{"id":460563,"date":"2026-10-08T22:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460563\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T22:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:48:07","slug":"city-of-dallas-employee-bribed-business-owner-to-avoid-code-citations-affidavit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460563\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Dallas employee bribed business owner to avoid code citations: affidavit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">DALLAS &#8211; A former Dallas city employee took money from a local business in exchange for not issuing code citations, according to arrest documents obtained by FOX 4.<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-35ac954e=\"\">What we know:<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">The Dallas Police Department arrested Daelena Howard on bribery charges on March 26, 2026. She has since bonded out of jail.<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">Howard was employed by the City of Dallas in its Code Compliance Services Department at the time of her arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">The city confirmed to FOX 4 that Howard was placed on leave following her arrest and is no longer employed by the city.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/GettyImages-955094116.jpg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"auto\" width=\"932\" height=\"524\" data-v-7f188271=\"\"\/> <\/p>\n<p data-v-7f188271=\"\">(Max Faulkner\/Fort Worth Star-Telegram\/Tribune News Service via Getty Images) <\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-35ac954e=\"\">Dig deeper:<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">According to an arrest warrant, Howard visited Oscar Rivera, the business owner, on September 27, 2025, with several code violations she could issue to the business.<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">Howard offered to keep Rivera&#8217;s business out of the city&#8217;s code enforcement database if Rivera paid her $290 per month, and Rivera complied.<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">Over the course of several months after the initial interaction, Rivera sent $700 to Howard&#8217;s personal Zelle account, and his business never appeared in the violation database.<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KDFW\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-35ac954e=\"\">The other side:<\/p>\n<p data-v-35ac954e=\"\">FOX 4 has reached out to attorneys for Howard and Rivera, but has not heard back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: Information in this story comes from Dallas Police records and the City of Dallas.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox4news.com\/tag\/us\/tx\/dallas-county\/dallas\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-35ac954e=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dallas<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox4news.com\/tag\/crime-publicsafety\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-35ac954e=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS &#8211; A former Dallas city employee took money from a local business in exchange for not issuing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1046,102,581,104,103,223,216,393],"class_list":["post-460563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-county","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-news","tag-tx","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}