Rogalski and his colleagues on the investigations team weren’t sure whether it was a story for them. For one, Coffee City is more than three hours north of Houston, outside of KHOU’s viewing area. Would their audience even care? Rogalski also recognized that digging into the tip would require a lot of work. He would need to submit dozens of requests for the personnel files for each of the officers.

He decided to do just that. Rogalski made nearly 100 requests to all of the officers’ past departments, asking for their personnel files, including any disciplinary actions and the reasons for their departures. The requests cost roughly $1,000 and resulted in nearly 9,000 documents.

[50 officers], Gibson said, initially didn’t make sense. The department didn’t even have enough police cars for that many officers. “A lot of the officers were never even in the city,” Gibson said. “They’re doing this warrant division, work-from-home thing.”

Within two weeks, the city council had voted to fire Portillo and disband the entire police department. In December, Portillo was given six felony charges for tampering with government records by failing to disclose his DWI charge on his Coffee City job application. Several other former Coffee City officers face felony charges.

Executive producer of investigations Jennifer Cobb said she has never seen a story she worked on cause such rapid change. The investigation’s success — despite her team’s initial doubts — is a reminder to take a chance on stories that strike her curiosity, Cobb said.

“I use it as my reminder now to keep an open mind if I’m curious about something even though it may not seem like the sure thing or the story that makes ‘sense,’” Cobb said. “It’s good to take a breath sometimes and take chances on stories and see where they’ll take you.”

KHOU’s investigation won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards and a Poynter Journalism Prize in local accountability reporting.

Kudos to KHOU 11. And this story shows why local press is vital. It makes me rage that Google, Facebook, etc should have been regulated during Obama's terms. Instead there's been a strong bipartisan effort for years and years to destroy local press by letting the giants destroy them by starving them of revenue. The NYT and the WaPo continue to survive but this lack of regulation killed off untold number of Podunk Times. And will kill more.