KHOU 11 Investigates discovered more than half of the cops in the Coffee City Police Department had been suspended, demoted or fired from their previous jobs.
Quick excerpt,
Coffee City’s budget shows the town collected more than $1 million in court fines last year. That came from more than 5,100 citations officers wrote, the most in the state for a town its size according to the Texas Office of Court Administration.
But there is more to this story than a small town writing a bunch of speeding tickets. KHOU 11 Investigates discovered Coffee City is a magnet for troubled cops. More than half of the department’s 50 officers had been suspended, demoted, terminated or dishonorably discharged from their previous law enforcement jobs, according to personnel files obtained through open records requests to other law enforcement agencies.
Those prior disciplinary actions range from excessive force, public drunkenness, untruthfulness and association with known criminals. They include:
- An officer terminated for posting a Facebook message to a citizen: “You should kill yourself, do the world a favor.”
- An officer suspended for smashing a window and entering his girlfriend’s home without consent.
- A deputy constable suspended after a burglary victim’s laptop computer was found in his home.
- A deputy constable terminated for tackling a non-resisting citizen to the ground during a traffic stop.
- A deputy sheriff terminated for slapping a handcuffed inmate without provocation.
- Two officers terminated for lying on their job applications.
So the town basically hired a gang of thugs to be their police while they extort travelers in their jurisdiction, sounds like a 70’s or later action movie/show like Dukes of Hazzard, Billy Jack, or Rambo.
Hopefully the main character shows up and kicks all of their asses and we all get a happy ending. (Meanwhile in reality they will just keep getting away with it because of the way Texas is ran and qualified immunity)
As an outsider, local city based police forces sound like some medieval throwback to me.
That must be a scary town to be stuck living in. Think time FBI step in and disband that police department.
I lived across the inlet on the same lake, about 3 miles from the major bridge that they use to get most their speeding tickets - Between Frankston/Tyler, there’s a long 4-lane bridge where they park on either end. There, the speed suddenly drops, directly on the outside of the city limits. There’s always at least 2 waiting to get all the speeders coming off the bridge, and there’s nothing at the end of that bridge but a Fat Dog Liquor and a closed/burnt down café.
Can confirm, Lindale over here. It brings to mind a little village next to Alvin TX (where the FBI picked up that lady for making threatening calls)- probably the same population…only 2 cops…it’s a husband and wife combo…and he’s also the judge! Ya learn quick --> not 1 mile above the posted speed limit, and sometimes one under just to play it safe
It’s the classic rent seeking example. Like throwing a chain across a river to charge a fee for crossing it.
💀
That’s a great way of putting it.
How does a town of 250 have the funds to pay 50 police salaries?
The town is probably a ticket trap or they make way too much money off of civil asset forfeiture, it all sounds shady AF.
Between insurance, pensions, salary, reimbursements, and fringe benefits, you’re looking at a minimum cost of $70k per full-time officer per year. They’d have to issue $3,500,000 in tickets to cover that alone, and even then, that leaves nothing for vehicle replacement/maintenance (which is huge on a fleet of cop cars), non-officer employee salaries (clerks etc.), rent/taxes/maintenance on the station, equipment and weapons, training programs, and so much more. No way tickets and forfeitures alone take in that much in a town of 250
Cartel town maybe? There’s probably some pretty surprising levels of corruption going on there.
How does a town of 250 have the funds to pay 50 police salaries?
Texas Highway 155 crosses Ledbetter Bay as it passes through Coffee City
Coffee City’s budget shows the town collected more than $1 million in court fines last year. That came from more than 5,100 citations officers wrote
So it’s literally funded by leeching. Not like most police sects aren’t, but this seems especially egregious
The town’s citizens do not want to pay taxes, so they are effectively outsourcing their costs to motorists passing by.
Sounds like a wildfire should visit that town, nothing of value would be lost.
The leech to town ratio is very high.
That’s still nowhere near enough for 50 cops with public level benefits. Even if every dollar of that goes towards the cops, at $20k/year each, it would hardly cover federal taxes on their income, let alone the income itself
Because only 12 of the 50 are full time. The rest are reserves that are used as surge for events and stuff in other cities.
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They’re not full-time:
The opportunity to wear a badge allows officers to make extra money. In the state of Texas, a commissioned reserve officer may work off-duty performing traffic control duties, commonly known as “road jobs.” Of the 50 sworn officers at the Coffee City Police Department, 38 are reserves according to state records.
Ahhh that makes more sense, but still crazy. Definitely staying out of Coffee on any road trips I take…
Corruption
Fascinating scheme for Wayward Police Officers they’re running.
Of the 50 Sworn Officers 38 of them are CROs (Certified Reserve Officers), meaning they aren’t Regular Day to Day Police but rather people who can be called on when asked / needed. Since these people are CRO they’re able to be used in other towns / cities / counties when necessary. Big Event in Houston and you suddenly need an extra 30 or so cops? These people are available. Want private security for your mall / apartment building / construction site but need them to be “Certified” for insurance purposes? These folks are available.
the individual officers make money doing that stuff and if they do it long enough without getting into trouble again then they can point to their clean record as a CRO in Coffee City as a reason they should be hired back onto a regular force.
The question I have is what is Chief JohnJay Portillo getting from this? Nobody is going to run a setup like for this nothing, so what’s his angle? Oh, the guy has an active warrant for DWI out of Florida too.
Sounds like they used public money to pay the startup costs of a private security firm, and in exchange for that they write a bunch of bogus tickets so the town makes money
The question I have is what is Chief JohnJay Portillo getting from this? Nobody is going to run a setup like for this nothing, so what’s his angle? Oh, the guy has an active warrant for DWI out of Florida too.
The city brought in over a million dollars in fines in one year. He’s getting job security.
The city brought in over a million dollars in fines in one year.
Maybe, but it looks like their Peace Officers make $45,000 ish a year so that’s half of the million spent before you include benefit costs which could easily run another 30% putting it at $700,000. Then you have equipment (Cars, Radios, Uniforms, Firearms, etc) and training costs (Have to stay Certified) for 12 Officers which would probably run another $100,000 per year. Now there’s maybe 20% of that Million left.
It’s still money but it’s not THAT much money.
“If you go back and look at the totality of the officers’ stuff, I would say 75% if not more … they’re being retaliated against from their agency,” Portillo said. “I try to look at the good in everybody and I believe everybody deserves an opportunity.”
The problem is that the police departments come down too hard on their personnel. /s
Retaliated for being bad cops, perhaps?
This is a sanctuary city for cops who should’ve been deported to prison.
A deputy sheriff terminated for slapping a handcuffed inmate without provocation.
There is no acceptable reason for slapping someone who’s cuffed. Provocation my ass.
What’s sad is that you KNOW the Deputy wasn’t really terminated for that. That incident was near certainly downwritten to be less severe than it actually was and you can you bet $$$ that this Deputy had a history of it.
These people don’t get fired for one off slapping incidents. They only get fired for severe and repeated infractions and even then only after one of them goes public and can’t be kept quiet.
Hey so one of the things i learned in college as a CJ major is that cops often make lateral moves in their career from one department to the next.
I bet small town departments like this only get the amount of recruits they do so they can get hired with “small town standards” and then transfer to the big city they couldn’t hope to pass an interview with.
Coptown sounds like a great SNL skit.
Enter smoky dank bar. All patrons are Popo. Bike cops play pool. All four are white, clean shaven, and wearing helmets and aviators. Detectives are at a table with handlebar mustaches and lanyard badges. Beat cops in vests are jawjacking near the bar, that the commissioner in dress uniform is tending.
Enter Snoop, blunt in mouth.
This would be an inversion of the Killing Floor novel. On the surface, this little town is terrible. Rampant police brutality, destitution, economic opportunities in the town frustrated by NIMBYs, a public easement to a national park is fenced up… Through pacifism, de-escalation, and empathy Snoop turns the town upside down. The town square is turned into a public garden, he provides therapy sessions to some of the police officers who are convinced to change jobs. When he finds out the national park isn’t accessible he helps a resident file an injunction in court against the properly owner, and by the end of the movie there is a vibrant tourism industry staffed by newly pacifist ex-cops.
Why does the state government permit this? I don’t think it’s a liberal vs conservative thing, because everyone thinks speed-trap towns are bullshit.
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Grifting out in the open.
Seems to be a prerequisite to be hired there.
#ACAB
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I remember movies and tv episodes from where this was the scenario.
Backwater town near a busy state or interstate traffic axis has a fuckton of cops and a tyrant of a judge/mayor.
These people rob and incarcerate travelers and some especially unlucky ones never even make it out of this town.
This another case of these inbred backwardians looking at a dystopian piece of media and thinking that looks like an awesome plan?
Rambo?
Texas is a shithole.
Fuck the south.
Time to build a wall along the mason dixie line and cut off their federal funding.
Mexico can have them.
Fuck the south, build that wall. We need to keep all the criminals and filth out.
Feel bad for Mexico though, they deserve better. Hopefully they build a wall too.
