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.
    • DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      68·
      10 months ago

      The town is probably a ticket trap or they make way too much money off of civil asset forfeiture, it all sounds shady AF.

      • idkwhatimdoing@sh.itjust.works
        20·
        10 months ago

        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

    • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
      311·
      10 months ago

      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

      • MTLion3@lemm.ee
        33·
        10 months ago

        So it’s literally funded by leeching. Not like most police sects aren’t, but this seems especially egregious

        • SCB@lemmy.world
          211·
          10 months ago

          The town’s citizens do not want to pay taxes, so they are effectively outsourcing their costs to motorists passing by.

      • idkwhatimdoing@sh.itjust.works
        11·
        10 months ago

        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

    • Ertebolle@kbin.social
      24·
      10 months ago

      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.