told Lundeen, in audio that Lundeen shared with some members of the media.

On Sunday, Trump posted a flurry of messages related to his Washington renovation projects to Truth Social, including photos of cleaned-up statues outside of the White House and Union Station.

“Freedom’s Charge” — a sculpture by Chas Fagan, who Trump appointed to the Commission of Fine Arts during his first term, and is on loan from Crow — also now sits in the Rose Garden.

The sculpture features two life-size figures of American soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War.

Crow, a billionaire real estate mogul who has donated to a wide array of Republican politicians and been linked to conservative figures such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had previously distanced himself from Trump.

In a lengthy piece in The Atlantic in 2023, Crow said he had self-diagnosed with “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and he supported Trump’s rival Nikki Haley in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Travis County panel heard three days of testimony before 457-day hiatus in the case

On the third day of an August 2024 trial against former Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody and an assistant county attorney, prosecutors interrupted the proceeding to announce that they were challenging a judge’s decision against them to a higher court.

The move prompted state District Judge Karen Sage to halt the proceeding at a highly unusual moment.

But before excusing 12 jurors and two alternates, she told them that “you are still on the jury” and that they should refrain from discussing the case and continue to be available.

“We are just on a little hiatus,” she told them.

The jurors never returned to court.

But they are set to receive about $27,000 each for their service.

Defense attorneys for Chody and Jason Nassour argued in a Monday hearing that because jurors were never “discharged from their duties,” they should be paid for the standard set daily rate of $58 for 457 days, minus weekends and holidays, while the case was winding through the courts.

Travis County Assistant District Attorney Dexter Gilford did not object to “even extraordinary measures to pay the jury,” according to a transcript.

Sage quickly approved the measure, adding, “they have been in limbo for a long time, so I think it’s fair. We can’t abuse the jury system.”

The bill to the Travis County District Clerk’s office, which pays jurors with a combination of state and county money, falls just below $374,000.

Paula Agor, retired director for the Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts, said the situation is unprecedented in her three decades of analyzing the work of juries nationally.

“It qualifies as wild for sure,” she said.

“But two years, that is a really long time to tell people not to talk, don’t read about the case and to be at our beck and call when we call you back.”

District Clerk Velva Price said she is reviewing Sage’s order.

State law says that jurors are entitled to compensation for each day they are “in attendance,” and the jurors would otherwise get about $175 each for their three days of duty.

Whether the definition of “in attendance” means physically in the courtroom is unclear.

The funds likely would come from Price’s budget, for which she received $855,354 this year and has $508,000 remaining until the end of September for juror pay.

The state typically reimburses $52 of the $58 the county pays for jury duty.

A complicated case

The unusual decision ends what had been highly contentious and complicated cases against Chody and Nassour.

The prosecution arose out of their alleged actions in 2019 when Williamson County deputies, with crews from a reality TV show alongside, chased Javier Ambler II from Round Rock to Austin in a pursuit that started because he failed to dim his headlights.

Ambler crashed his car and deputies used Tasers to try to subdue him as he shouted that he could not breathe.

He died a short time later.

A Travis County jury later acquitted the deputies on manslaughter charges.

Prosecutors alleged that Chody and Nassour took steps in both Williamson and Travis counties to prevent the television show footage from becoming part of the investigation before it was reportedly deleted.

The only video that existed from the encounter was that of an Austin police officer who arrived at the scene as the confrontation unfolded.

Prosecutors, who have never publicly described the actions they think Chody and Nassour took, opted to try the case in Austin.

Before the trial started, attorneys for the two said their clients would have violated federal law had they seized the video and argued the case shouldn’t go to trial because federal law “preempted” state prosecution.

Then, early in the proceeding, Sage said that prosecutors must seek permission before presenting evidence about the video.

Prosecutors, believing that Sage had gutted their case, informed her they would appeal to the 3rd Court of Appeals.

That’s when the trial was interrupted.

Austin attorney Richard Wetzel, who specializes in appellate law, said such actions after a trial is underway are highly unusual and left Sage with few options.

Sage “was perfectly justified in recessing the proceeding until the state’s appeal was concluded,” he said.

He said judges in some instances will delay a trial for a few days during a pending appeal should higher courts rule quickly.

Instead, the battle in the case played out for nearly two years.

First, the higher court sided with the state, then reversed its ruling, before the matter was appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which declined to review the case and allowed a favorable ruling for Chody and Nassour to stand.

Along the way, attorney Keith Hampton, who represents Nassour, cited his concern about the jurors in at least one motion, saying the case “uprooted both these jurors’ committed service and their ordinary lives” which were “all still on hold.”

Prosecutors then decided earlier this month to drop the cases.

“The trial court prevented the State from presenting evidence of Mr. Chody and Mr. Nassour’s guilt,” Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said in a statement.

Payment is ‘absurd’

In the Monday hearing, Hampton proposed that Sage’s order awarding jurors the fees include a sentence that targeted prosecutors in their vigorous pursuit of the case, saying that “actions by county officials have consequences.”

Gilford, the lead prosecutor, objected to the statement but acknowledged they had “pursued our appellate rights to the extent that we could until they were exhausted.”

Hampton agreed to remove the language.

Sage would not comment about her decisions in the case, including paying the jurors.

Garza said in a statement that “jurors should be compensated for the three days they served. We are grateful for that service. This order, however, is absurd.”

Williamson County District Attorney Shawn Dick said that “this was a decision solely by a Travis County district court judge.

William Henry Hord settled permanently in Texas in 1845, on a high, tree-shaded ridge on the south side of the Trinity River that later became know as Hord’s Ridge.

Hord served as a Dallas justice of the peace, county judge, and was founder and vice president of the Dallas Pioneers Association.

He helped form the Dallas Light Artillery Battery; became brigadier general of the Texas Militia, in 1963;

and in 1866 signed resolutions approving the National Union Convention’s plan to restore all former Confederate states.

He presided over the formation of the county’s Conservative Party, and was a founded and trustee of the Oak Cliff Cemetery, where he and his wife, Mary (1807-1882) are interred.

Prior to Hord, in 1843, William Coombs (1833-1895) settled on the north bluff of the creek that carries his name

Moving from Tennessee, William Henry Hord and his wife Mary also settled here in 1845 and opened a boarding house.

The farming community in the area became known as Hord’s Ridge.

Nearby, Aaron Overton’s gristmill on Five Mile Creek provided a place for farmers to process their grain.

In 1879, the new Cleburne and Rio Grande Railway passed through Hord’s Ridge and a station was built there in 1882, opening the community to national transportation.

Built in 1845 by William H. Hord, this cabin served as the first permanent residence on the west side of the Trinity River, across from Dallas.

In 1926, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Weiss rescued the cabin from demolition and, in 1942, donated it to Post 275 of the American Legion and Auxiliary.

It received an historic landmark designation in 1962 and is now located on Cockrell Hill Road at the American Legion Post.

Peter Jaraysi, a Duluth truck accident lawyer at Slam Dunk Attorney

Federal regulations only require motor carriers to retain driver logbooks for six months.

Once that timeline expires, trucking companies routinely delete hours of service records along with electronic tracking data.

This standard administrative process legally erases the exact documentation needed to prove driver fatigue or mechanical failure.

Corporate defendants use short retention schedules to shield themselves from liability, allowing highly incriminating telematics information to vanish forever.

Action taken within the first few days determines whether the truth survives.

Waiting for an official police report often guarantees the loss of irrefutable digital footprints.

Time ruins everything.

How Electronic Data Vanishes Within Days

Modern commercial vehicles function like massive rolling computers equipped with sophisticated tracking mechanisms.

These onboard systems capture speed metrics and braking patterns leading up to an impact. Data vanishes extremely fast.

Companies maintain complete access to this digital footprint immediately following an incident.

They also control the servers where the fleet management software stores the telemetry.

Erasing Telematics And Engine Control Modules

The engine control module records catastrophic events, yet the memory bank won’t hold more than a few hard brakes before overwriting older data.

Moving the cab from the scene generally will not overwrite the hard-braking crash sequence, though it may alter ‘last stop’ data. Investigators must download the module immediately.

Overwriting Dash Camera Footage

Inward and outward-facing cameras constantly loop over existing video every few days.

Fleet managers can easily claim the hard drive was corrupted or simply let the system record over the collision footage.

Extracting the video requires specialized software to prevent accidental formatting.

Discarding Driver Logbooks

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules dictate short lifespans for paper and electronic logs.

Keeping accurate duty status reports prevents exhausted operators from causing these catastrophic incidents.

Unscrupulous managers frequently discard logs showing excessive driving hours to protect the corporate bottom line.

The Legal Concept Of Spoliation In Commercial Collisions

When a corporate entity alters or deletes relevant material in the course of impending litigation, courts apply the doctrine of spoliation.

Plaintiffs must demonstrate that the opposing party possessed the records, had a duty to preserve them, and intentionally or negligently destroyed the files.

Judges take this behavior seriously.

Proving deliberate tampering requires swift intervention before the company executes standard document retention policies.

“Under federal regulations, motor carriers are only obligated to preserve electronic log data for six months, meaning fleet management systems are often programmed to purge these files once that timeline expires automatically”, stated Peter Jaraysi, a Duluth truck accident lawyer at Slam Dunk Attorney, “If a formal preservation hold isn’t issued immediately, the direct electronic logging record is deleted, forcing investigators to reconstruct a driver’s hours-of-service violations through secondary data like GPS pings, dispatch logs, and fuel receipts.”

The Immediate Legal Action Required To Preserve Records

Halting the destruction of digital materials requires a formal spoliation letter.

This legally binding document places the motor carrier on notice regarding pending litigation and demands the preservation of all specified components. Issuing this demand triggers an absolute legal duty to override standard corporate deletion policies.

Failing to send the letter allows the company to hide behind routine administrative schedules.

Firms must specify exactly what needs protecting. A vague request accomplishes nothing.

The demand should list the engine control module and dispatch communications.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, motor vehicle collisions caused 41.241 fatalities in a single reporting year.

Negligent carriers possess a massive financial incentive to hide damaging documentation.

Judicial Penalties For Destroying Crash Evidence

When a corporate defendant intentionally destroys telematics data, trial judges possess broad authority to impose severe sanctions.

These penalties aim to level the playing field while punishing the offending party for obstructing justice.

Judges punish obstruction severely.

Sanctions take several distinct forms depending on the severity of the spoliation:

Adverse inference instructions force a jury to assume the destroyed items contained information detrimental to the motor carrier.

Exclusion of specific testimony prevents the trucking company from presenting accident reconstruction analysts who relied on the altered data.

Default judgments completely strike the defendant’s legal responses, automatically awarding liability to the plaintiff.

Imposing a default judgment remains rare but happens in egregious cases of systemic fraud.

According to the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors pursued civil fraud recoveries totaling $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2022.

Procedural tools exist to maintain the integrity of the civil justice system against such corporate deception.

Connecting Hours Of Service Violations To Missing Data

Commercial operators face strict federal limits regarding maximum driving hours to prevent fatigue on highways.

Companies aren’t above forcing drivers to manipulate their electronic logging devices to bypass these safety mandates.

Erasing this history conceals a widespread pattern of regulatory noncompliance.

Disparities emerge instantly.

Finding the truth requires looking beyond the missing logs themselves. Attorneys subpoena fuel receipts and weigh station timestamps to recreate the actual route. Discrepancies between the physical receipts and the submitted logs expose the deception immediately.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requires minimum liability coverage of $750,000 per commercial truck operating in interstate commerce.

This high financial exposure drives corrupt fleet managers to erase incriminating route data.

Because commercial trucking companies typically have major insurance carriers and rapid-response defense teams, obtaining an early, objective assessment of your case can be beneficial.

If you are facing such a situation in Duluth, Georgia, Slam Dunk Attorney offers cost-free initial evaluations to crash victims. To connect with their legal team, call (678) 329-9750 or visit their office suite at 2250 Satellite Blvd, Ste. 120, 10 minutes drive from Gwinnett County Public Library – Duluth Branch, Georgia.

A wrecked truck amid debris on an urban street, capturing post-disaster chaos and damage.

Investigating Beyond The Motor Carrier’s Files

When a corporate defendant purges internal records, external sources hold the key to liability.

Third-party vendors manage fleet communication systems and back up data on independent servers outside the trucking company’s control.

Subpoenaing these tech vendors bypasses internal data destruction entirely.

Cell phone providers store location pings and communication logs on centralized network servers.

Bypassing the motor carrier through these external subpoenas uncovers the exact evidence the company attempted to hide.

Questions About Truck Accident Evidence Destruction

How quickly do motor carriers delete electronic logging data after a collision?

Companies legally purge electronic hours of service data exactly six months after an incident under federal retention guidelines.

Sending a formal spoliation demand overrides this timeline.

Once that deadline passes without a preservation order, the telematics vanish permanently from the fleet management servers.

Can a damaged engine control module still provide vehicle speed data?

Forensic engineers extract vehicle speed and braking pressure even from heavily deformed engine modules.

The internal memory bank survives extreme impact forces.

However, while turning the ignition can alter specific operational logs or key-cycle counts, the actual sudden deceleration crash sequence is preserved in non-volatile memory.

What happens if the trucking company claims the dash camera malfunctioned?

Defense firms frequently allege camera hardware failure to hide damaging footage. Investigators combat this excuse by demanding the maintenance logs for the specific recording device.

Finding no reported technical issues before the collision strongly implies intentional formatting rather than a genuine mechanical failure.

Isabelle Jones

Author

Pauline Kael about Scarwid in this movie:

“There’s no vulgar life in Silkwood except for Diana Scarwid’s Angela, a cosmetician in a mortuary who has an affair with Dolly and lives with the three for a while. […] She prolongs syllables and twists meanings—she sounds like Jean Harlow as a Valley Girl. […] And it’s a lucky thing that Angela the cosmetician is around to ply her professional skills on this movie, because Silkwood is a stiff.”

Kael also notes that how the ending is unsatisfactory; Jane Fonda had previously tried and failed to secure Silkwood’s life rights, so instead she incorporated the car chase into The China Syndrome.

Tamika Ware, IBR Supervisor, UCR/LES, Austin-HO 

On February 1, 2016, Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Lieutenant Thomas Williams conducted in person an audio-recorded interview with IBR Supervisor Ware (Tab B - Audio Files). 

Lieutenant Williams furnished Ware with the Employees Responsibilities under Section 18.25, General Manual form. 

Ware signed and returned the form to Lieutenant Williams (Tab C). 

Lieutenant Williams questioned Ware's knowledge of the allegations levied against Training & Coordination Supervisor Rafael Martinez. 

Ware recalled an incident that occurred in approximately the first half of 2015 in which Martinez referred to Kusner as a "Fucking Faggot.” 

Ware stated that this incident occurred in Martinez’s office the week after Martinez returned from supervising Kusner in Kusner's area of responsibility, the Dallas Metroplex. 

Ware described Martinez as appearing frustrated when Martinez began to vent and express his (Martinez's) dislike for Kusner. 

It was assumed by Ware that Martinez disliked Kusner because Kusner was not catching on to the job as fast as the other field reps and because Kusner asks "why" a lot. 

According to Ware, Martinez stated that he (Martinez) and Kusner were traveling in the car together on the way to Dallas going over some basics about being a field rep and expectations of the job when Martinez addressed Kusner about his attire. 

Ware stated Martinez told Ware that some of Kusner's shirts expose Kusner' s stomach or midriff when Kusner raises Kusner's arms.

According to Ware, Martinez described Kusner as a "Fucking Faggot" when referring to Kusner's dress and mannerisms. 

Ware stated that Martinez would also vent to her (Ware) about the way in which Kusner prepares itineraries for travel to Kusner's assigned area. 

Ware stated that Ware was unsure if Martinez was just picking on Kusner because Ware has never heard Martinez complain about the way other employees organize their itineraries. 

During the conversation with Martinez, Ware described Martinez as "coming off condescending" and stated that Martinez never wanted Kusner to be hired in the first place. 

When asked to elaborate on what Martinez told Ware, Ware stated Martinez told Ware that Kusner, who was #3 at the time on the eligibility list to be hired, was hired by default because the DAD at the time of the Department, Randy Batten, is "Flaming.” 

Ware described this term to mean homosexual. 

Ware stated that Ware has never heard that term used to describe someone at DPS. 

Ware stated that it is her (Ware's) opinion that Martinez’s treatment of Kusner is based upon the fact that Martinez did not want Kusner hired because of Kusner's sexual orientation. 

Ware stated that Martinez told Ware that as soon as Kusner walked into the room (referring to when Kusner was first hired) that Martinez knew Kusner was gay. 

Although Ware has not witnessed Martinez interacting negatively directly with Kusner, Ware has witnessed Martinez's reaction when someone mentions Kusner's name. 

Ware stated that when someone mentions Kusner, Martinez would say, "Ahhhhh" and gestures by throwing his (Martinez's) hands up in the air. 

Ware believes that based upon Ware's conversation with Martinez that Martinez has enlisted the assistance of two female subordinates, Shawna Kilborn and Susan Langley, to spy on Kusner's Facebook and report the findings to Martinez. 

It was at this time that Martinez, according to Ware, asked Ware about the department's social media policy. 

Ware thought this was suspicious since Martinez has never asked about the social media policy before. 

Based upon the aforementioned actions of Martinez, Ware believed Martinez was doing this in an effort to say that Kusner was not performing his (Kusner's) job satisfactorily and to get justification for finding Kusner in violation of department policy. 

Ware recalled this discussion with Martinez as taking place in October or November 2015. 

Ware admitted to reporting Martinez for violating the Department’s Policy on Discrimination only because Kusner resigned from the agency. 

Ware admits that she (Ware) never discussed Kusner's sexuality or the reason for resigning with Kusner but assumed based upon Martinez’s characterization of Kusner that Kusner resigned as a result of Martinez's treatment of Kusner.