Be very careful if you drive through the city limits of this tiny dot on the map!!
The town of Brookside, Alabama holds municipal court once a month. The courtroom and the parking lot are packed with people. Police must direct traffic before the 1 p.m. court session starts. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer
By John Archibald | jarchibald@al.com
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.
He figured there was no point.
“I saw the same attitude in every officer and every person,” he said. “That’s why I hesitated to fight it. They were doing the same thing to every person that was there. They own the town.”
Perez, it appears, was right.
Months of research and dozens of interviews by AL.com found that Brookside’s finances are rocket-fueled by tickets and aggressive policing. In a two-year period between 2018 and 2020 Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared more than 640 percent and now make up half the city’s total income.
And the police chief has called for more.
www.al.com
The town of Brookside, Alabama holds municipal court once a month. The courtroom and the parking lot are packed with people. Police must direct traffic before the 1 p.m. court session starts. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer
By John Archibald | jarchibald@al.com
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.
He figured there was no point.
“I saw the same attitude in every officer and every person,” he said. “That’s why I hesitated to fight it. They were doing the same thing to every person that was there. They own the town.”
Perez, it appears, was right.
Months of research and dozens of interviews by AL.com found that Brookside’s finances are rocket-fueled by tickets and aggressive policing. In a two-year period between 2018 and 2020 Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared more than 640 percent and now make up half the city’s total income.
And the police chief has called for more.
Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole’
Using unmarked police cars and uniforms without insignia, the town with no traffic lights collected $487 in fines and forfeitures in 2020 for every man, woman and child. Total town income more than doubled from 2018 to 2020 – from $582,000 to more than $1.2 million – as fines and forfeitures...
www.al.com
