"Brookside, Alabama’s population is barely 1,200 people, but officials decided that what the town really needed was more police. Now, fines and forfeitures make up half of the town’s income in a rampant case of policing for profit, Alabama news site AL.com reports.
The numbers are shocking. Only 55 nonviolent crimes were reported in the seven-year period between 2011 and 2018. And yet in 2018, the police force was expanded from one full-time police officer to eight full-time officers and several part-timers. From the article:
By 2020 Brookside made more misdemeanor arrests than it has residents. It went from towing 50 vehicles in 2018 to 789 in 2020 – each carrying fines. That’s a 1,478% increase, with 1.7 tows for every household in town.
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Police stops soared between 2018 and 2020. Fines and forfeitures – seizures of cars during traffic stops, among other things – doubled from 2018 to 2019. In 2020 they came to $610,000. That’s 49% of the small town’s skyrocketing revenue.
A town with just 6.3 miles of roads saw officers patrol 114,438 miles in 2020. And those patrols resulted in stops that residents have often found shocking. There’s the grandmother who’s suing the city alleging that she was stopped after officers claimed she flashed her headlights to warn other cars that they were nearby. Or there’s another resident who was one of 75 people that were given a ticket for simply using the left lane on the interstate. The city is in the business of screwing over its residents. And the mayor doesn’t seem to care that people are complaining:
Mayor Bryan dismissed the complaints of those who must appear in court. “Everybody’s got a story,” he said. “And 99% of them are lying.”
Residents are hoping something can be done about the situation soon. The sheriff for Brookside’s Jefferson Count, Mark Pettway, thinks everything that’s going on will eventually attract the attention of the federal government:
I think it’s one of those situations … that could possibly bring in the feds with some oversight,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they opened up an investigation. You can’t do what’s going on over there.
It’s a wild case of for-profit overpolicing in a tiny town with a population whose median income is well below state average — a town that survives in large part due to tax revenue from the local Dollar General. It’s not known for havinv a lot of crime. Though it already brought in a pretty high percentage of its local revenue from fines and forfeitures, even before the policing crisis started.
Here’s hoping Pettway is right and the federal government starts paying attention to Brookside, Alabama."
Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/this-tiny-alabama-town-of-1-200-has-been-overrun-by-out-of-control-police/ar-AASXZaj?ocid=msedgntp
A very small town on the northern outskirts of Nashville has been running a veritable racket on I-65 North for like 2 decades. Basically, I-40 crosses I-65 right in the heart of Nashville. I-65 then heads north through Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, all the way up to Lake Michigan.
The interstates are generally patrolled by State Highway troopers. Somewhere in the early 2000's, little Millersville (TN) received permission to patrol the section of I-65 between the 2 exits that lead into their town (roughly a 6-mile stretch 15 minutes north of Nashville). The state approved it presumably because it meant the need for fewer resources from them to handle traffic safety in that area.
The town then proceeded to invest heavily in horrible officers and vehicles and basically tucked 2 squad cars there every weekday year-round during the peak travel hours of the day, to the point that this became an enormous piece of their budgeted annual revenues. Normally, most people wouldn't think much of this - after all, if you're doing 88 in a 70 and get caught, that's on you. The problem is that virtually none of this revenue has been used for civic improvement. The schools, roads, and general infrastructure in that little town are still an utter mess, and no one seems to be able to grasp where the money has been going other than back into the pockets of the local government employees and departments.
The karmic full-circle comedy from this is that one of their biggest investments several years back was to replace most of the vehicles they used to patrol the interstate with unmarked vehicles that blended in better in the median. That was an "oops," because pulling over vehicles as part of routine traffic patrol isn't supposed to be done with cars that aren't clearly marked in this area. As a result, quite a few drivers just stopped pulling over for these idiots. They just put on their hazards and drove on past the second Millersville exit, at which point Roscoe P. Coltrane had to exit and go back to town. Apparently, enough people did both that and complained to state officials, such that you rarely see them out in speed traps any longer. No idea what corrupt tactics they're up to these days to try to make up the revenue that they aren't getting as much of any longer.
safety it represents. Accidents being a prime reason with roadside assistance - As a deterrent for Unruly drivers and those who are inebriated. Road construction crews and just general compliance of road rules.
But misuse by police department as a money gatherer for personal use is what policing doesn’t need - after awhile this misuse of authority only engenders distrust.
Speed traps, because there are lots of a holes around
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