The Abuse of Power in a Small Town Police Force

Not Mayberry. Not even close.

AL.com has a remarkable, extensive, and, to me, sickening story about a small town just outside of Birmingham, AL: Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole’. It is a tale about turning basic police powers into an unjust money machine that serves not the cause of public safety, but of its own self-perpetuation. While it isn’t some dramatic tale of mass violence or denial of human rights on a societal scale, as we often associate with authoritarian regimes, it nonetheless is a very clear illustration of how the power of the state, specifically law enforcement, can be used with impunity to victimize citizens who end up having limited, if any, recourse. It is also an illustration that, despite the way it is often discussed, local government is not necessarily the most benign level of government (and can misbehave without anyone noticing).

Here are the basics:

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.

The town of 1,253 just north of Birmingham reported just 55 serious crimes to the state in the entire eight year period between 2011 and 2018 – none of them homicide or rape. But in 2018 it began building a police empire, hiring more and more officers to blanket its six miles of roads and mile-and-a-half jurisdiction on Interstate 22.

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.

I am not sure I have ever seen a better example of the old saw about the self-licking ice cream cone: the money earned from the fines (which the article notes now account for just shy of half of all revenue for Brookside) is basically plowed back into the police force.

Jones said crime when he took over was higher than it appeared from numbers the town reported to the state. He said response times were long because Brookside often had to rely on the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department for service.

He said he’d like to see even more growth in revenue from fines and forfeitures.

“I see a 600% increase – that’s a failure. If you had more officers and more productivity you’d have more,” Jones said. “I think it could be more.”

When Jones was hired as chief in 2018, he was the only full-time police officer, he said in sworn testimony for a lawsuit filed against him and the city. By last summer, he said in a deposition, Brookside had hired eight additional full-time officers and several part-timers.

Asked in December how many officers were on staff, he refused to say, citing “security” concerns, though police staff sizes are reported regularly to the government for public consumption.

A department of nine officers in a 1,253-person town is far larger than average. Across the country, the average size of a force is one officer for every 588 residents, according to a Governing Magazine study that examined federal statistics.

Last year, based on Jones’ testimony, Brookside had at least one officer for every 144 residents.

The idea that it raises “security concerns” to know how many public employees the police department has underscores the militarized thinking at play here.

I would note the following photo from the piece illustrates both the way funds are being spent and yet another example of unnecessary militarization of law enforcement.

Brookside
Here’s the caption from this photo in the article: “Brookside, which in 2018 had one full time police officer, now parks a riot control vehicle — townspeople call it a tank — outside the municipal complex and community center. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songe”

Brookside, AL is not a place that needs a riot control vehicle. Not even close.

Indeed, before getting into more details from the piece I will note that I am quite familiar with the area surrounding Brookside and have some specific experience with Brookside itself. Brookside is part of an area outside of Birmingham proper but is part of the larger metro area. It is part of the area that grew up around the mining that declined some decades ago alongside the mining industry in the Magic City.* It is adjacent to the town where my grandparents (and a huge chunk of my family) lived when my mother was born (a small neighborhood that was once part of a company town). While my grandparents and a slew of aunts and uncles migrated to Texas in the 1950s, my great-grandmother, great-uncle, and several great-aunts stayed pretty much right where they had been since the early 20th century until their deaths. In fact, a beloved great-aunt was still living where she had for almost her entire life when I moved to Alabama in the 1990s for my current job. Sadly, by that time she was suffering from dementia, but we made a number of visits before she passed a few years later. So, I have both childhood recollections of the region and adult experiences.**

Here is Brookside relative to Birmingham. I have highlighted I-22, a relatively new section of interstate that goes from Birmingham to Memphis (I have to wonder as to the degree to which the full opening of I-22 was not the impetus for this move to aggressive policing since it meant more traffic near the town’s borders). I-22 intersects I-65, the main N-S corridor through Alabama. All along I-65 is suburban Birmingham and it runs right through downtown.

Despite proximity to suburbs and very urban areas, if I were to blindfold you and drop you in the middle of Brookside, you might assume that you were in the middle of nowhere.

Here’s a zoom-in. The blue circle (and the blue “x” in the above-which is actually a little off) is the cluster of streets where a chunk of my mother’s family is from. One will note that most of Brookside is hills and trees. One will also note that it does not, according to this map, actually touch I-22 (although the story notes that 1.5 miles of that highway is within its jurisdiction).

I was in Brookside proper twice in late 2016. A friend and I were taking photos and were curious about this church, which was built in 1916 on the site of the first Russian Orthodox Church south of the Mason-Dixon Line:

We were also curious about this old, disused train trestle:

IMG_2101

So, note that Brookside is that kind of place where you go looking for remnants of the past (especially if your aesthetic is urban decay). Like much of the area between I-65 and I-22 (and really a lot of the former mining communities) Brookside is a mix of trees, hills, and a lack of zoning. There are falling apart trailers, older but nice houses, and newish suburban homes all on the same block.

So, not, it is not a place that needs riot control vehicles or law enforcement officials without insignia (oh yes–see below) because of, you know, security concerns.


But, back to the article:

Brookside until recently was known for its quirky Russian food festival and the state’s only onion-domed Russian Orthodox Church. It’s a former mining town, its population about the same as it was a decade ago. Fewer than 100 of its residents graduated college.

Brookside is a poor town, 70% white, 21% Black, with a small but growing Hispanic population and a median income well below the state average. The town survives on the fringes of Birmingham with tax revenue from the Dollar General, which forms the totality of its commercial district.

In 2018, when the town had one full-time police officer and a few part-timers, it reported no serious crimes to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. Brookside Police did patrol the 1.5-mile stretch of Interstate 22 within their jurisdiction and wrote tickets that brought in $82,467 in fines. That contributed a 14% chunk of the city’s total income, a number that would be considered high in much of America.

But Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared after that, and the town’s law-enforcement goals — and its reputation — changed.

By 2020 officers in the sleepy town were undergoing SWAT training and dressing in riot gear, even as the city continued with only a volunteer fire department. It parked a riot control vehicle — townspeople call it a tank — outside the municipal complex and community center. Traffic tickets, and criminalizing those who passed through, became the city’s leading industry.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, insane.

SWAT. Training.

Let that sink in.

Not to mention:

Chief Jones testified under oath that just one of the 10 Brookside vehicles is painted with police striping, but nine others bear no emblems, and seven are tinted all the way around, making it impossible to see inside. Jones testified his officers wear gray uniforms with no Brookside insignias.

But, you know, there was work to be done, so why not do so dressed in ways that suggest clandestine military operations? After all, there are traffic stops to make.

 Arrests on Brookside warrants went from zero to 243 in the span of two years, according to statistics Chief Jones presented to the council.

Jones — again as Mayor Bryan nodded — said the goal of the department is only to help people.

“It’s not about making a dollar,” Jones said.

Yet the town with no traffic lights collected $487 in fines and forfeitures in 2020 for every man, woman and child, though many of those fined were merely passing by on I-22.

Help people do what?

Like, perhaps, this?

Sandra Jo Harris, a 52-year-old grandmother, claims in a lawsuit she pulled off I-22 at Cherry Avenue on Jan. 8, 2020, as she often did when she went to visit her daughter. It was nearing dusk, and as she drove into the neighborhood she didn’t think much about the unmarked black SUV with tinted windows on the side of the road. She turned on her lights, according to her lawsuit, because of the approaching darkness.

But when she did, the unmarked SUV pulled into the street, crossed the center line and sped toward her car, blue lights flashing. She was not speeding, or breaking the law, she argued in the suit. She pulled to the side of the road as the SUV pulled behind her, and a wrecker simultaneously parked nearby. It frightened her, and led to more trouble.

Officers, dressed completely in dark, unmarked uniforms approached her, and one accused her of flickering her lights to warn others of their presence, her suit alleges. Unsure what was happening, Harris dialed 911. But an officer grabbed the phone and threw it to the ground, breaking it, the lawsuit says. Police put her in a patrol car and searched her vehicle for drugs.

This led to her arrest and a trip to jail (see details in the piece).

Police charged Harris with flickering her lights – or “nuisance of casting lights from motor vehicle on real property at night,” which she argues did not happen and eventually was dropped. She was also charged with resisting arrest. A report quoted in the suit claimed she “tighten (sic) arm muscles from getting handcuff (sic).”

There are a number of other examples. My favorite is the traffic stop that resulted in a joint being found and the driver being charged with possession and for having drug paraphernalia–that is, the wrapping paper that was part of the joint.

Bill Dawson, a lawyer who has represented several clients in Brookside, said defendants have faced possession charges for a joint, with paraphernalia charges tacked on for the paper it was rolled in.

“I’ve never seen a possession case split like that,” he said. “It’s unheard of.”

And all of these tickets, fines, and arrests cost people, often of limited means, substantial financial costs, not to mention the loss of time. There is a photo accompanying the piece that shows the long line at the courthouse for persons contesting their tickets.

Or, if one needs another example, see this companion story (also via al.com): Pastor, sister say rogue Alabama police force sought revenge. In that piece, a Black pastor is pulled over for having a paper tag on his new car who is called a racial epithet (yes, that one) and the result of him calling to complain was him accused of impersonating an office (and his sister was too, and she wasn’t even involved). You just really need to read the whole thing.

All of this underscores the perils of policing for profit instead of supporting public safety.

Further, it demonstrates how the petty authoritarian applications of local power by law enforcement officers with delusions of grandeur can wreck lives. None of this is making anyone safer. It is not improving the lives of anyone, save perhaps for whatever benefits the burgeoning Brookside police department receives (or the vendors selling riot control vehicles and SWAT training to a tiny town that needs neither).

I would recommend reading the entire piece, as well as the story of Rev. Witt linked above. I will warn you, it is all quite infuriating and describes practices that ought to be unacceptable. Hopefully, the pending lawsuit and the national attention that this excellent reporting has generated will lead to the dismantlement of this farce of a police force.


*Birmingham’s nickname is “The Magic City” as it grew out of nothing in the very late 19th Century to become a boom town and center for mining and steel production. Its star shined brightly and peaked by the mid-20th Century (if not a tad before). It was in a declining pattern from mid-century onward. The remnants of the mines, the industry, and the infrastructure (such as the railroads) have all been featured in many Photos for Friday (a lot more here).

**These connections made this story really bore into my head, and hence the very long post. This is a place linked to where a significant portion of my family originated. It is part of a larger place I have come to be profoundly interested in for a number of reasons and in a number of ways (linked to art and history). And, thematically, it touches directly on my interests in democracy and how it can go awry.

FILED UNDER: Crime, Democracy, Policing, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Bnut says:

    I would love a lawyer to tell us where the State AG is. What is Merrick Garland doing with this for that matter? Brookside is in a Democrat held state district. Who the hell is doing ONE thing?

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  2. Jim Brown 32 says:

    When rural America lost manufacturing to offshoring–this is what replaced it. The Police Industrial Complex. Frankly, they are really just jobs programs built off a privateer model. But hey–beats eaking out a living driving a wrecker, mowing yards, or some other low volume light industrial job found in these places.

    Florida put an end these operations by requiring all ticket revenue be sent to the state to be sent back to the county using a pre-determined proportion. There is no way to sustain these po-dunk jobs programs down here. Now HOAs? In Florida–they have the power to destroy your life.

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  3. EddieInCA says:

    None of this is surprising, and many of us have been complaining about small town police departments for decades. But good old boys protect good old boys. I’ve said it a million times. (Sorry, Dr. Taylor), “I have more in common with people from Madrid, Paris, Mexico City, or Berlin than I do people from Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas.” And I have relatives in Texas!

    I’ve been stopped no less than six times for “speeding” while driving under the speed limit in Alabama. Fortunately, I have a camera in my car that records everything when I’m on road trips. Soon as I tell the officers they’re being recorded, they hand me back my license, registration, insurance card, and walk away – usually silently.

    In Mississippi, I was threatened with arrest for recording the police after they pulled me over because I “looked suspicious”. At the time, I was driving the speed limit on I-20 between Brandon and Jackson. When I road trip, I set my cruise control at the speed limit and don’t touch it. I adjust every time I see a speed limit sign. Fortunately, I could tell the officer the exact statute in the MS code to counter his threat about me recording.

    https://www.aclu-ms.org/en/know-your-rights/right-record

    Nowadays, when they pull some shit, and they do because of one of the cars I drive, I tell them to google me, But that’s only when they’re harassing and don’t have a legitimate case. My last drive from ATL to Los Angeles, I got busted for speeding in West Texas. I was going 84 in a 70. I did it. I pulled over and took my ticket. No issue. Cop was genuinely nice. Of course, I was guilty as sin, so all I could do was say “Yep. You caught me officer. Good job.” $274 ticket. I still remember.

    But too many small town cops are just assholes.

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  4. EddieInCA says:

    @Jim Brown 32:

    Now HOAs? In Florida–they have the power to destroy your life.

    Funny my wife and I are talking about selling our FL home and buying one in GA instead because…. Florida. And she’s from Florida.

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  5. de stijl says:

    Where’s Radley Balko when you need him?

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  6. Kurtz says:

    @EddieInCA:

    You have a home here? Mind sharing the general region? Would love to chop it up if it’s near where I am next time you’re around this swamp.

  7. Dude Kembro says:

    @Jim Brown 32:

    Now HOAs? In Florida–they have the power to destroy your life.

    Hahahaha. That’s perfect.

    1
  8. Dude Kembro says:

    Thanks for flagging this, Dr. Taylor. I read both of these pieces a couple of days ago, on a walk to the Post Office. I ended up wishing I could mail myself to Berlin or Prague.

    Drove from Atlanta suburbs to Birmingham exurbs and back in Dec 2020, for a family member’s high school basketball game. My Dad: “I know you drive like a grandmother, but…” He wanted to give me The Speech (?!). Like, bro, I haven’t been a teenager since Trump was a Democrat, but okay dad.

    Infuriating indeed. Merrick has a lot of fish to fry. God bless him.

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  9. Matt Bernius says:

    @de stijl:

    Where’s Radley Balko when you need him?

    He’s been promoting this story on twitter. That’s where I first heard it.

    —-

    Thanks for covering this Steven–especially as you can give needed local perspective. I’m still working on my response to Zaid Jilani’s editorial (gathering sources is taking longer than expected) and I was planning to mention this, along with Fergeson, in regards to “for-profit policing.”

    One thing I’m specifically curious about: what, if any, local taxes exist for Brookside. You often see for-profit policing in places that have low tax bases and the police are expected to self-fund.

    One other thing I’ll note is related to:

    “Brookside, which in 2018 had one full time police officer, now parks a riot control vehicle — townspeople call it a tank — outside the municipal complex and community center.”

    That vehicle was most likely a “free” transfer from the US military. The city doesn’t pay for the vehicle, if memory serves, but does have to pay for upkeep. Upkeep is not insignificant. Those transfers were suspended* under the Obama administration. The “pro-police” Trump administration reinstated the transfers (as part of rolling back a number of Obama-era guardrails on police) and it appears that this was most likely obtained after the Trump restart.

    To my knowledge, the Biden administration has not suspended the program again.

    * – Note that the Obama admin did not suspend all transfers. I believe it was primarily focused on larger vehicles and high-caliber weapons.

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  10. @Jim Brown 32:

    When rural America lost manufacturing to offshoring–this is what replaced it.

    Well, mining in the region collapsed decades ago and this started in Brookside in 2018, so while I take the general point, I think it is a gross overgeneralization.

    And yes: HOAs have too much power.

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  11. @Matt Bernius: I thought about that military surplus angle on that vehicle and meant to mention the possibility.

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  12. @Jim Brown 32: @Steven L. Taylor: Oh, and as I was trying to note, this isn’t truly a rural community. It is maybe a 10 minute drive from downtown Birmingham.

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  13. @Matt Bernius:

    One thing I’m specifically curious about: what, if any, local taxes exist for Brookside.

    Localities in Alabama rely on property taxes and sales taxes. Alabama has the lowest property taxes in the country (and, as the piece notes, this is a fairly poor municipality, and therefore likely has low property valuations). There are practically no businesses in Brookside (I think the piece mentions a Dollar General and I am aware of a gas station and a few other small service businesses, but not much).

    Of course, what is striking to me from the budget discussion in the piece is that the money generated is mainly just being spent on more policing. It isn’t like a bunch of city services are being funded (not that that would justify it, but it would at least there would be a thin reed of positive motivations in all of this).

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  14. Matt Bernius says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    Of course, what is striking to me from the budget discussion in the piece is that the money generated is mainly just being spent on more policing. It isn’t like a bunch of city services are being funded (not that that would justify it, but it would at least there would be a thin reed of positive motivations in all of this).

    This is a pattern seen in numerous places. And for obvious reasons it’s deeply problematic especially as it creates a closed-loop that ultimately incentivizes code enforcement. It’s more or less one of the (in)famous antidrug commercials of my youth:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fordPXp06h4

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  15. OzarkHillbilly says:

    “ATM! ATM! ATM!”

    _ Arresting Monteagle TN LEO to a man in custody (me)(as I was removing my boot laces)

  16. Jay L Gischer says:

    This is exactly the sort of thing that can go wrong in small towns. Corruption can happen anywhere, but in a small town, there are fewer decision makers involved, and the smaller scale of it doesn’t attract much attention from the sort of out-of-towners who could maybe do something about it.

    Interestingly enough, California has its own version of this: Siskiyou County is famous for the number of tickets given out on I-5 in the county. My family has two. It’s a revenue thing, it would seem. It is not as egregious as described here, but its the same pattern of an area with a low native population, but high traffic through it. The demand is for higher police protection from all those “bad people” from elsewhere.

  17. Jax says:

    I ran into a similar trap in Tupelo, Mississippi in 2001 or so. They thought for sure I was a drug runner, tore my rental car apart, bagged up all the powdered sugar on the front passenger seat from a bag of donuts that had tipped over as “evidence of either meth or coke”, and found a tiny, tiny end of a roach under the seat. Bam, Driving under the influence, possession, paraphernalia (same as the article said, the paper the roach was rolled with was paraphernalia), took me to jail, the whole 9 yards. I lived in Arizona at the time, so it was a major pain in my ass, but if I remember correctly everything got dropped to a speeding ticket (2 miles over) and some kind of misdemeanor for the roach. Thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and court fees fighting it, though.

  18. Jax says:

    And this hippie chick hasn’t set foot in the Deep South since. The cop said they don’t like “my kind” there. 😛

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  19. EddieInCA says:

    @Kurtz:

    Bradenton. Bayshore Gardens. 26th Avenue.

  20. James Joyner says:

    For-profit policing is a problem even when it’s not this transparently corrupt. Unlike the @EddieInCA I’m almost always actually speeding when I’m stopped for speeding. Thankfully, it’s not that often. But what has happened in the last few years is the radical ramping up of “court costs,” which one has to pay even if one doesn’t go to court. In my experience, this often results in the officer kindly writing the ticket up for something other than speeding (say, “Failure to Observe a Highway Sign”) that comes with no points on the license, report to the insurance company, etc. The fine is usually something like $30. But the “court costs,” which are imposed even if you plead guilty via a checkmark on the ticket and simply mail in the payment, are something like $100-150. Nice little racket.

    As to local yokel cops like these using the interstates, I have long argued that they should not have jurisdiction on federal highways, certainly not interstate highways. I would allow only federal cops and the state highway patrol, which is almost invariably better screened and trained, to issue tickets on those roads. The Florida solution offered by Jim Brown 32 is also a reasonable one.

  21. Kurtz says:

    @EddieInCA:

    Cool. Not too far.

  22. Biographical note: I was talking to my mother last night and she noted that she went to elementary school in Brookside for a few years before they moved to Texas.

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  23. @James Joyner:

    s to local yokel cops like these using the interstates, I have long argued that they should not have jurisdiction on federal highways, certainly not interstate highways.

    Especially if the interstate isn’t even in the city limits!