The Alabama police chief in a small town that saw an increase of more than 640% in its fines and forfeitures resigned on Tuesday following national coverage of a Birmingham News investigation into policing for profit. “This will confirm that earlier today, Mike Jones resigned as the Police Chief for the Town of Brookside,” town clerk Debbie Keedy said in a statement the newspaper obtained. “Since this involves a personnel matter, the Town has no further comment.”
Jones didn’t immediately respond to The Birmingham News’ attempt to comment, but he did respond on social media to residents who shared the newspaper’s story. “I strongly suggest you take the time to research the truth of the story before posting comments,” he said in a Facebook message to Senate candidate Lisa Ward that The Birmingham News obtained.
“Especially if you expect to run for public office on the State of Alabama. I am the Chief of Police of this department. I am a highly awarded and decorated 27 year State of Alabama law enforcement veteran choosing to continue serving in public office. I also serve on the AACOP executive board of Directors as the Emergency Response Committee Chairman with the Alabama Association of Chiefs of Police as well as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, & FBI LEEDA.”
Make that a decorated former police chief.
“Brookside, a former mining town in north Jefferson County, has only 1,253 residents, but under Jones built an outsized force of 10 or more full- and part-time officers with 10 dark vehicles that patrol I-22,” journalist John Archibald wrote. “The town has no traffic lights and only one retail store, the Dollar General, but in 2020 collected $487 in fines and forfeitures for every man, woman, and child.”
That amounts to nearly half of the $1.23 million in total revenue the town produced in 2020. Taxes, charges for services, intergovernmental revenue, and money from licenses and permits comprised most of the town's remaining revenue, The Birmingham News reported.
“This is shocking,” Carla Crowder, director of an equity and justice nonprofit dubbed Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, told The Birmingham News. “No one can objectively look at this and conclude this is good government that is keeping us safer.”
Coverage of the alleged abuse led public officials to seek investigations from the Department of Justice and the Alabama Attorney General.
Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth tweeted on Thursday: "This needs to be fixed and our office will be looking into this and possible solutions." He followed up with a tweet that the police chief’s resignation is “good news.”
The social media response is the very least Ainsworth can do. Let’s not stop the accountability at Brookside or allow Jones to end up another town’s problem when the national spotlight dims. Some 140 miles northwest of Brookside, Linndale law enforcement officers so frequently stopped drivers that the town became known "almost entirely for its speed trap," the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast This American Life reported.
Sean Cole, producer of the show, described an interstate just outside of Cleveland that runs through the village of Linndale. "And here's the thing everybody knows about Linndale. If you drive down this little stretch of road and you're speeding, the Linndale police will pull you over and give you a ticket," he said. "For decades, it's been the most aggressively policed 440-yard stretch of Interstate 71 around. And you have to pass through it to get from the airport to downtown Cleveland, so tourists on their way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or whatever get pulled over. And if you ask people who live in the Cleveland area, Linndale is basically a speed trap masquerading as a town."
Linndale, a town with a population of about 160 people, has an annual budget of about $2.7 million, Fox 8 reported. For comparison: Rochester, a town about 40 miles southwest of Linndale, has a population of about 170 people and a budget of $65,000.
Mark Gardner, a defense attorney who has represented clients in Linndale, told This American Life that Linndale and the Ohio State Legislature have an ongoing and "petty political tit-for-tat." "t's a municipality that, arguably, wouldn't exist, wouldn't have a budget, or barely any money at all, if not for speeding tickets. And the Ohio Legislature basically treats Linndale as a parasite, living off the lead-footedness of northern Ohioans," Cole said. "So the players are a town that has eight streets in it and a powerful body of lawmakers who thinks its laws are being enforced not wisely and too well."
The victims are unsuspecting drivers like activist Dario Alvarez, who pushed federal legislation aimed at reducing policing for profit. "The Driving for Opportunity Act would provide grants to states that do not suspend, revoke, or refuse to renew a driver’s license for failure to pay a civil or criminal fine or fee," he wrote in an ACLU article last October.
He said in the post that he was on his way to work at a food safety lab when he was pulled over for driving a car with tinted windows, and for displaying a temporary plate a highway patrol officer claimed he couldn't see. "I thought it was a minor infraction," Alvarez said. "I didn’t know it would kick off an ordeal that has cost me thousands of dollars and three jobs for over a decade since. That traffic ticket changed my life and I am still feeling the effects every day."
He said he was fined $140 for the window tint and $350 in court costs, and because he worked a $20-an-hour job, he opted for a payment plan to pay the debt. "Not long after, the lab I worked at closed down, and I lost my job—and my ability to make those payments," he wrote. "Meanwhile, the interest piled up and my court debt continued to grow."
When he got another job at a plastic manufacturing company in Loveland, Colorado, and attempted to drive to work, he was stopped on the way for failing to make payments on the fines. "I missed work that day because I was sitting in jail, without the ability to call in," Alvarez wrote. "When I finally got out and tried to explain the situation to my employer, I found out I’d been automatically fired due to their strict no-call, no-show policy."
Alvarez said by October, he owed $3,000—and because many jobs require a valid license or the ability to drive to work, employment was out of reach for him. “What happened to me happens to millions of Americans who struggle to pay off government-imposed debts for minor traffic violations,” he wrote. “State and local governments use these fines and fees to fund law enforcement and other government operations, but the inability to afford expensive tickets has no bearing on public safety and should not be treated as if it does.”
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