Da fuck were they doing with all that money? It had to be lining someones pockets...
If it was say, 3 million a year in tickets, that plays 50 officers 60k a year.
I wonder how often they seized assets.
This article could probably use some context as it is pretty misleading currently.
Coffee City is about 25 miles from Tyler, a city of about 100,000 people. You can't buy liquor in Tyler stores, only beer and wine. Until relatively recently, there wasn't even liquor sold in bars in Tyler. For the last 40 to 50 years, Coffee City has been the main place to go for liquor. Coffee City is basically two liquor stores on the far end of a mile long bridge. The article mentions a couple other stores in town, but I didn't notice them last time I was there.
I am not a fan of the excessive Police State that the US has become. Furthermore, it is very clear that there is some kind of corruption is going on in the Coffee City police force itself where they are hiring problem cops.
That said, these cops aren't there to police Coffee City residents. They are there to catch the constant stream of drunk drivers coming in from Tyler. I don't have the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if 95% of their income is from DWIs given to people crossing the bridge.
In this particular case, discharging all those officers is probably a significant public danger. People are probably going to end up dying over this if the county or state don't send officers to cover the bridge area.
So the safe thing to do would be to legalize the sale of liquor in Tyler.
clutches pearls
Probably, unless people thought they could make it five miles but not twenty-five, and decided to go for it. Not that anyone that drunk ever had good enough judgment to not drive the twenty-five.
How on earth do you need 50 cops to patrol one bridge? I am guessing hiring cops with questionable backgrounds is also necessary to stop the DWIs. It might have started with DWIs but it clearly got corrupted a while ago.
That's a good point. Assuming 3 shifts a day each for weekdays and weekends, there would need to be 6 cops on duty all the time to utilize that roster. Maybe 4 in cars and 2 watching the drunk tank?
Thanks for the context, sincerely. I had pictured only a speed trap, not a drunk-driving trap. I am confident, however, that if there are tickets to be written, county and/or state cops will be there.
Sure thing. Not like there aren't plenty of small towns in Texas that have a history of speed traps.
I might even be underestimating the amount of speeding tickets that get written in the area, but I was more than a little surprised not to see Tyler or DWIs mentioned.
I have some family in the area. I will have to try and remember to ask them if they have heard anything about it next time I talk to them.
That is very interesting context. But sounds like the solution is to get rid of the stupid alcohol prohibition in Tyler and move the cops there. There will still be drink drivers but they won't be driving as far so theoretically less dangerous.
You are preaching to the choir here. I am for the old tax, tag, and regulate. Not just alcohol, but virtually any drug excluding antibiotics. Its still a growing city though so most people must not mind that badly.
Lmao city council had no idea they were employing 50 cops? Or they just caved as soon as their scheme was figured out and blasted online....
I wonder which one it is 🤔
The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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