"Coffee City Police"

INVESTIGATIVE CATEGORY — showcase gold

KHOU
Contributors: Jeremy Rogalski, John Gibson, Jennifer Cobb
08/28/2023

There’s not much to Coffee City, Texas. Two liquor stores, a couple of dollar stores, a pizza joint and a motel.

But there were a whole lot of cops—50 full-time and reserve officers--or one officer for every five residents. They wrote more citations than any other similar-sized town in Texas, which pumped more than $1 million in court fines into city coffers last year.

But there’s more to the story than a small town writing a bunch of speeding tickets.

A tip from a law enforcement source led KHOU 11 Investigates to file nearly 100 open records requests with police agencies across Texas. The trove of information revealed more than half of the department’s officers had been suspended, demoted, terminated, or dishonorably discharged from their previous law enforcement jobs. The misconduct ranged from untruthfulness and excessive force to criminal charges of official oppression and aggravated assault.

One criminal justice expert said he’d “never seen anything like that” in 34-year law enforcement career.

The officers were all hired by one man, JohnJay Portillo, who had his own dubious history.

Chief Portillo defended his hiring practices, claiming many officers got on the “wrong side of agency politics and had been “retaliated against” from their previous agencies. But when pressed, Portillo conceded he offered reserve positions to officers so they could work extra security jobs, making up to $100,000 a year.

That’s exactly what Portillo did himself. The Chief didn’t even live in Coffee City, and often worked side jobs in the Houston area (three hours away) along with other Coffee City officers. At one such job, Portillo launched a profanity-laced tirade at an elected constable and the encounter was all captured on body-camera video. The chief never apologized to the elected official and was never disciplined for the incident.

Some of the officers working extra jobs were part of a questionable Coffee City police “warrant division.” They were allowed to work from home in Houston, calling people with outstanding traffic warrants and trying to collect outstanding fines. The criminal justice expert said the practice “screams questions about the legitimacy of what they’re doing." After we questioned the program’s legality, the chief suspended the warrant division.

It's not the only example that calls into question Portillo’s judgment and character. KHOU 11 Investigates discovered he never listed a DWI charge and active warrant on his application to become Coffee City Police Chief. Two weeks after our series first aired, the Coffee City Council voted unanimously to fire Portillo. In a stunning move, it also disbanded the entire police department.

“There were things that we weren’t aware of and that really just opened our eyes,” Coffee City Mayor Jeff Blackstone said.

This story is still evolving but so far two grand juries have indicted seven former officers, including the police chief for tampering with government records.

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Submitted by Jennifer Cobb