All Cops are at Coffee City

August 31, 2023 8:11 PM

Coffee City, Texas has 250 residents, and 50 police officers. More than half of the have been suspended, demoted or dishonorably discharged from their previous jobs.
posted by Artw (40 comments total)

Alaska, 2019 story
posted by Ideefixe at 8:14 PM on August 31, 2023

When pressed, Portillo denied taking a cut, or percentage, of his officers’ extra job wages.

Ah.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:15 PM on August 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

Sounds legit.
posted by signal at 8:15 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm glad you posted this because a place called Coffee City would ordinarily be at the very top of my list, seeing as how coffee is wonderful and delicious. It's good to know to give the place a wide berth in the increasingly unlikely event I ever find myself in Texas.
posted by potrzebie at 8:37 PM on August 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

If you type "coffee city" into Google Maps it outlines the town boundaries and they are... well, very, very strangely specific.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:42 PM on August 31, 2023 [58 favorites]

What’s going on there? It looks gerrymandered.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:48 PM on August 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Amazing. Besides the town, they encompass some waterfront properties, but it's the roads that are just obviously corrupt: long major roads heading miles out of town, but only the roads--nothing to either side. I'm guessing this vastly extends their jurisdiction for writing traffic citations, without incurring any responsibility for actually policing a larger area.

My mistake, not even the town, just roads leading in and out and some waterfront properties.
posted by fatbird at 8:52 PM on August 31, 2023 [28 favorites]

Texas
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:52 PM on August 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

There is also a possible side gigs grift:

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.

“I mean, let’s not hide it from anybody, they’re making probably about $80,000 to $100,000 a year doing that,” Portillo said.

When pressed, Portillo denied taking a cut, or percentage, of his officers’ extra job wages. He said outside of his salary as chief, the only law-enforcement money he makes is from working extra jobs himself.
posted by Artw at 9:06 PM on August 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

Texas

Yes, it is Texas so obviously a massively corrupt employments scheme for parasitic cops can exist out there and nobody is going to do anything about there. On the other hand I’d bet every state has its own variants on this going on somewhere, cops are just like that.
posted by Artw at 9:09 PM on August 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

I don't see it in California. Our freeways are patrolled by state police. Some dipshit town doesn't get to 'own' a stretch of nearby interstate.
posted by ryanrs at 10:50 PM on August 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'm not an ACAB person, but if that applies anywhere....probably here.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:05 PM on August 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

California has a different scheme, which is cities with almost no citizens like Vernon City, where essentially every resident is a city employee and votes as they are told, while taxes on the various industrial plants are leached off in corruption. It's been slightly reformed, but not entirely.
posted by tavella at 11:12 PM on August 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'm not an ACAB person, but if that applies anywhere....probably here.

ACCCAB? All Coffee City Cops...
posted by Dysk at 12:07 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

What a novel idea: a band of villains camping along a road and collecting "tolls".
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:59 AM on September 1, 2023 [24 favorites]

[Archive] Main link is blocked in Europe.
posted by Lanark at 4:29 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Let me guess, they were all aiming for Donut City and missed?
posted by rikschell at 4:36 AM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

we had something like that here in Alabama.

Amazingly, the local news org covered it extensively, and shut it down.
posted by heyitsgogi at 4:53 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

When pressed, Portillo denied taking a cut, or percentage, of his officers’ extra job wages.

So probably just a regular flat rate subscription then.
posted by srboisvert at 5:04 AM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

As a Canadian whose family did the 80s thing of driving down to Florida this kind of roadside cop shakedown was very well known. You had to be sure and carry sufficient cash to keep Dad out of jail. Travellers Cheques were also accepted. If you didn't pay the cop directly right there on the road you were told you'd have to spend the night in jail until you could see the judge the next day.

The speed limits had arbitrary drops and the signs were always obscured in some way.
posted by srboisvert at 5:08 AM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

How does a town of 250 afford to pay the salaries of 50 cops? Where does that money come from?

Also, 5,100 citations for 250 people? Every resident got 20 tickets a year? WTF?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:22 AM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, 5,100 citations for 250 people? Every resident got 20 tickets a year? WTF?

It's unlikely that any of those citations were written for locals, unless of course they crossed the police.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:32 AM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

I remember getting pulled over at a speed trap between Houston and Austin once(classic “town on highway lowers speed limit by 15mph” situation.) I called the local PD to see if there was some kind of traffic school or community service that could make it a non moving violation. They told me to just “round up the check to the nearest $100.”
posted by q*ben at 6:43 AM on September 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Back in the 80s/90s the Texas legislature capped the percentage of a towns revenue that could come from tickets, leading to a couple of towns going bankrupt. I'm curious how they got around that.
There are a couple of towns on Highway 59/69 known for being speed traps, but for them, the road goes right through town, and it's pretty much a regular road at that point. In one town, there's a High School on the side of the road. (Max speed's 30, but there are plenty of speed signs lowering the speed limit in 5 to 10 mph increments before then.)
posted by Spike Glee at 6:47 AM on September 1, 2023

I was surprised that the article didn't touch on a civil asset forfeiture scheme there, which is what I assume is what pays their salary.

and, related: Speed Trap Town by Jason Isbell.
posted by entropone at 7:42 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

On reflection, I'm pretty much okay with all the bad cops moving to a certain town, assuming we evacuate everybody else and then build a moat. Seriously, though, isn't that the question -- if you want to make major police reforms or even abolition, what do you do with all the large, unemployed, and vengeful men? Together with their camp followers, hangers-on, and demagogues? Countries have fallen for the lack of an answer to this question.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:53 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

I am familiar with the area. In college I spent a summer in Athens, about 25 miles to the west. Texas has local option on the sales of liquor, beer and wine. Everything in every direction was bone dry except for the tip of a peninsula protruding into lake Palestine that had somehow managed to incorporate itself. Wall to wall liquor stores and traffic backed up for miles. Could well have been the beginnings of Coffee City...
posted by jim in austin at 7:59 AM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

“ first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.”
posted by Artw at 8:37 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Looking at the city boundaries does make it seems like the liquor stores had something to do with it along with the roads. But small cities with odd boundaries is just a huge recipe for corruption. Texas as seem especially bad with small counties having a population of like 1,000, but it is a problem anywhere. See the City of Bell California not far from Vernon mentioned above. Having worked with jurisdictions of all sizes, I am of the opinion that cities of less than 40,000 aren’t very efficient at delivering services and once you get over 150,000 you start to build up a lot of bureaucratic bloat. (Not that there aren’t well or poorly governed cities of all sizes) I think we need more rationalization of gov’t boundaries, but no one wants to give up their power
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:31 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Odd how "Protect and Serve" has changed to "Stand and Deliver".
posted by Sphinx at 9:48 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

These kind of speed traps were one of the first things I was taught to look out for when my dad was teaching me to drive. My grandparents live out in east Texas off 69, and at least for that highway, all speed signs are clearly visible. I’m sure I have saved quite a few people driving behind me from getting tickets in these towns because I make damn sure I’m at or below the speed limit when I get to the sign and do not increase my speed until I’m on the other side.

I don’t think these speed traps are terrible, at least on highway 69. It’s not an interstate, and no one needs to be going 70 through the middle of a downtown. If you don’t want to have to slow down, take the freeway.
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:41 AM on September 1, 2023

I have not read the text, so perhaps this has already been covered. In Texas there is a law that any municipality that derives more than half of their revenue from traffic tickets must turn over the excess to the state. This has caught up with some speed traps and has even bankrupted some towns over the years.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 10:47 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Chief Portillo, hired in April 2021, quadrupled the size of the police force when he brought on "nearly all the Coffee City cops with tainted work histories." Before Coffee City, Portillo worked in law enforcement in Harris County for 17 years and still takes security gigs there: The police chief of Coffee City, Texas launched a profanity-filled rant against a Harris County constable while working an off-duty security job in Houston.

Incidentally, "In his application to become Coffee City’s police chief he never listed a 2004 DWI charge out of Bay County, Florida, in which he failed to appear in court. When asked why he didn’t list the charge on his application, Portillo said: 'I just didn’t disclose it, it was over 10 years ago.'

But court records show Portillo still had an active warrant, and the case hadn’t been disposed of. The day after the interview with KHOU 11 Investigates, Portillo hired a Florida defense attorney who filed a not-guilty plea in the case."
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:07 PM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Coffee City, in southeast Henderson County, was formed in the late 1960s after the development of Lake Palestine. Per the 2010 census, the town's total area is 6.6 square miles, of which 1.9 square miles are land and 4.7 square miles (70.96%) are water. For many years, it was known as a place where residents in Smith County, which was a “dry” county, went to purchase beer and wine. When liquor sales were made available in Smith County, fewer people went to the town’s stores.

5,100 citations in 2022, Chief Portillo's first full year on the job, with his outsized, handpicked crew (and a stray LARPer) policing a speck of dry land.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:20 PM on September 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

jim in austin has it right. I used to live near there. Dry counties all around, including where I lived. We would "go across the (county) line" on Fridays to get beer etc. Coffee City existed for that reason. It was also a bit of a trap. Cops ready to hand out tickets and people not waiting to get home to start their drinking. Many arrests, accidents and deaths along that road. It was rumoured that certain people of power had part ownership of the stores or were paid off by the proceeds and that they kept the other counties dry to keep the cash flowing.
posted by SJustS at 12:25 PM on September 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

the fragmented geography reeks of corruption, even without the cop bullshit.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:53 AM on September 3, 2023

No cops are at coffee city: In wake of KHOU 11 Investigates reports, Coffee City fires police chief, deactivates police department
posted by Artw at 8:46 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

"There were things that we weren’t aware of and that really just opened our eyes, you know, there’s major changes that have got to be made and made quickly," Coffee City Mayor Jeff Blackstone said after Monday’s council vote."

"Also, math is hard and you can't expect us to look at every single line of the city budget."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:46 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

At least they were pretty decisive about just straight out shutting down the department? Not just firing the chief.
posted by tavella at 3:29 PM on September 12, 2023

It IS pretty badass until you stop and think about how they didn’t do that before the media embarrassed the shit out of them, though even then it’s commendable they went for that over Trump-era roughing it out and doubling down.
posted by Artw at 4:03 PM on September 12, 2023