Texas Officials Disband Local Cop Shop For Failing To ‘Provide Any Benefit To The Community’
from the nonexistent-blue-line dept
“Defund the police” has come for at least one local law enforcement agency in one of the reddest states in the nation. This police department could have avoided this ignominious fate simply by not being generally awful. But the person leading the now-defunct department couldn’t seem to do his job without violating rights on the regular. And that’s how this ended up going down in Texas once state law enforcement officials got involved:
A police department in Texas that arrested a local resident for complaining on social media about their city’s contaminated water supply has been ordered closed after failing to prove it provided any benefit to the community.
State officials stepped in to investigate after Jennifer Combs spent a night in jail in May after a post appeared on her Facebook page suggesting people were hospitalized by bacteria in the water pipes of Trinidad, a municipality in Henderson county about 75 miles south-east of Dallas.
The (now-former) police department referenced in this report once failed to serve the residents of Trinidad, Texas. The biggest problem appears to have been (now-former) police chief Charles Gregory, who did nothing but double-down on his First Amendment violations before stepping away from the job shortly before the state’s commission on law enforcement decided the Trinidad PD served no public purpose.
Gregory not only tried to get Combs indicted for bringing attention to town water quality issues, but arrested a supporter of Combs for daring to “display” a “FUCK BAD COPS” sign outside of city hall during one of its meetings.
After an investigation, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCLE) sent a letter to the town’s mayor, letting him know the state had decided to pull the plug on the PD.
Chief Gregory may have been the biggest problem, but he wasn’t the PD’s only problem:
According to the news channel, the police department lacked resources for officers, including not having bulletproof vests or an evidence room.
Other highlighted failings were problems with use-of-force policies, active shooter situations, vehicle pursuits and the professional conduct of officers.
While some might suggest this lack of public value wasn’t completely the PD’s fault (see also: lack of Kevlar vests, a functioning evidence room), the possibly underfunded PD apparently did the least it could with its limited resources.
As for Chief Gregory, he took the easy way out when it became apparent he had no business running a law enforcement agency (into the ground). When a grand jury refused to indict citizen journalist Jennifer Combs on trumped-up “threatening public safety” charges, Gregory resigned, rather than face more criticism from critics he’d failed to put in jail, as well as to avoid answering questions posed by the judge who handled the Combs arrest warrant and now claimed to have been “misled” by Chief Gregory.
Even if you ignore everything seen here, it’s tough to see how the town of Trinidad (pop. 860 as of the 2020 census) could support a cop shop that employed five full-time officers and “several part-timers.” To put this in perspective, I live in a town with a population of 885 (according to the 2020 census) and all law enforcement support is provided by the county and that seems to be more than enough. No local has ever suggested the town needs its own PD, much less one staffed with 5-10 officers.
With the PD disbanded, law enforcement will be handled by the county, which (as is the case in my current home town) is probably enough to handle whatever criminal activity the town of Trinidad throws at it. The mayor of Trinidad (David Haws) seemed to be completely receptive of this disbanding, suggesting in his public statement that the PD had been a bit of problem for its entire existence.
He said: “There’s been a lot of neglect through the years. We are moving in a positive direction. We’ve got to get past all of this.”
This could mean a few things, but given the context of the disbanding, Haws seems to suggest the town was both over-policed and under-funded. And it’s easy to imagine the local PD had more power than a succession of small town mayors who probably took the job because someone needed to do it. Meanwhile, a bunch of cops with no real crime to fight continued to collect paychecks and abuse their power, with the town seemingly powerless to shut down the unnecessary agency itself.
No one needs a local cop shops when residents report [squints and re-squints at crime data] an average of eight(8)[!!!} crimes per year. The prosecution of town critics and the cop critics who support them make it clear the overstaffed agency had nothing better to do with its time than provide residents with nothing useful in exchange for their tax dollars.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, charles gregory, jennifer combs, police misconduct, texas, texas commission of law enforcement, trinidad police department, vindictive prosecution
Comments on “Texas Officials Disband Local Cop Shop For Failing To ‘Provide Any Benefit To The Community’”
Those former “officers” should be swinging from trees.
Not wearing vests is the only good thing those thug “cops” did for the community. Too bad nobody took any of them up on the offer.
Who wants to bet on Charles Gregory getting a job in Trump’s FBI by the end of the year?
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Just the guy to head up HHS.
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I dunno, how much bestiality does he do?
If I had to guess where the funding for 5 FTE cops in a town of 900 comes from my first guess would be a speed trap.
Checked Google Maps. Sure enough. The speed limit in the local area is 70 but as soon as you cross the bridge into Henderson County it’s 55. All for a town that you could literally blink and you miss it. There is one singular stoplight with a Dairy Queen and a gas station.
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That’s not uncommon where the highway cuts straight through town, TBH, and has a valid purpose. There’s a bunch of hamlets on a road I drive regularly where the limit drops from 100 or 80 down to 50/60 and then back up, and it’s because the highway is also their main street and there’s cross traffic and pedestrians there where there wouldn’t be further out.
It’s crappy road design, but that’s North America for you. Roundabouts at entry and exit would help so much in reducing speeds.
8 arrests
Does that 8 annual arrests include the arrests made for saying mean things?
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Good question, but more like for saying the truth, no matter how bitter it is.
To be fair:
The mark of effective policing is not processing a lot of crime after the fact, but preventing a lot of crime from happening in the first place.
Justice Bader Ginsburg called out the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act because few violations occured by likening it to throwing away your umbrella in the rain because you were not getting wet.
Let’s see how those numbers develop now. And how people feel about their safety. A comparison does not work with a single data point.
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A town as small as Trinidad doesn’t necessarily need police to prevent crime. It needs better funding for institutions and social systems that, when properly funded and working, prevent crime by helping people with their most pressing needs. People with full bellies and decent homes to live in tend to commit fewer crimes than people who are starving and homeless.