6 January 19-25, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Grayson says “landscape reparations” means there will be a tangible remembrance to honor someone who affected her neigh- bors there, and not some faceless person of questionable origin. She says that “this country was built on the backs of my ances- tors for free, and our neighborhoods should provide a reflection of that.” “Now I can look and see the name of someone who had the characteristics I want to tell my children about when we look up at that sign,” she says. “Dimple Jackson had the advocacy, the love for community, the love for humanity that should be honored.” She’s been gone for about three years now, but soon the street Dimple Jackson once walked to get to and from her bus every day will bear her name. In a symbolic way at least, this means her time being a hopeful beacon for her neighbors isn’t over, which makes sense to her son Robert Jackson, given her stellar record of service. “She was such an honorable person,” he says. “She had such a gift in that she could make so many contributions that made her community better.” ▼ CRIME ALL THE WRONG PLACES DATING APP ‘ROMANCE SCAMMER’ SENTENCED TO THREE YEARS. BY KELLY DEARMORE A North Texas man was sentenced on Monday to more than three years in federal prison for his role in a scam that victimized many people to the tune of thousands of dollars each, according to Leigha Simonton, the United States Attor- ney for the Northern District of Texas. Nige- rian-born Emanuel Stanley Orji, 36, pleaded guilty in September 2022 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud; his brother, Frederick Orji, 38, was sentenced to the same amount of prison time in December 2022. A state- ment also says the elder Orji “has ties to a Nigerian organized crime syndicate.” In a scenario that reads like the summary of a Netflix true crime documentary series, Orji and his fellow conspirators sought their victims, often elderly individuals, on dating apps such as Match.com and Bumbledate. com while assuming fake names. “Once they had ingratiated themselves with their victims, they concocted sob-sto- ries about why they needed money – i.e., taxes to release an inheritance, essential overseas travel, crippling debt, etc.” the statement said. “And then siphoned money from victims’ accounts, tens of thousands of dollars at a time.” The statement added: “In plea papers, Mr. Orji admitted that once he and his con- spirators had depleted the victims’ accounts of all the funds they were willing and able to send, often emptying their entire savings, the defendants stopped communicating with the victims.” Orji’s arrest in Sept. 2021 was a part of a large-scale operation led by the FBI that netted 35 indictments. At the time of the ar- rest, acting United States Attorney Prerak Shah said, “Crimes like these are especially despicable because they rely not only on vic- tims’ lack of internet savvy, but also their isolation, their loneliness, and sometimes their grief. As the victims open their hearts, the perpetrators open their wallets.” Court filings note that Orji carried out his schemes in 2017 and that he targeted “older, often widowed or divorced individ- uals, with savings, as romantic interests.” In one instance, Orji and his co-conspira- tors deceived an online acquaintance from California out of $40,000 using the name “Wayne Power,” a man they described as someone who worked on an oil rig in Alaska. According to the latest annual report from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, romance scams, or confidence fraud, targeted more than 24,000 victims, resulting in over $956 million in losses in 2021. The report also notes that many of the victims fall prey to “sextortion,” the threat to release private, intimate information and photos, and to pressure from the swindler to take part in investment opportunities, of- ten involving cryptocurrency. Dallas-based Match Group re- cently an- nounced new safety measures to help users of the company’s dating apps more easily detect ro- mance scams. “Starting today users across Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish, Meetic and OurTime will begin receiving messages alerting them to tips and common behaviors to watch out for to help identify potential scams,” the announce- ment states. “These tips were created with the help of law enforcement and financial exploi- tation experts.” In addition to his prison sentence, Orji must pay $418,030 in restitution to his vic- tims. Five more of Orji’s alleged co-conspir- ators are awaiting trial, currently set for March 20, 2023. ▼ FIRST AMENDMENT FIGHTING CITY HALL CIVIL RIGHTS GROUP ASKS COURT TO HALT DALLAS’ ORDINANCE BANNING PANHANDLERS FROM MEDIANS. BY JACOB VAUGHN T he Texas Civil Rights Project is trying to block enforcement of a new ordi- nance in Dallas that makes it illegal to sit or stand on street medians less than 6 feet wide. Dallas was sued by the Texas Civil Rights Project, an Austin-based nonprofit organization that advocates for voter rights, racial and economic justice, and criminal justice reform, shortly after the ordinance was passed in October. The suit was filed alongside Waters Kraus & Paul LLC and the SMU First Amendment Law Clinic, on behalf of two advocates and two homeless individuals. The ordinance makes standing or sitting on medians narrower than 6 feet a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $500. It’s been billed as a public safety measure to protect pedestrians (including panhan- dlers) from getting hit by cars. But to the Texas Civil Rights Project and the plaintiffs in the suit, the ordinance is a violation of the First Amendment. This is because courts have ruled that asking for help, like asking for money, is protected speech. And panhan- dlers often ask for help while standing on city medians, some of which may be nar- rower than 6 feet. Last week, the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a motion in court to block enforcement of the ordinance until there’s a ruling on the lawsuit. The city of Dallas won’t comment on the suit. Travis Fife, a fellow with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the ordinance is uncon- stitutional and will make it harder for the homeless to get help. The threat of fines can create distrust between the homeless and the people trying to help them, Fife said. “Accepting help from someone else is a process that requires trust. It’s a process that requires time,” Fife said. “When they can’t have that trust to know if a person is going to criminally sanction them or offer services, I think it just undermines any progress that can be made by any of the city’s other initiatives.” Fife said the city will try to say what it has argued all along, that this ordinance isn’t about panhandlers. It’s about public safety, according to the city. But, Fife said the city’s own work on the ordinance cen- tering on panhandling disputes this. Addi- tionally, he said the public safety concern about pedestrians on medians getting hit by cars is unfounded and is just an excuse used to help the ordinance stand up to legal scrutiny. “I think it’s also important to take a little bit of a historical view that time and time again the city of Dallas and other govern- ments have used these vague and ambiguous safety concerns to restrict the rights of the most vulnerable,” Fife said. He referenced a Dallas ordinance from the 2000s that banned people from giving food to the homeless. The city said at the time that giv- ing food to the homeless was a public safety concern. According to a report by NBC at the time, Boadicea White, then Dallas’ interim man- ager for homeless services, said the ordi- nance was meant to combat litter and food-borne illness and drive the homeless to places that offered a variety of services in- stead of just food. The city was eventually sued in federal court over the ban by Big Heart Ministries and Rip Parker Memorial Homeless Ministry. In 2013, a court ruled the ordinance was a violation of the groups’ religious freedom. The city settled the suit and had to revise the ordinance and pay the groups’ legal fees. Plaintiffs in the panhandling suit in- clude homelessness advocates Hannah Lebovits, a University of Texas at Arlington professor, and Kawana Scott, community organizer and chair of the Dallas Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, as well as two homeless veterans named Alton Waggoner and Teri Heishman. Waggoner, 68, and Heishman, 67, both rely on panhan- dling to pay for basic necessities. Waggoner has been fined $450 for panhandling be- fore, an amount he still can’t afford to pay, according to the lawsuit. He’s been home- less for about two years. Heishman has a home subsidized by the Veteran Adminis- tration in Dallas, but says she still has to panhandle to make ends meet. Fife said he’s not sure how long this fight against the city and its no-standing-on-me- dians ordinance will take. That’s why it’s im- portant to him that the court blocks enforcement of the ordinance until it reaches a decision. “The ball is in the city’s court. We are going to fight this for as long as it takes to get a judgment on the merits or for the city to voluntarily agree to rescinding the ordi- nance,” Fife said. “If I was a taxpayer or an accountant for the city, I would be telling them ‘Settle, settle, settle. Get rid of this,’ because it’s just going to be more and more money on litigation fees and ex- penses when the city council could do the moral and correct thing of getting rid of this policy.” Unfair Park from p4 Hannly Sam via Flickr Homelessness advocates are fighting to block enforemcent of the new ordinance. “ONCE THEY HAD INGRATIATED THEMSELVES WITH THEIR VICTIMS, THEY CONCOCTED SOB-STORIES ABOUT WHY THEY NEEDED MONEY.” – ATTORNEY STATEMENT