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re: Any of you baws live in Brookside?
Posted on 2/6/22 at 9:37 pm to Roll Tide Ravens
Posted on 2/6/22 at 9:37 pm to Roll Tide Ravens
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He had some shady stuff going on when he was in that role involving a business he owned.
He owned a security company. His company had a contract with UA for football games at one time. He allegedly was caught altering time cards and underpaying his hired help, in addition to bilking a bunch of vendors. I want to say he was indicted for the time card issue, but charges were dropped.
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Posted on 2/7/22 at 8:16 am to JustGetItRight
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I'm a bigger fan of community service. Get a ticket, pick up the trash for a weekend and we're good.
i'd rather pay
Posted on 2/7/22 at 12:34 pm to imjustafatkid
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One could argue that they don't need a constant police presence, but if the citizens of Brookside want a constant police presence then I would argue that is their right.
What the residents do not have a right to is to have an ongoing criminal enterprise, run by its city government. The town of Hampton, FL, had to agree to disband their police department or face having its town charter revoked by the state government.
LINK
The right of Brookside citizens to have their own city government is not inviolate.
Posted on 2/7/22 at 4:07 pm to JustGetItRight
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The police jurisdiction for a municipality the size of Brookside extends 1.5 miles beyond the city limits. If Brookside provides services to that area (and it seems they do), the population of that area would be the correct number to use when comparing officer to citizen ratio.
I’m fairly familiar with that area, and even extending out to their jurisdiction boundaries it’s not adding a whole lot of people. Despite its proximity to Birmingham, it’s a pretty sparsely populated area. We are talking maybe 500 more people, if that.
I know someone that lives near there, and according to him(he knows a couple of the councilors there) they expanded their PD 4 or 5 years ago because the sheriff’s department all but stopped responding to calls there. At that time, they had 2 police officers, and one was part time. How they went from that decision to aggressively ticketing people, I don’t know, but it’s likely because they made a bad hire with that chief. Then the council and mayor turned a blind eye to it because the revenue made them look better.
Posted on 2/7/22 at 4:30 pm to The Spleen
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I know someone that lives near there, and according to him(he knows a couple of the councilors there) they expanded their PD 4 or 5 years ago because the sheriff’s department all but stopped responding to calls there.
That's a pretty common thing is more rural areas. Even if the sheriff's office wants to respond they're not getting there in time to make a difference so on more serious calls the PD of a local city will be the initial responder.
One of the few things the old Brookside chief said that's right is that a certified police officer can enforce state laws anywhere in the state. One very interesting thing though is that if they were writing tickets outside the police jurisdiction those should have been sent to district court. The local municipal court wouldn't be the right place for them to be heard.
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How they went from that decision to aggressively ticketing people, I don’t know, but it’s likely because they made a bad hire with that chief. Then the council and mayor turned a blind eye to it because the revenue made them look better.
Most likely 100% accurate. It's also notable that they don't have a budget. A municipality that size isn't required to have one. That's important because it means there's a good chance that most of the city council showed up to the once a month (all a city that size has to hold) council meeting, got a bottom-line bank statement, and then went home. There was money in the bank, so all must be fine. I REALLY doubt many ever show up and watch a municipal court session.
This post was edited on 2/7/22 at 4:30 pm
Posted on 2/7/22 at 4:48 pm to BLG
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i'd rather pay
I'm sure virtually everyone would too but there's a certain amount of validity to the claim that the fines and costs are disproportionally harder on poor people.
I'm not terribly sympathetic in non-Brookside situations because there's a really easy way to avoid getting fined no matter your income level. Having said that, we all mess up now and there needs to be a good way for those people to settle their debt to society. Assuming a $10/hour rate, a weekend (16 hours) of picking up trash pretty much equals the cost of a speeding ticket.
Debt paid, go forth and sin no more.
Posted on 2/7/22 at 5:20 pm to The Spleen
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it’s likely because they made a bad hire with that chief.
After reading a couple more stories, it's way more than the police chief. In fact, he and the bad officers aren't the worst problem.
This is a failure of the magistrate, municipal court judge, and to a lesser extent the JeffCo district attorney and circuit court.
They were signing tickets with crap like "agent MM." Every single one of those should have been dismissed when presented to the magistrate and if not then, for sure when the judge saw it. Not a single one of them is valid. Both the magistrate who authenticated tickets signed with aliases and the judge who convicted off of them should be facing sanction. In the case of the judge, his law license needs to be under serious review (I'd disbar him).
So where does JeffCo come in? If you're convicted in municipal court, your first appeal is to circuit court. With the volume they were doing, there's no way quite a few of those weren't appealed. There's no way the DA and Circuit court didn't know something 'off' was going on in Brookside.
Brookside is bankrupt, they just don't know it yet and they deserve whatever happens to them. I just hope the legislature doesn't overreact because despite what some believe they really aren't the norm.
Absolutely punish the guilty. From the looks of things, several people involved in that court and PD need to be incarcerated but don't destroy the system.
There's actually a pretty easy fix. Municipal and district courts don't keep records of their sessions. They only report outcomes. Simply require that those sessions have permeant records that are available for review and considered part of the record. They don't even have to be a court reporter - just require a video of the session be uploaded to a state maintained repository and kept for a couple of years. If questions are raised, they can be simply answered by playing the tape.
Posted on 2/7/22 at 5:22 pm to JustGetItRight
The Apple regulatory issue with the Netherlands is pretty informative to the brass tacks of fines from the government. If you’re sufficiently well-off, a fine is just the price to do whatever you want. Apple will gladly eat 5mil a week for up to 50mil to do what they want with their App Store monetization schemes.
Posted on 2/7/22 at 6:30 pm to Diego Ricardo
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If you’re sufficiently well-off, a fine is just the price to do whatever you want.
That's pretty much going to always be the case.
Let's not forget why municipalities with populations under 19,000 can't write tickets on the interstate. It wasn't because of speed traps. It was because Lowell Barron (D) Fyffe, AL who was at the time the most powerful man in the Alabama legislature, got stopped going at or in excess of 100 mph by small town officers. He didn't like getting stopped so he just took away their ability to do it. If you're in power or rich enough you're going to get away with TONS more than regular people. There's no system in the world where it doesn't happen.
Fines have their place for low level offenses but they have to be fairly administered - which clearly didn't happen in Brookside.
Posted on 2/7/22 at 8:03 pm to JustGetItRight
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Let's not forget why municipalities with populations under 19,000 can't write speeding tickets on the interstate.
Small correction, because that's one of the fixes the legislature is considering: removing these towns' ability to write ANY tickets on interstates.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 8:38 am to mre
You're right, it is just speeding tickets. I utterly and completely disagree with taking away any officer's ability to write them. What Barron did is inexcusable. The legislature really needs to restore the ability to write speeding tickets instead of taking away more ability.
Deputies in most counties don't write tickets. Quite often there will be one trooper on duty in an entire county and there are only about 30 municipalities in the state with populations over 19,000.
That means that outside of metro Montgomery, Birmingham, Huntsville, or Mobile you can drive just as fast as you want with very little risk of getting stopped - which is really fun until it's your family that just got deleted by the 18-wheeler running 85 mph. Places considered relatively major by Alabama standards like Fort Payne, Clanton, Pell City, Rainbow City, and Spanish Fort all have interstates running right straight through the middle of them and yet lack the legal authority to keep their citizens safer because a POS (and Barron was one and I would tell him to his face) didn't like his 100 mph cruises interrupted.
Restricting local PDs interstate authority won't prevent another Brookside. People not stopped on the interstate got the same treatment. Step one to fixing the Brookside type problem is incarcerating those responsible for criminal activity, ending the legal careers of the judge, prosecutor, and magistrate, and civil sanctions so that they're a bright shining examples of what will happen if you go astray. Step two is the state judicial authorities doing their jobs and taking note of what's happening in local jurisdictions. As I said earlier, there's no way the JeffCo DA and Circuit Court didn't know what was happening in Brookside. They just chose to look the other way. Step 3 is to make district and municipal courts more accountable by requiring permanent records of proceedings in the form of transcripts or (my preference) video recordings.
Deputies in most counties don't write tickets. Quite often there will be one trooper on duty in an entire county and there are only about 30 municipalities in the state with populations over 19,000.
That means that outside of metro Montgomery, Birmingham, Huntsville, or Mobile you can drive just as fast as you want with very little risk of getting stopped - which is really fun until it's your family that just got deleted by the 18-wheeler running 85 mph. Places considered relatively major by Alabama standards like Fort Payne, Clanton, Pell City, Rainbow City, and Spanish Fort all have interstates running right straight through the middle of them and yet lack the legal authority to keep their citizens safer because a POS (and Barron was one and I would tell him to his face) didn't like his 100 mph cruises interrupted.
Restricting local PDs interstate authority won't prevent another Brookside. People not stopped on the interstate got the same treatment. Step one to fixing the Brookside type problem is incarcerating those responsible for criminal activity, ending the legal careers of the judge, prosecutor, and magistrate, and civil sanctions so that they're a bright shining examples of what will happen if you go astray. Step two is the state judicial authorities doing their jobs and taking note of what's happening in local jurisdictions. As I said earlier, there's no way the JeffCo DA and Circuit Court didn't know what was happening in Brookside. They just chose to look the other way. Step 3 is to make district and municipal courts more accountable by requiring permanent records of proceedings in the form of transcripts or (my preference) video recordings.
This post was edited on 2/8/22 at 8:39 am
Posted on 2/8/22 at 8:42 am to JustGetItRight
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there's no way the JeffCo DA and Circuit Court didn't know what was happening in Brookside.
There’s also no way the state didn’t know what was going on because those tickets and fine collections are reported to them monthly.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 9:49 am to The Spleen
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There’s also no way the state didn’t know what was going on because those tickets and fine collections are reported to them monthly.
That's also true. To a bit of the state's defense, they get all that from every jurisdiction and they never see the actual people. It's easier to get lost in the shuffle. Like every other profession, local cops and lawyers talk. They all knew and didn't care.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 10:26 am to The Spleen
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there's no way the JeffCo DA and Circuit Court didn't know what was happening in Brookside.
There’s also no way the state didn’t know what was going on because those tickets and fine collections are reported to them monthly.
Maybe they are supposed to be, but if confiscated property ends up in the homes of police officers, it wouldn't be surprising if Brookside didn't report all the collections to the state.
Ultimately, the people responsible are the citizens of Brookside. It was their police department and their mayor. I've come to the conclusion that the state should dissolve the town charter. There should no longer be a city of Brookside. Citizens can get necessary services from the county.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 2:32 pm to BamaGradinTn
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but if confiscated property ends up in the homes of police officers
When that happens the property hasn't been confiscated, it has been stolen.
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I've come to the conclusion that the state should dissolve the town charter. There should no longer be a city of Brookside. Citizens can get necessary services from the county.
You can think that's what should happen all you want except it won't happen because by state law there are very few ways municipalities get dissolved and some state authority saying "you suck at governing" isn't one of them. Title 11, Chapter 41.
The legislature could, of course, introduce and pass specific legislation directed only at Brookside but that should never, ever happen. Residents of Brookside were being treated the same too so your solution is to punish the victims by removing their right to self government? Also, when you eliminate the municipal corporation the chance that the victims will ever get ANY compensation for their losses becomes absolutely ZERO.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 3:40 pm to JustGetItRight
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Residents of Brookside were being treated the same too so your solution is to punish the victims by removing their right to self government?
Are any citizens of Brookside parties to any lawsuits? Not that I've heard. Brookside police were specifically targeting outsiders traveling on the interstate.
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Also, when you eliminate the municipal corporation the chance that the victims will ever get ANY compensation for their losses becomes absolutely ZERO.
Not necessarily true at all. The city has assets that could be sold at auction...specifically real estate such as City Hall. Plaintiffs could easily see some compensation if the city was dissolved.
No, I'm not as versed in Alabama law, but in Florida the state legislature used decertification to pressure the town of Hampton to dissolve their police department. This has been going on for too long for the citizens to not have known, especially in a town that small. You can defend them until you're blue in the face, but they've been complicit. Will the state do it? No. Dissolving the police department would solve the problem. And citizens will likely get quicker responses from the sheriff's department than when their own police were busy out on the interstate pulling people over.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 4:17 pm to JustGetItRight
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There's actually a pretty easy fix. Municipal and district courts don't keep records of their sessions. They only report outcomes. Simply require that those sessions have permeant records that are available for review and considered part of the record. They don't even have to be a court reporter - just require a video of the session be uploaded to a state maintained repository and kept for a couple of years. If questions are raised, they can be simply answered by playing the tape.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but whatever municipal court they're using is absolutely required to keep records related to each case brought before it.
Posted on 2/8/22 at 4:28 pm to imjustafatkid
Thank God for Germany, no speed traps and no polizei shooting radar
Posted on 2/8/22 at 4:30 pm to JustGetItRight
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Having said that, we all mess up now and there needs to be a good way for those people to settle their debt to society. Assuming a $10/hour rate, a weekend (16 hours) of picking up trash pretty much equals the cost of a speeding ticket.
Most areas allow you to do jail time in lieu of fines. If you implemented something like you propose, I guarantee you the folks who take the jail time option now would still take the jail time instead of community service, and the folks who won't even show up to court still won't. My area gives people VERY generous payment plans, and then they just won't make the second payment and end up with an arrest warrant anyway.
This post was edited on 2/8/22 at 4:35 pm
Posted on 2/8/22 at 4:32 pm to solus
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Thank God for Germany, no speed traps and no polizei shooting radar
I gotta tell you, those random speed limits on the Autobahn in between periods of no speed limit at all definitely feel like speed traps.
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