Oct 2023. Blues Vol 39 No. 10

NOT SO BRIGHT AWARD

NOT SO BRIGHT AWARD Light Bulb Award THE DEPLORABLES Coffee City Texas PD Fired by Council COFFEE CITY, TX. – Residents of a small Texas town that is famous mostly for a robust speed trap operation are worried after the city council disbanded the entire police force. The mass firing came after an investigation by KHOU, a Houston-based CBS affiliate, which found that the Coffee City Police Department was employing 50 police officers, many with questionable backgrounds, to police the town of just 250 residents. The force brought in more than million in court fees from more than 5,100 traffic citations last year, which is the most citations for any town in Texas the size of Coffee City, the report says. According to the outlet, the city’s now-fired police chief, John Jay Portillo, who was hired in 2021, quadrupled the size of the police department in a span of just two years. And a lot of those officers had troubled pasts. More than half of Coffee City’s cops had been either suspended, demoted, fired, or dishonorably discharged from their previous jobs in law enforcement, according to personnel documents obtained by the outlet. And at least a dozen Coffee City officers had previously faced criminal charges, ranging from aggravated assault with a deadly weapon to 168 The BLUES endangering a child, KHOU reported. Jeff Blackstone, the mayor of Coffee City, said in a September 1 press release that the city council had put Portillo on a 30-day suspension and would be conducting an internal investigation into his conduct. Following that investigation, the city council on Monday voted to fire Portillo and temporarily “deactivate” the entire police department, according to a local CBS station. The city’s investigation confirmed allegations that Portillo had received a DUI prior to being hired as police chief, which he did not disclose in his job application, according to the outlet. Blackstone told the outlet that the city decided to disband the police department rather than conduct individual investigations into every officer. Any officer who wants to stay with the department must reapply once the city hires a new police chief, CBS reported. “We’re going to have a new police department that everybody in the community can trust,” Blackstone told the outlet. In an interview with KHOU, Portillo defended his vetting of the officers he hired, saying that several of them had faced “retaliation” at their previous police departments. “There’s more to just what’s on paper,” Portillo told the outlet. “That’s where I rely on my captain and my background investigators to go in and say ‘hey, what’s the truth behind this?’” Sheriff’s deputies from the nearby Smith County Sheriff’s Office are helping respond to calls in Coffee City until the town can hire a new police force, according to CBS.

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