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• Back off that accelerator if you're driving through Coffee City, Texas, about three hours north of Houston. Why? The town, with about 250 residents, has 50 full- and part-time police officers, KHOU-TV reports.

The town's budget reveals that it collected more than $1 million in court fines in 2022, which were the result of more than 5,100 citations the officers wrote. And there's a tantalizing twist:

Most of Coffee City's officers had been suspended, demoted, terminated or discharged from previous law enforcement jobs, for reasons including excessive force, public drunkenness and association with known criminals.

"I've never seen anything like that in my professional career, and I've seen a lot," said Greg Fremin, a retired Houston Police Department captain.

But Coffee City's police chief, JohnJay Portillo, disagrees: "There's more to just what's on paper," he said. "I try to look at the good in everybody and I believe everybody deserves an opportunity."

Even so, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement has an open investigation into the tiny community's big law presence.

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