Hey Merrick, If You Aren't Too Busy Doing Nothing, These Local Cops Might Need A Look See

And unfortunately, this crazy town isn't alone.

737666There’s an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents[1] where a couple drive through a small town in the South and a crooked police officer pulls them over on a trumped-up charge. They end up getting beaten in a courtroom, told that their case can’t be heard for a week, the car is “damaged” and then repaired by the local mechanic in cahoots with the local law enforcement. The injustices keep piling up and the audience gets more and more agitated on the mortorists’ behalf. After finally clearing the city limits — with the police trailing the car the whole way — we finally get the twist the series always promised. The couple were state agents investigating local government corruption all along.

Someone might want to screen that episode for Merrick Garland and then hand him a copy of this terrifying deep dive report out of Alabama. Just to see if maybe this might remind him that his job isn’t ALL thwarting antitrust enforcement.

Brookside, Alabama, is a town of 1,253 residents. It generates $610,000 in revenue off police fines and forfeitures — more than the entire town generated from all sources in 2018 — despite having no serious crime to speak of.

But the town brought on a new police chief, Mike Jones, in 2018 and he launched a massive increase in misdemeanor stops. Confronted with the town’s shocking spike in citations: “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.”

For the record, the sort of hardcore criminal activity that Jones wants more officers to pursue includes “a woman turning on her headlights at dusk” which police characterized as “a nuisance.”

Where does a tiny town that got by on a $431K total budget in 2016 spend all this money? More police, of course! And so the town that failed to report a single serious crime the year Jones took over as chief, now spends $646,620 on policing. The town is actually losing money chasing more fees.

But it does have a riot control tank! Which is one of the few symbols openly identifiable to the public as law enforcement.

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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.

That’s some hardcore Soviet Secret Police stuff right there. Officers also refuse to put their names on tickets, opting for initials — or code — instead.

“It’s my understanding that a guy can go out there and I mean, he can fall into a black hole,” Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr said of drivers getting entangled financially. “You know, we’ve had a lot of issues with Brookside.”

Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway said the same.

“We get calls about Brookside quite regularly because they really go outside their jurisdiction to stop people,” Pettway said. “Most of the time people get stopped, they’re going to get a ticket. And they’re saying they were nowhere near Brookside.”

That’s the DA and Sheriff saying, “Yeah, man, this is pretty messed up.” Later in the story, the Sheriff is quoted advising citizens to appeal their citations because, eventually, getting the case outside of the closed Alfred Hitchcock Presents-inspired system of Brookside tends to result in “real justice.” But folks in the poor town or people just passing through don’t always have the resources or time to push the issue. The town banks — quite literally in this case — on folks deciding it’s not worth it to fight.

This is a good time to encourage law schools and the regional mid-sized firms in the area to look into providing some pro bono assistance to the people of Brookside (or beyond, as Brookside may be a stark example, but it’s not alone out there). Because this is exactly where abuse happens — right where the rising cost of legal representation outstrips the cost of just acquiescing to injustice.

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If only we had some sort of “Department” focused on dealing issues like this…

Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole’ [Al.com]


[1] The Crooked Road (1958). Walter Matthau’s the primary antagonist.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.