The Trinidad, Texas police department was disbanded after failing to demonstrate it provided any benefit to the community.

A police department in Texas that arrested a local resident for complaining on social media about their city’s contaminated water supply has been ordered closed after failing to prove it provided any benefit to the community. State officials stepped in to investigate after Jennifer Combs spent a night in jail in May after a post appeared on her Facebook page suggesting people were hospitalized by bacteria in the water pipes of Trinidad, a municipality in Henderson county about 75 miles south-east of Dallas. The Trinidad police department’s then chief, Charles Gregory, said at the time that a since-dropped felony charge of making a false report or alarm for Combs was justified because the hospital claims were “simply false and have only caused unnecessary fear and confusion in our community”, Texas news station KDFW reported. The next day, Trinidad police arrested a supporter of Combs for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “fuck bad cops” placard outside city hall. That charge was also later dropped. The arrests prompted an investigation of Trinidad police by the Texas commission on law enforcement (TCLE). TCLE wrote to Trinidad’s mayor, Dennis Haws, on 9 September informing him that the agency would be disbanded. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/trinidad-texas-police-department-disbanded?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"A police department in Texas that arrested a local resident for complaining on social media about their city’s contaminated water supply has been ordered closed after failing to prove it provided any benefit to the community." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/trinidad-texas-police-department-disbanded