Why Are So Many People Suing This Tiny Town?
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Civil Asset Forfeiture and Brookside, Alabama
Today’s video takes us to the town of Brookside, Alabama, population 1253. The town is outside of Birmingham, located on a one and a half mile stretch of Interstate 22. Interstate 22 runs from Birmingham to Mississippi.
As reported by John Archibald for AL.com:
Ramon Perez came to court last month ready to fight the tickets he’d been handed by Brookside police, including one for rolling through a stop sign and another for driving 48 mph in a 40 zone.
He swore he’d seen the cop from a distance and was careful as he braked.
“I saw him and we looked eye to eye,” the Chelsea business owner said. “There’s no way I was going to run that stop sign.”
When he got to court Dec. 2, he saw scores of people just like him lining up to stand before Judge Jim Wooten, complaining of penny-ante “crimes” and harassment by officers. He saw so many people trying to park in the grassy field outside the municipal building that police had to direct traffic.
He figured there was no point.
“I saw the same attitude in every officer and every person,” he said. “That’s why I hesitated to fight it. They were doing the same thing to every person that was there. They own the town.”
The article goes on to list numerous other abusive tactics by the Brookside police. A young woman who had to show up to court three times before they tossed her false ticket. A grandmother who took out her phone to call 911 after being confronted by several men in an unmarked vehicle, only to have her phone smashed and get hauled off to jail. A man whose vehicle was impounded, despite the police not filing civil asset forfeiture paperwork.
Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement officials to seize assets from individuals upon the belief that the assets are connected to criminal activity. This belief does not need to be proven, and the agency gets to keep a large portion of the proceeds, sometimes all of it.
There are many horror stories from around the country regarding civil asset forfeiture, and googling that term plus your county or state can be a real eye opener. But back to Brookside, Alabama.
The city has a population of 1253 and until 2018, they had only one police officer. When they promoted Officer Mike Jones to police chief in 2018, arrests and civil asset seizures skyrocketed. The town had a high rate of traffic stops along I 22 back then, with the fines and forfeitures contributing 14% of the city’s revenues. In 2020, half of the city’s revenues came from traffic stops.
Brookside has eight full time police officers and several part timers, although the chief refuses to say how many, He can get away with this because unlike most other towns, Brookside does not adopt a budget every year. Even more frightening, some of the officers ride in plain black vehicles and sign their tickets as “Agent JS” or “Agent AR.”
Chief Jones told AL.com he’d like to see even more growth in revenue from fines and forfeitures.
“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.”
There is one more terrifying story out of Brookside, a tale of retaliation. Baptist preacher Vincent Witt was stopped at a stop sign when an officer pulled him over in a new car. Officer Marcus Sellers claimed that the Cadillac with its paper tag matched the description of a stolen vehicle. While Witt was not ticketed, he says the officer did use a racial slur and told him to stay out of the town.
When Witt got home to Lipscomb, Alabama, where he is city chaplain, he filed a complaint about Officer Sellers. Lieutenant Bo Savelle called him the next day and told “Officer Witt,” as he called him, to come to the Brookside police station to file a complaint. Witt realized complaining would do no good and decided to drop the matter, telling Sellers that “Brookside is a real racist police department.”
Several days later, Vincent Witt was preaching in a church where he was applying for a job. His sister Tareya, who was not in the vehicle during the traffic stop, showed him her phone after the service. Vincent and Tareya’s pictures were plastered on the Brookside Police Department’s Facebook page and they were both wanted for impersonating police officers. The charges were eventually dropped with no explanation.
Representative Jamie Raskin convened a hearing of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in December 2021 on the topic of civil asset forfeiture reform.
https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-in-this-tiny-alabama-town-suck-drivers-into-legal-black-hole.html
https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/pastor-sister-say-rogue-alabama-police-force-sought-revenge.html
https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/forfeiting-our-rights-the-urgent-need-for-civil-asset-forfeiture-reform
Видео Why Are So Many People Suing This Tiny Town? канала Infinitely Interesting Information - Marietta Daws
https://amzn.to/33SRmxM
Civil Asset Forfeiture and Brookside, Alabama
Today’s video takes us to the town of Brookside, Alabama, population 1253. The town is outside of Birmingham, located on a one and a half mile stretch of Interstate 22. Interstate 22 runs from Birmingham to Mississippi.
As reported by John Archibald for AL.com:
Ramon Perez came to court last month ready to fight the tickets he’d been handed by Brookside police, including one for rolling through a stop sign and another for driving 48 mph in a 40 zone.
He swore he’d seen the cop from a distance and was careful as he braked.
“I saw him and we looked eye to eye,” the Chelsea business owner said. “There’s no way I was going to run that stop sign.”
When he got to court Dec. 2, he saw scores of people just like him lining up to stand before Judge Jim Wooten, complaining of penny-ante “crimes” and harassment by officers. He saw so many people trying to park in the grassy field outside the municipal building that police had to direct traffic.
He figured there was no point.
“I saw the same attitude in every officer and every person,” he said. “That’s why I hesitated to fight it. They were doing the same thing to every person that was there. They own the town.”
The article goes on to list numerous other abusive tactics by the Brookside police. A young woman who had to show up to court three times before they tossed her false ticket. A grandmother who took out her phone to call 911 after being confronted by several men in an unmarked vehicle, only to have her phone smashed and get hauled off to jail. A man whose vehicle was impounded, despite the police not filing civil asset forfeiture paperwork.
Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement officials to seize assets from individuals upon the belief that the assets are connected to criminal activity. This belief does not need to be proven, and the agency gets to keep a large portion of the proceeds, sometimes all of it.
There are many horror stories from around the country regarding civil asset forfeiture, and googling that term plus your county or state can be a real eye opener. But back to Brookside, Alabama.
The city has a population of 1253 and until 2018, they had only one police officer. When they promoted Officer Mike Jones to police chief in 2018, arrests and civil asset seizures skyrocketed. The town had a high rate of traffic stops along I 22 back then, with the fines and forfeitures contributing 14% of the city’s revenues. In 2020, half of the city’s revenues came from traffic stops.
Brookside has eight full time police officers and several part timers, although the chief refuses to say how many, He can get away with this because unlike most other towns, Brookside does not adopt a budget every year. Even more frightening, some of the officers ride in plain black vehicles and sign their tickets as “Agent JS” or “Agent AR.”
Chief Jones told AL.com he’d like to see even more growth in revenue from fines and forfeitures.
“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.”
There is one more terrifying story out of Brookside, a tale of retaliation. Baptist preacher Vincent Witt was stopped at a stop sign when an officer pulled him over in a new car. Officer Marcus Sellers claimed that the Cadillac with its paper tag matched the description of a stolen vehicle. While Witt was not ticketed, he says the officer did use a racial slur and told him to stay out of the town.
When Witt got home to Lipscomb, Alabama, where he is city chaplain, he filed a complaint about Officer Sellers. Lieutenant Bo Savelle called him the next day and told “Officer Witt,” as he called him, to come to the Brookside police station to file a complaint. Witt realized complaining would do no good and decided to drop the matter, telling Sellers that “Brookside is a real racist police department.”
Several days later, Vincent Witt was preaching in a church where he was applying for a job. His sister Tareya, who was not in the vehicle during the traffic stop, showed him her phone after the service. Vincent and Tareya’s pictures were plastered on the Brookside Police Department’s Facebook page and they were both wanted for impersonating police officers. The charges were eventually dropped with no explanation.
Representative Jamie Raskin convened a hearing of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in December 2021 on the topic of civil asset forfeiture reform.
https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-in-this-tiny-alabama-town-suck-drivers-into-legal-black-hole.html
https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/pastor-sister-say-rogue-alabama-police-force-sought-revenge.html
https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/forfeiting-our-rights-the-urgent-need-for-civil-asset-forfeiture-reform
Видео Why Are So Many People Suing This Tiny Town? канала Infinitely Interesting Information - Marietta Daws
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24 января 2022 г. 22:10:22
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