Dec 2023. Blues Vol 39 No. 12

CHICAGO COFFEE CITY, TX. – MAYOR,
Residents of
STILL A MORON
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.
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The mass firing came after an
investigation by KHOU, a Houston-based
CBS affiliate, which found
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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 $1
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million in court fees from more than
• 5,100 DUTY traffic citations GEAR last year, which
• is the FLASHLIGHTS
most citations for any town
• in Texas PLATE the size of CARRIERS
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 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
Lorem Ipsum
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The Blues 40th Anniversary Issue 163