Brookside police patrolled social media, threatening town's critics

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https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/police-chief-alabama-town-noted-traffic-trap-resigns/Q4CWIKSLVJA7NBJ77WWPVZZ3HE/

According to AL.com, in a two-year period between 2018 and 2020, Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared more than 640% and now account for 49% of the town’s $1.2 million budget. The main source of income was the speed trap along I-22.

Brookside, a former mining town in north Jefferson County, has only 1,253 residents, AL.com reported. Jones, as police chief, built a force of 10 or more full- and part-time officers with 10 dark vehicles that patrol I-22, the website reported.

A federal lawsuit contended that the left lane tickets written on I-22 by Brookside police were unlawful, WMBA-TV reported.

“Brookside is a poster child for policing for profit,” Carla Crowder, the director of Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, told AL.com. “We are not safer because of it.”

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/brookside-police-patrolled-social-media-threatening-towns-critics.html


In 2020, she had explained her case this way to the AG’s office: “The person threatened me with an arrest if I did not take down my Facebook pictures and posts of their police officers, stop sending emails to the local politicians, as well as others, and show them (Brookside police) that I understand law enforcement practices.”

Jones is not alone in complaining about Brookside. Stories from people stopped in the ticket-happy town continue to roll down like an avalanche, since AL.com last week published the story of how the tiny town turned to aggressive ticketing to build a ballooning police force that came to provide half the town’s revenue.

Police Chief Mike Jones has since resigned, Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth has requested an audit of Brookside’s town and police force, and lawmakers across party lines have called for bills to help curb small-town policing for profit on Alabama Interstates.

The accounts told to AL.com detail harassment and intimidation. They tell, with consistency, of specious tickets and arrests, of retaliation by a police department and by a chief who challenged those who questioned him as he sought to build an empire on the backs of drivers.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-in-this-tiny-alabama-town-suck-drivers-into-legal-black-hole.html

Ramon Perez came to court last month ready to fight the tickets he’d been handed by Brookside police, including one for rolling through a stop sign and another for driving 48 mph in a 40 zone.

He swore he’d seen the cop from a distance and was careful as he braked.

“I saw him and we looked eye to eye,” the Chelsea business owner said. “There’s no way I was going to run that stop sign.”

When he got to court Dec. 2, he saw scores of people just like him lining up to stand before Judge Jim Wooten, complaining of penny-ante “crimes” and harassment by officers. He saw so many people trying to park in the grassy field outside the municipal building that police had to direct traffic.

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On July 10th, 2019, 16 days after she paid her ticket, her phone rang. On the other end was a caller ID’d as coming from the Brookside Town Hall, she said. The caller identified himself as a “Det. Johnson,” though it is unclear if Brookside had a Detective Johnson.

He told her she was a wanted woman.

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“Detective Johnson had called and asked that I come to the Brookside Police Department to talk to them. After I told him that I would not, he reported that they have two warrants for my arrest. He stated that I issued threats, incited a riot, and slandered the Brookside Police Department in my Facebook posts. He reported that his Police Chief was mad.”