COFFEE CITY, Texas — Coffee City councilmembers did not come to a decision during the city council meeting about getting a new police force; however, they do plan to form a community committee to help make that decision.
"Part of the having a community committee is going to be important because we need everybody in the community to understand what, what's at stake here," Mayor Jeff Blackstone said.
In September, the city council approved firing former Coffee City Police Chief JohnJay Portillo and deactivating the police department. That decision was made after several allegations about Portillo and his department came to light.
An investigation led by our sister station in Houston, KHOU 11, showed Portillo grew the department size by four times and routinely hired officers who had been suspended, demoted, terminated, or dishonorably discharged from previous law enforcement jobs. The investigation also showed Portillo failed to disclose an active DWI charge out of Florida in 2021 when he was applying to be Coffee City’s police chief.
The stakes are high, but the budget is low.
Since Coffee City operates solely off sales tax, Blackstone said the revenue coming to the city averages around $17,000 a month.
"We need to form a police department that follows the state guidelines, which mandate that you don't fund your police department with traffic citations," Blackstone said.
Those traffic citations earned Coffee City police $1 million last year alone.
"A city's revenue from tickets cannot exceed 30% of their total city revenue. And so ours is right around $200,000. So that kind of just tells you how limited we can take from ticket, the rest of that money goes to the state of Texas," Blackstone said.
Blackstone said if you have received a traffic violation in Coffee City, you are still required to pay it.
"I talked to the judge and the prosecutor and they basically said that they would do it on a case-by-case basis. And also check to see if they had body cam or dash cam footage to confirm the citation," Blackstone said.
He added until the city is able to get their finances in order there will not be a Coffee City Police Department. He said the community committee will be getting together in the next week and he hopes they’ll have an answer by the next city council meeting.
Currently, the Smith County Sheriff's Office and the Henderson County Sheriff's Office are responding to police calls in Coffee City.