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.
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.