In an unusual turn, officials in a Texas community have voted to disband their local police department, concluding that it failed to provide any benefit to the community. The decision gives new meaning to "defund the police" in a conservative state, where such rhetoric is rarely embraced.
According to Techdirt, the department could have avoided this fate simply by not being "generally awful." The person leading the now-defunct department was apparently a central problem, though the report's details on specific failures remain limited.
The move is notable because it comes from officials who would not normally support defunding law enforcement. It suggests that when a police force is seen as ineffective or harmful, even conservative lawmakers may be willing to abolish it entirely.