When stopping white drivers, police in Brookside issued warnings rather than citations more often than when they pulled over Black drivers. That’s among the findings in a report commissioned by the small town and made public today.
White drivers received more than 60 percent of the 1,020 warnings Brookside officers issued between January 2018 and May 2020, according to the new report, despite white people accounting for just under half of the population of wider Jefferson County.
“These percentages are strong evidence of selective enforcement, as they reflect officer discretion being exercised to excuse whites and to enforce violations against other groups to a degree well beyond their proportion of the population,” the report states. “While the statistical evidence does not necessarily demonstrate intentional discrimination, it is a red flag that the even-handedness and objectivity of the Police Department’s warning practices require attention.”
Black drivers account for more than 42 percent of the county’s population, yet they received just 35 percent of warnings in Brookside, the report says.
Drivers came forward to complain about racial profiling and policing for profit after AL.com in January published an investigation that detailed how Brookside, a small town north of Birmingham, multiplied its police force and saw revenue from traffic stops soar in recent years. Brookside then hired Ken Simon, a lawyer and retired circuit judge, to conduct an inquiry.
[Read more: Inside the remarkable rise and fall of Alabama’s most predatory police force]
Simon’s inquiry did not find evidence of racial profiling regarding who police chose to pull over. But, the report says, when it came to which drivers got to drive away with a warning, white drivers “received substantially more favorable treatment” than drivers of other races.
“We will do better going forward,” said Henry Irby, who took over as the Brookside police chief after Mike Jones stepped down in the wake of the AL.com reporting, and many other members of the force left. “There’s no doubt about that because that’s what we’re trying to do now.”
The AL.com reporting also prompted multiple state investigations and led to immediate promises of change in police policies in Brookside, such as reduced patrol zones and clearly marked vehicles.
Irby today told AL.com that the town already hired a police supervisor who will provide implicit bias training for the department.
Simon’s report also addresses allegations that the town stopped and ticketed drivers to raise revenue. AL.com’s reporting found that revenue from fines and forfeitures soared by 240 percent, coming to account for nearly half the town’s revenue by 2020.
“During the 2018-2021 time frame, Brookside Police Department leadership cast its enforcement dragnet too widely,” the report says. “The wide scope of traffic enforcement activity affected ordinary citizens. Relatively minor equipment and traffic interactions turned into multiple citations, court appearances, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, towed cars, and forfeited property.”
But Simon stopped short of saying whether he believes the policing was motivated by profit. He told AL.com that is for the courts of public opinion and courts of law to decide.
“I tried not to come down on it one way or another,” Simon told AL.com today. “I really was not charged with that task. I really think that is a task the media has taken on pretty well and I don’t know if I have anything to add. And that issue is in the courts right now with multiple lawsuits.”
Simon wrote in the report that town officials in Brookside believed more police were necessary to fight drugs and crime. The mayor and other officials told Simon that they did not employ the police department to drive up revenues. The town hired Jones as chief to build up the police department in 2018 and believed he was “cleaning up the streets as crime came down and patrol miles went up.”
“Instead of focusing on drug trafficking within the town’s traditional borders, it pursued regular vehicular traffic outside those boundaries – black, white and Hispanic citizens going to and coming from work, college students working part-time delivering food, local pastors driving late model cars,” the report says, noting that many drivers feared the town’s masked officers who drove blacked-out vehicles.
The report recommends that under the leadership of Irby, the new chief, the police department should adopt policies to more strategically target law enforcement efforts, and avoid racial profiling and over-policing. Brookside police officers also need more training, the report says.
“Citizen and officer safety, and protection of constitutional rights, should be among the prime goals of such training,” the report says. “The goals should include elevating professionalism at each level of law enforcement and civilian oversight.”
Finally, Simon found that the town needs help from local, state and federal authorities in fighting drugs.
“As we have seen, overly aggressive traffic enforcement is not the way forward,” the report says. “Smart, targeted strategies administered in an even-handed fashion will maximize results and public support for Brookside.”
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