The Texas Police Department That Jailed a Water Whistleblower Got Disbanded for Being Useless

The Arrest That Started All of This

In May, Jennifer Combs spent a night in jail because of a Facebook post. The post suggested that residents of Trinidad, a small municipality in Henderson County about 75 miles southeast of Dallas, had been hospitalized due to bacteria in the city's water pipes. Trinidad Police Chief Charles Gregory decided this was a felony.

Gregory told Dallas news station KDFW that the felony charge of making a false report or alarm was justified because the hospital claims were, quote, "simply false and have only caused unnecessary fear and confusion in our community." The charge was later dropped. A separate investigation by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that yes, there were in fact issues with Trinidad's water supply. So the fear and confusion, it turns out, had a source, and it wasn't Jennifer Combs.

The day after Combs was arrested, Trinidad police arrested a supporter of hers for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. His crime was standing outside city hall holding a sign that read "fuck bad cops." That charge was also dropped. At this point, the Trinidad PD was batting a clean zero for successful prosecutions of people who criticized the Trinidad PD.

State Investigators Arrive and Find Basically Nothing

The arrests triggered an investigation by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, which is the state agency responsible for certifying and overseeing police departments. What they found was not a rogue department that went too far. What they found was a department that barely existed in any functional sense.

According to KDFW, Trinidad police lacked bulletproof vests for their officers. They had no evidence room. The department had problems with its use-of-force policies, its protocols for active shooter situations, and its procedures for vehicle pursuits. The professional conduct of officers was flagged as a specific problem area. This is the kind of checklist that makes you wonder what, exactly, was happening in that building on a day-to-day basis.

On September 9th, TCLE wrote to Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws informing him that the department would be disbanded. The letter stated plainly that the department "failed to meet minimum standards" and "was unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community." That second part is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Unable to provide evidence. Of any benefit. To anyone.

The Mayor's Response Was Refreshingly Honest, at Least

Mayor Dennis Haws told KDFW that the state's order to revoke the department's license to operate was "not a shock." That is an extraordinary sentence for a sitting mayor to say about his own police department.

Haws added: "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." Points for candor, zero points for the years of neglect that apparently preceded this moment. The department employed five full-time officers and several part-timers. Police duties in Trinidad are now being transferred to the Henderson County Sheriff's Office while a longer-term solution is worked out.

Chief Gregory, for his part, resigned back in June after a grand jury declined to indict Combs. He did not stick around to see how the investigation concluded.

The Judge Says He Was Lied To

Here is where it gets even worse for the former Trinidad PD. Henderson County Judge Scott McKee has publicly stated that he was misled by the department when it sought his approval for an arrest warrant for Combs. The department, he said, omitted key information from its warrant application. A police department that arrested someone for spreading false information apparently left out some information of its own when it went to get permission to make that arrest. Remarkable stuff.

Combs has since filed a wrongful arrest lawsuit against the city of Trinidad, claiming her detention was politically motivated retaliation for speaking out about the water issues. Given that the state of Texas has now confirmed the water had problems and disbanded the police department that arrested her, her lawsuit has what you might call supportive context.

What Jennifer Combs Said When It Was All Over

After the department was ordered to shut down, Combs posted a statement on social media. The Guardian reported it in full and it is worth reading every word: "For months, citizens who questioned this agency were dismissed, attacked and in my case arrested. Now the state agency responsible for regulating Texas law enforcement has confirmed that this department could not demonstrate compliance with even the minimum standards. We were never the problem. We were exposing it."

That's it. That's the whole story in four sentences. A woman posted about contaminated water, got arrested for it, and turned out to be right about everything while the people who arrested her turned out to be running a department that couldn't meet the most basic requirements of a functioning law enforcement agency.