Some of the "police" belong in jail. You think stuff like this is something from a bygone era, looks like thats not the case. Glad I never got popped on that road! I'm up and down interstate 22 quite a bit. Anyway, I never heard about this and found it interesting.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police-i...-hole.html

Quote: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.”

Perez, it appears, was right.

Months of research and dozens of interviews by AL.com found that Brookside’s finances are rocket-fueled by tickets and aggressive policing. In a two-year period between 2018 and 2020 Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared more than 640 percent and now make up half the city’s total income.

And the police chief has called for more.

The town of 1,253 just north of Birmingham reported just 55 serious crimes to the state in the entire eight year period between 2011 and 2018 – none of them homicide or rape. But in 2018 it began building a police empire, hiring more and more officers to blanket its six miles of roads and mile-and-a-half jurisdiction on Interstate 22.

If it's that blatantly obvious, then first it should be on the judge to start tossing these cases en masse. Let it be known the cops are now wasting their time and the money that is driving all this. If he/she doesn't do that, good chance he's on the take too.

If judge doesn't do it, then the people gotta vote the mayor and whatever council they may have, assuming the form of gov't.

Same ol same ol. Bureaucrats gonna bureaucrat and figure out a way to screw the people they purport to serve, and waste the money of those same people.

When Rick Scott was governor he signed a law that put in rules that basically got rid of these areas. I think the town of Waldo had their police department dissolved after those rules were put into place.

Wilmer, AL was once legendary in the 70s/80s/90s before they cracked down on that bs stretch (sometime in the 90s IIRC)...

(05-09-2023 04:13 PM)fsquid Wrote:  When Rick Scott was governor he signed a law that put in rules that basically got rid of these areas. I think the town of Waldo had their police department dissolved after those rules were put into place.

Arkansas passed a law that says if more than 30% of a town's revenue is comprised of traffic citations and fees, they cant write tickets for a year. This happened to the town of Menifee.

Menifee tried to park the amount they collected in citations right up to the 30% mark, failing to realize that past due tickets collected and failure to appear fines also counted. So they went over. And now they cant write tickets.

(05-09-2023 03:20 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  If it's that blatantly obvious, then first it should be on the judge to start tossing these cases en masse. Let it be known the cops are now wasting their time and the money that is driving all this. If he/she doesn't do that, good chance he's on the take too.

If judge doesn't do it, then the people gotta vote the mayor and whatever council they may have, assuming the form of gov't.

Same ol same ol. Bureaucrats gonna bureaucrat and figure out a way to screw the people they purport to serve, and waste the money of those same people.

In this case, the judge was part of the scam. Judge was making money off of it too.

Another paper american bitcheing. Suck it up

Wait, there's still somebody out there that didn't know that cops jack you up on traffic tickets to make money for their city???

Arkansas passed a law in the 90s that restricted the town from writing tickets on state highways or interstate highways if they got more than 30% of their revenue from tickets.

This eventually killed off the worst ones like Tyronza.

Missouri let’s them write tickets, but all ticket revenue greater than some formula based on average Town budget over x years is just given directly to the state so they have no incentive.

I travel to Memphis a lot, and pass right through that place, and have for many years, but I don't speed, so I've never had an issue.

Still needs to be stopped, though.

The police are performing at the request of the town trustees. Police are the enforcers of town agendas. Run for office. Vote out the Mayor and trustees.

(05-11-2023 12:26 PM)chess Wrote:  The police are performing at the request of the town trustees. Police are the enforcers of town agendas. Run for office. Vote out the Mayor and trustees.

I believe they are all gone now. Just the audaciousness of the whole operation. Mayor, police, prosecutor & judge all in on it. Plus they were ticketing people outside of their jurisdiction. If they pop me driving down the road, I don't have the option to vote them out. I don't live there.