Drunk-Busting Montana Cop Turns in Badge

“Texas Joe” Eldredge, the lawman who won national attention when he joined the two-man police department of Three Forks, Mont., and started arresting locals for something they never considered much of a crime--drunk driving--has turned in his badge.

In his first nine months, he locked up 19 local residents for driving under the influence, more than six times the total for the entire previous year. Some residents began a campaign to remove him from the force. The City Council recently voted to keep him, but the night of the vote Eldredge resigned anyway.

“I wanted to stay long enough to show people I wasn’t running from the pressure,” Eldredge said. “But my family doesn’t deserve this. I got wind of a new campaign to force me out, and I decided if the town doesn’t want my kind of law enforcement, that’s fine.”

Eldredge said he has an offer of a salesman’s job in nearby Bozeman.