A woman from a town near Trinidad spent nearly a day in jail after she asked Facebook users to document the city’s water complaints. A grand jury declined to indict her. Then the judge who signed the warrant started asking what police had left out, and by mid-July the whole City Hall staff had resigned.
Long before Jennifer Combs was arrested over a Facebook post about Trinidad’s drinking water, people there were already unhappy with what came out of their taps.
Combs lives up the road in Kerens. She said Trinidad residents kept telling her about discolored water, bad smells, and health worries. So on April 6 she put up a post on the Southern Belle Watch Facebook page asking them to send photos, videos, dates, general areas, and descriptions. The idea was to map the complaints and hand the whole thing to the state.
Her post said residents had reported illnesses and hospitalizations they blamed on bacteria in the water. FOX 4 later said it could not confirm anyone had actually been hospitalized over it.
Trinidad police answered the same day with a Facebook post of their own. No contamination-related hospitalizations had been confirmed, the department said, and knowingly spreading false information that stirs up fear or sets off an emergency response could violate Texas law.
The water troubles were real, though. On April 21 the city put out a boil-water notice after disinfectant levels dropped below what the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requires, and the notice came off two days later. Low disinfectant can weaken a system’s protection against microbial contamination. It does not, by itself, prove the water made anybody sick.
Trinidad was incorporated in 1955 and counts fewer than 1,000 people. Residents say the water has been a sore subject for years.
Police went on investigating the post. Officers arrested Combs May 8 at her home in Kerens on a charge of felony false alarm or report, and she said she sat in jail about 23 hours. Two days after that, Police Chief Charles Gregory called the case “very cut and dry.”
It didn’t stay that way. On May 19 Combs filed a 43-page federal civil-rights suit in the Eastern District of Texas naming Gregory, Officer Cameron Beckham, Councilwoman Marie Bannister, and the City of Trinidad. Her claim: the arrest was payback for protected speech, and officials worked together to shut her up. None of it has been proven in court.
Zachary Smith, an attorney for the city, told CyberGuy that officials believed they had acted in the community’s best interests and that Combs’ allegations would be answered in court.
Two days after the suit was filed, a Henderson County grand jury declined to indict her. The no-bill ended the criminal case for now, nothing more. Her federal suit is still pending and nobody’s liability has been decided.
The hardest questions came from the judge who signed the search warrant in the first place. FOX 4 read the document. District Judge R. Scott McKee wrote to Gregory that his officers had left out the citizen complaints, the water- quality concerns, and other information that would have explained why Combs said what she said.
McKee questioned the “accuracy, completeness, and reliability” of what Beckham and a second officer handed him. He said future warrant requests from those two officers would have to be presented to him in person. The letter raised concerns about how the warrant was presented. It was not a court ruling on whether either officer violated the law or department policy.
“Accuracy, completeness, and reliability.” District Judge R. Scott McKee, as quoted by FOX 4 The trouble kept climbing City Hall’s steps. Gregory resigned, last day June 19. A second resident, Winston Noles, got arrested while protesting Combs’ arrest, charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct over a sign that went after bad cops in language we can’t print. Municipal Judge Shellena Bivens dismissed the charge. The council fired Bivens at a May 28 meeting, and she has said she may sue over it. “I’m a good judge. I’m a damn good judge,” she told FOX 4.
Then came the employee lawsuits. Alex Estrada and Colby Reyes, two former city workers, sued on May 27 saying they were fired without cause. Reyes was the water clerk. Her lawsuit alleges she lost her job because she “refused to lie” for Gregory and City Administrator Cynthia Dosier, and says she stated in writing that she was “never offended” by Noles even while, she claims, Gregory was saying otherwise to justify arresting him. A former city administrator, Lindsey Patterson, filed her own wrongful- termination suit, saying she was let go in February after reporting to police that private individuals were holding money that belonged to the city. None of those allegations has been decided in court.
By mid-July the departures reached the top. All three of Trinidad’s remaining City Hall staff resigned, FOX 4 reported: Dosier, City Clerk Sandra Rojas, and Municipal Judge Susan Carver. Mayor Dennis Haws announced the resignations. Dosier, a defendant in several of the lawsuits, went out citing the “circus” she said had come to the city.
In a press-deadline update on the city’s Facebook page, Haws said he had hired two interim employees in an effort to get City Hall open and functional again after the Texas Municipal League told him he had appointment authority in limited situations. Haws said one of the hires later stepped down following community backlash. He said the hiring decision was his and asked residents for patience.
Combs responded in the comments that she respected Haws for acknowledging the mistake and understood the public concern over the hiring. “I want to see Trinidad succeed,” she wrote, calling for clean and safe water, responsible financial management, transparency and accountability.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has confirmed the Texas Rangers are investigating allegations surrounding the water system, including the arrests. What exactly prompted the inquiry, the state hasn’t said. Haws had previously called for a Rangers investigation. “I wanted people here to know that there is going to be transparency at the end of this,” he told FOX 4. Beckham, one of the two officers McKee named in his letter, is now the interim police chief. He told FOX 4 he expects to meet with the Rangers and intends to cooperate fully.
The state’s water findings are on paper now too. In reporting published July 13, FOX 4 said TCEQ’s findings cited water discoloration exceeding the applicable standard, aging distribution mains, dead-end lines that prevent proper circulation, and failures to conduct required chloramine-effectiveness sampling. FOX 4 also reported that Trinidad has until August 3 to set a compliance plan.
Steven Haynes and Jonathan Bowman, who own businesses in town, told FOX 4 that tests of raw, unfiltered water at their businesses found disinfectant levels more than 300 percent above federal maximums. They said they invested $10,000 in a filtration system. The Chronicle has not reviewed those private test results. “Trinidad needs to make a decision whether or not it wants to be in the water business,” Bowman told FOX 4.
Trinidad sits well outside the Chronicle’s coverage area, and its quarrels are its own. But anybody who’s covered a small Texas town will recognize the bones of this one. Old pipes and no money to replace them. A government too small to absorb a crisis. People standing at the kitchen sink wondering if what’s coming out is safe.
In a July 16 email to the DMC Publisher, Combs said “no one was covering it” when she was arrested, and she was working for a local paper at the time. The national and international outlets showed up after her arrest.
Most of the sustained reporting since then has come from television stations, FOX 4 chief among them. Area newspapers have shared those stations’ stories on their Facebook pages, giving citizens around Trinidad another way to keep up with what is happening in their own backyard.
There’s more of this story still to come. The Rangers haven’t said what they’re looking at. The compliance plan is due August 3. The lawsuits are just getting started, and a city of fewer than 1,000 people is trying to keep City Hall running with interim help and continuing turnover.
READ MORE | https://www.fox4news.com/news/ trinidad-texas-water-controversy-charges-dismissed-facebook- post?utm_source=chatgpt.com | https://www.fox4news. com/news/trinidad-police-department-judge-jennifer-combs-water- issues?utm_source=chatgpt.com | https://www.fox4news. com/news/texas-rangers-investigating-city-trinidads-officials-following- water-controversy?utm_source=chatgpt.com