{"id":593392,"date":"2017-03-05T08:14:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T14:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?p=593392"},"modified":"2017-03-06T10:58:19","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T16:58:19","slug":"east-mountain-without-police-force-upshur-county-to-provide-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=593392","title":{"rendered":"East Mountain without Police Force; Upshur County to Provide Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2017\/03\/e693b9bd8f53d424efa3e91738503206.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2017\/03\/e693b9bd8f53d424efa3e91738503206-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-593393\" \/><\/a>EAST MOUNTAIN \u00e2\u20ac\u201d East Mountain residents will receive law enforcement protection from the Upshur County Sheriff&#8217;s Office for the time being after the city lost its entire four-person police force as of Friday.  That&#8217;s according to KETK and the Longview News-Journal.  &#8220;I want the citizens of East Mountain to feel safe, so I will do what I need to do to keep them protected until this thing in the city is resolved,&#8221; Upshur County Sheriff Larry Webb said Friday. &#8220;The citizens of East Mountain will have law enforcement service regardless of what is going on with their police department.&#8221;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Webb said he was contacted by an East Mountain officer Thursday about assisting the city, but that as of Friday, he was informed that the city has no officers on duty.  Webb said the switch won&#8217;t have much effect because his office already handles 911 dispatching; he&#8217;ll just be dispatching his own deputies instead of an East Mountain police officer.  Residents who contacted the News-Journal said that as of a Thursday evening City Council meeting, there were no police officers in the city and that Mayor Neal Coulter resigned. It was not immediately clear whether all officers had resigned or were terminated, but officials indicated some officers had resigned while others were fired.<\/p>\n<p>The city and its police department have been under scrutiny recently as the city is facing numerous lawsuits. Most of the lawsuits pertain to the city not complying with open records requests. One lawsuit deals with the city employing the same person as its police chief and city administrator \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a violation of the Texas Constitution, according to that lawsuit.  An agenda posted at East Mountain City Hall showed the council met Thursday. The only item on the agenda was consultation with attorneys to seek advice regarding a settlement offer in the pending lawsuits. Various current or former city officials have either declined comment or have been unavailable for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EAST MOUNTAIN \u00e2\u20ac\u201d East Mountain residents will receive law enforcement protection from the Upshur County Sheriff&#8217;s Office for the time being after the city lost its entire four-person police force as of Friday. That&#8217;s according to KETK and the Longview News-Journal. &#8220;I want the citizens of East Mountain to feel safe, so I will do &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=593392\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">East Mountain without Police Force; Upshur County to Provide Service<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":593393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-16 08:56:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=593392"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593397,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593392\/revisions\/593397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/593393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=593392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=593392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=593392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}