(Alabama) Brookside police patrolled social media, threatening town's critics

[Eugene]

Earlier DU threads:
• Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal 'black hole'
• Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal 'black hole

Related:
• Brookside Police Chief Mike Jones resigns after AL.com report on traffic trap (AL.com)
• ‘We’re going to get something done’: State leaders promise action on Brookside ticket trap (AL.com)

______________________________________________________________________

Source: AL.com

Brookside police patrolled social media, threatening town’s critics

Updated: Jan. 27, 2022, 8:44 a.m. | Published: Jan. 27, 2022, 7:00 a.m.

By John Archibald

Michelle Jones made an official complaint to the Alabama Attorney’s General’s office three years ago, arguing that Brookside police stopped her out of jurisdiction, issued a bogus citation and threatened her with more charges after she criticized them on Facebook.

She thought the complaint was long forgotten or closed.

But on Wednesday morning, she said, she got a call from the Alabama Attorney General’s investigator who had worked the case after her complaint was filed in 2019,

“He informed me that my case was never closed,” said Jones, who lives in Forestdale near Birmingham.

In 2020, she had explained her case this way to the AG’s office: “The person threatened me with an arrest if I did not take down my Facebook pictures and posts of their police officers, stop sending emails to the local politicians, as well as others, and show them (Brookside police) that I understand law enforcement practices.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/brookside-police-patrolled-social-media-threatening-towns-critics.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[dalton99a]

2. Avoid this shithole:

[barbtries]

5. did you read the article?

it's not enough to avoid Brookside - you need to stay away from anywhere around there.

Seems like this story is going to make a change in Brookside and I certainly hope it does. I have half a mind to go post about the police there on fb - it would be hard for them to chase me down, since I live in NC and have no intention of even entering the state of AL at this point as long as i live.

[Eugene]

6. That includes Interstate 22 *anywhere near* Brookside.

Out of jurisdiction stops by officers without badges or insignia in unmarked vehicles, citing made-up offenses.

And throw in racial profiling for good measure:

https://www.wsfa.com/2022/01/27/state-rep-calls-several-brookside-leaders-resign/

[SWBTATTReg]

3. Sounds like to me that this entire town's police force needs to be dismantled, etc., especially when

they are threatening people's first amendment rights (in threatening town's critics). What are these guys? Some kind of thugs, threatening everybody's first amendment rights for their freedom of speech? I'm surprised that they haven't sent thugs to go threaten people in other states, in other jurisdictions, threaten to jail or throw critics and others in jail, or issue tickets, mail them to out of state critics for some stupid made up reason.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. There are two towns on US 301, between I-10 and Gainesville, FL that were similar,

and the state division of Law Enforcement, basically the cop watchers for the state of Florida, decertified and abolished the police forces of both after repeated allegations of corruption and “policing for profit”.

The town of Waldo had its police department disbanded and the town of Hampton was found to have illegally annexed a portion of county road 18 over to US 301, a distance of a mile and a quarter from the center of the village for the sole purpose of placing a city cop at a gas station on 301 and writing speeding tickets! I believe the state revoked the city charter of Hampton because of the corruption.

If you go to Google maps and type Hampton, FL, you will see the outline of this annexed street I mentioned.

Florida has a bunch of these little shitburgs that do the same thing.

Sooner or later the state and/or feds get involved and the judges and prosecutors in those towns end up being convicted.