A report out of a tiny Texas Panhandle town makes me wonder whether I should laugh … or laugh harder.

It goes something like this: The police chief of Estelline has been charged with official oppression, ordered to surrender his peace officer’s license and now faces prosecution on charges that he threatened and terrorized two female motorists passing through his town of 130 residents.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/28095627/estelline-chief-of-police-charged-with-official-oppression

Duwayne Marcolesco is in trouble for allegedly stopping the women while he was off duty. The women filed a complaint with the Childress County Sheriff’s Department, which then brought charges against the former chief.

So, why the struggle to suppress my laughter?

It’s that Estelline has this reputation throughout Texas — and perhaps even parts of Oklahoma — for being a speed-trap town. You’d better obey the speed limit signs posted on either side of U.S. 287 coming into Estelline, either from Childress or Memphis, or else the cops’ll get ya.

That’s what residents in the Texas Panhandle are known to advise others from outside the region who are driving through Estelline.

Indeed, I received that exact advice when I arrived in the Panhandle in early January 1995 to take my post as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News — and I’ve been giving that advice to others for the past two decades.

The term “official oppression” is a kind of legalese for misusing one’s authority. Motorists have griped for as long as I can remember about that very thing as they drive through this tiny Panhandle town.

I don’t know what the former chief allegedly did to those women — but none of this sounds all that surprising.