re: Any of you baws live in Brookside?

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Harvey Updyke stays in trouble with the law because of the fine they levied on him more than anything else.

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Harvey has actually managed to stay out of trouble for the past 18 months or so. Glad to see he's really cleaned up his act.

In all seriousness, Updkye is a bad example. He wasn't saddled with *fines* but rather with *restitution* payments for the trees he killed. That's a different animal.

There's no perfect solution to the treadmill of trouble lower income folks can find themselves in because of court ordered fines and the system we have in place makes it even more difficult. In many cities in this state, if you don't have the ability to resolve your fine outright, you get shuffled off to a private probation company, such as JCS ( https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2018/05/private_probation_company_sued.html) which piles on additional fees on top of those already imposed by the city. Many times, these monthly fees assessed by the private probation company pile on and make it near impossible for someone to climb out from the hole they're in, with the threat of imprisonment if they're unable to pay.

Making the fines proportional to the offender's income is not a solution that will ever be palatable or acceptable, but the cities should be willing to work with offender's by evaluating their ability to pay, allowing them to pay their fines over time without additional fees assessed by a private company further indebting them, and maybe offer forgiveness of the remaining fees for those individuals who are below a certain income threshold but who make their payments timely for a set number of months. It's still a regressive system, but it's one with some flexibility, forgiveness, and compassion built into it.

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I don't have a problem with forgiving, but it would have to be tied to more than simply making your payments. If you didn't include other stipulations like no further offenses in any jurisdiction it would become an immediate get out of jail free card.

I'm a bigger fan of community service. Get a ticket, pick up the trash for a weekend and we're good. Even if you just stand there holding the bag for 8 hours a day, you've effectively been incarcerated and paid your debt.

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Agree with most of this, though I don't think the absence of a "no further offenses in a jurisdiction" would render it a get out of jail free card. If someone has made, say 12 payments of $20, they're still paying $240.

Absolutely would have no problem with the incorporation of community service into the forgiveness of a fine.

I grew up nearby in Gardendale. From the early 80s Brookside was a dump, trash town and to be avoided.

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Harvey has actually managed to stay out of trouble for the past 18 months or so. Glad to see he's really cleaned up his act.

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“This will confirm that earlier today, Mike Jones resigned as the Police Chief for the Town of Brookside,” the statement from town clerk Debbie Keedy read. “Since this involves a personnel matter, the Town has no further comment.”

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I'm wondering if they actually meant that he resigned due to "personnel" issues or if they meant to say "personal" issues.

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They're saying it relates to city personnel, and they don't comment on those matters.

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Yeah, but they act like they can't when obviously a city can comment on personnel issues within one of its own departments. That's what caused me to wonder.

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So 1 police officer for every 125 residents...?

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According to the bureau of labor statistics, there are 795k police officers in the united states. That maths out to 1 officer for every 415 people, or only 3.32 times the national average for Brookside. With the recent resignation that literally decimated their force, down to only 3 times the national average

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Lots of people beat their chest and claim they're going to sue a city after getting a ticket, and simply filing a claim means the city is "facing a lawsuit."

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This isn't talking about people who have filed notices of claims with Brookside. I'm not sure where they got the five number, but I can see three active lawsuits filed in Alabama federal courts against Brookside since 2021. The original article simply said "five lawsuits" (or maybe has been corrected to say that since then), so it may be there are some cases pending in state court as well.

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I don't take issue with the size of the police force. As you said, if the town of Brookside wants that, then more power to them. But the police are using their increased manpower to issue bogus tickets just to generate revenue. We know that they're issuing bogus tickets because they've admitted under oath that they're doing it.

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Dawson also represents Victoria Brumlow, a young woman who – like hundreds more – was stopped on I-22 and ticketed for driving on the left lane of the interstate. Not speeding, not swerving, just using the left lane.

A Brookside officer ticketed Brumlow under Alabama code section 32-5-77, which her lawyers contend does not contain a crime. But it’s a common charge in Brookside.

She argued that she only drove in the left lane to pass other vehicles, and her ticket – on May 26, 2019 – came five months before Alabama’s Anti-Road Rage Act, a law making it illegal to drive in the left lane of an interstate for more than a mile and a half, went into effect.

Brookside police officers in sworn depositions indicated they did not follow drivers for a full mile and a half before or after the new law was passed, and they continued to write tickets under the old law after the new road rage bill passed.

In May of 2019, the month Brumlow was stopped, Brookside officers ticketed 75 people for driving in the left lane. Between April 2018 and June 2020, they handed out 406 of those tickets, or about 15 a month, according to documents filed in the lawsuit.

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Then, after issuing bogus tickets, the system is rigged into brow-beating people into just paying the fines by repeatedly continuing their cases:

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Brumlow’s uncle, Jeff Brumlow, is the longtime prosecutor and city attorney for the city of Alabaster, and a GOP candidate for Shelby County district judge. He agreed to represent his niece in her traffic case.

In a sworn deposition in the civil suit Jeff Brumlow said he went to court three times before the case was ultimately dropped, and saw many people – he’d guess 25 to 30% of all defendants – charged with the dubious left lane violation.

“What I had watched in court with the use of this particular charge, I mean, just to be quite frank, it offended me that a court would act that way and that a city would act that way toward people who really don’t have that kind of money,” he testified. “So it was a bit of a moral outrage because I had sat in court three times now and it was no longer a mistake.”

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This isn't getting a notice beforehand that your case is continued; it's driving back to Brookside, sitting in the court room, and then getting told to come back. If you're not from Brookside, having to do that three times goes beyond inconvenience and into the territory of the government using its inherent authority to force people to pay the fines--regardless of guilt--rather than continue to waste more of their time.

There's a reason why this is a non-partisan issue and Brookside is getting pressure from both Republicans and Democrats. Police Departments are not meant to be revenue generating arms of the government, which is what Chief Jones turned Brookside into.

Ironically, their actions are going to hurt other small towns because there will be reactionary legislation to what they're doing: https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/were-going-to-get-something-done-state-leaders-promise-action-on-brookside-ticket-trap.html

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Among the ideas being discussed is a proposal that would ban Alabama towns under 19,000 population from issuing any tickets at all on the interstate, he said. Another suggestion might ban those small departments from issuing tickets on the interstate for non-moving violations, such as tag lights that are too bright or too dim.

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there are several other proposals under consideration by legislators, including eliminating municipal courts in towns under a certain size, or requiring that money from fines and fees can’t go back into the general fund, or the police department.

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Apparently the now former police chief was also President of the Helena City Council at one time. He had some shady stuff going on when he was in that role involving a business he owned.