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Breakdown

April 18, 2023, by Allison Williams Hill

In-Vesica  Art  Design  Energy

“Do All Things In-Vesica.”

The breakdown is growing. I looked at the 21 Goals of the Illuminati and The Committee of 300.  This was at Educate-Yourself in the early 2000s, written by John Coleman in 1993.  It is clear that the laws, designed over centuries in all cultures, are disintegrating. An almost unnoticeable unraveling of the behavioral structure was underway. The latest is the United Nation’s input to reduce the criminalization of the worse conditions of societies worldwide. However, as it is formatted to appear as relief, as awareness to remove punishment and stigma, it could have gone further to have developed a responsible context that improves protection.

Natali and Clayton Morris of Redacted (above) discussed the United Nation’s publication called  The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty “…a new set of expert jurist legal principles to guide the application of international human rights law to criminal law. Natali said some alarming things. I put the document title in the browser and read right along with her. It reminded me of the Codex Alimentarius, the effort to reduce supplements to minimal amounts worldwide so that all countries are on the same level.  Science has shown that different people have different needs; amounts need to change according to individuals. Comparing access;  activity, and affordability among countries, people who made a practice out of using larger doses of vitamin C supplements, who are not surrounded by tropical foods (it was like that when we lived in the Virgin Islands UK) could fulfill their additional requirements only with prescriptions.

“PRINCIPLE 10 – CRIMINAL LIABILITY MAY NOT BE BASED ON DISCRIMINATORY GROUNDS No one may be held criminally liable for conduct that does not constitute a criminal offence if committed by another person and where the criminalization of such conduct constitutes prohibited discrimination under international or domestic law.”

I take the above to mean if a White person was not  arrested and convicted for a crime, and a Black person comes behind them, committing the same crime,  does that mean that the Black person shall not be arrested and convicted because of the previous case?

“No one may be held criminally liable for conduct or status based on their gender identity or gender expression. This includes gender identities and forms of gender expression that are perceived not to conform to societal expectations or norms relating to gender roles, the sex assigned to a person at birth or a male-female binary, among others. No one may be held criminally liable for consensual practices aiming to assist others with the exploration, free development and/or affirmation of sexual orientation or gender identity, unless there was force, coercion, fraud or medical negligence, or a lack of free and informed decision-making on the part of the person concerned.”

When I read the above, and perhaps I’m being extremely literal and ignorant, I thought of Adam Graham, a male rapist in the U.K. who “transitioned” before trial.  I am pleased that he was convicted. If this is adopted, would that mean his victims will have a more difficult time proving that the acts were not consensual?

There are a lot of interesting points. One is Principle 16: Consensual Sexual Conduct. I gather from this that child marriages between adults and children are acceptable. Adultery may no longer be grounds for divorce. Religious tenets are no longer considered. Children will be acceptable sex partners. There are no limits, in that, as public demonstrations of affection between homosexuals are no longer punished, all boundaries between all humans are eliminated.

We were on this track already. The blatant, in-security’s-faces robberies in stores in California demonstrated the lawlessness that these principles support- poverty and homelessness. So we add a few more logs to the fire.

PRINCIPLE 16 – CONSENSUAL SEXUAL CONDUCT

“Consensual sexual conduct, irrespective of the type of sexual activity, the sex/gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression of the people involved or their marital status, may not be criminalized in any circumstances. Consensual same-sex, as well as consensual different-sex sexual relations, or consensual sexual relations with or between trans, non-binary and other gender diverse people, or outside marriage – whether pre-marital or extramarital – may, therefore, never be criminalized. With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage.

“Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”

How would a kid under 18 know how or what to decide about this?   And then, they may be more aware earlier. An eleven-year-old was raping a six-year-old boy on a school bus recently. The bus driver would stop the bus occasionally because s/he heard fighting. I am not aware if the driver ever walked to the place where the fighting occurred. The only way the parent found out about the abuse her child suffered was that his school bag was missing and the search for it included looking at videos.  If this is adopted, would that mean that this sexually aggressive child would be free to continue abusing other younger chidren?   Parents can’t say no, but rather, “Eleven-year-old Casey, what would you like to do?”

We are getting help with this. When we think of children, we think of Disney. Disney’s staff was reduced when police arrested child traffickers that worked there, with free reign over the grounds, and knowledge of secret places. There are people there who want to change young minds. Maybe they were exposed and no longer employed. Watch the short below.

21 Goals of the Illuminati and The Committee of 300

By Dr. John Coleman.(Written ca. 1993)
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/johncolemangoalsofIlluminati.shtml#top

21 Goals of the Illuminati and The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman (ca. 1993)

F rom: Conspirators’ Hierachy: The Story of The Committee of 300

  1. To establish a One World Government/New World Order with a unified church and monetary system under their direction. The One World Government began to set up its church in the 1920:s and 30:s, for they realized the need for a religious belief inherent in mankind must have an outlet and, therefore, set up a “church” body to channel that belief in the direction they desired.
  2. To bring about the utter destruction of all national identity and national pride, which was a primary consideration if the concept of a One World Government was to work.
  3. To engineer and bring about the destruction of religion, and more especially, the Christian Religion, with the one exception, their own creation, as mentioned above.
  4. To establish the ability to control of each and every person through means of mind control and whatZbignew Brzezinski called techonotronics, which would create human-like robots and a system of terror which would make Felix Dzerzinhski’s Red Terror look like children at play.
  5. To bring about the end to all industrialization and to end the production of nuclear generated electric power in what they call “the post-industrial zero-growth society“. Excepted are the computer- and service industries. US industries that remain will be exported to countries such as Mexico where abundant slave labor is available. As we saw in 1993, this has become a fact through the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. Unemployables in the US, in the wake of industrial destruction, will either become opium-heroin and/or cocaine addicts, or become statistics in the elimination of the “excess population” process we know of today as Global 2000.
  6. To encourage, and eventually legalize the use of drugs and make pornography an “art-form”, which will be widely accepted and, eventually, become quite commonplace.
  7. To bring about depopulation of large cities according to the trial run carried out by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. It is interesting to note that Pol Pot’s genocidal plans were drawn up in the US by one of the Club of Rome’s research foundations, and overseen by Thomas Enders, a high-ranking State Department official. It is also interesting that the committee is currently seeking to reinstate the Pol Pot butchers in Cambodia.
  8. To suppress all scientific development except for those deemed beneficial by the Illuminati. Especially targeted is nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Particularly hated are the fusion experiments currently being scorned and ridiculed by the Illuminati and its jackals of the press. Development of the fusion torch would blow the Illuminati’s conception of “limited natural resources” right out of the window. A fusion torch, properly used, could create unlimited and as yet untapped natural resources, even from the most ordinary substances. Fusion torch uses are legion, and would benefit mankind in a manner which, as yet, is not even remotely comprehended by the public.
  9. To cause. by means of A) limited wars in the advanced countries, B) by means of starvation and diseases in the Third World countries, the death of three billion people by the year 2050, people they call “useless eaters”. The Committee of 300 (Illuminati) commissioned Cyrus Vance to write a paper on this subject of how to bring about such genocide. The paper was produced under the title “Global 2000 Report” and was accepted and approved for action by former President James Earl Carter, and Edwin Muskie, then Secretary of States, for and on behalf of the US Government. Under the terms of the Global 2000 Report, the population of the US is to be reduced by 100 million by the year of 2050.
  10. To weaken the moral fiber of the nation and to demoralize workers in the labor class by creating mass unemployment. As jobs dwindle due to the post industrial zero growth policies introduced by the Club of Rome, the report envisages demoralized and discouraged workers resorting to alcohol and drugs. The youth of the land will be encouraged by means of rock music and drugs to rebel against the status quo, thus undermining and eventually destroying the family unit. In this regard, the Committee commissioned Tavistock Institute to prepare a blueprint as to how this could be achieved. Tavistock directed Stanford Research to undertake the work under the direction of Professor Willis Harmon. This work later became known as the “Aquarian Conspiracy“.
  11. To keep people everywhere from deciding their own destinies by means of one created crisis after another and then “managing” such crises. This will confuse and demoralize the population to the extent where faced with too many choices, apathy on a massive scale will result. In the case of the US, an agency for Crisis Management is already in place. It is called the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), whose existence I first enclosed in 1980.
  12. To introduce new cults and continue to boost those already functioning which include rock music gangsters such as the Rolling Stones(a gangster group much favored by European Black Nobility), and all of the Tavistock-created rock groups which began with the Beatles.
  13. To continue to build up the cult of Christian Fundamentalismbegun by the British East India Company’s servant Darby, which will be misused to strengthen the Zionist State of Israel by identifying with the Jews through the myth of “God’s chosen people”, and by donating very substantial amounts of money to what they mistakenly believe is a religious cause in the furtherance of Christianity.
  14. To press for the spread of religious cults such as the Moslem BrotherhoodMoslem Fundamentalism, the Sikhs, and to carry out mind control experiments of the Jim Jones and “Son of Sam” type. It is worth noting that the late Khomeini was a creation of British Military Intelligence Div. 6, MI6. This detailed work spelled out the step-by-step process which the US Government implemented to put Khomeini in power.
  15. To export “religious liberation” ideas around the world so as to undermine all existing religions, but more especially the Christian religion. This began with the “Jesuit Liberation Theology”, that brought an end to the Somoza Family rule in Nicaragua, and which today is destroying El Salvador, now 25 years into a “civil war”. Costa Rica and Honduras are also embroiled in revolutionary activities, instigated by the Jesuits. One very active entity engaged in the so-called liberation theology, is the Communist-oriented Mary Knoll Mission. This accounts for the extensive media attention to the murder of four of Mary Knoll’s so-called nuns in El Salvador a few years ago. The four nuns were Communist subversive agents and their activities were widely documented by the Government of El Salvador. The US press and the new media refused to give any space or coverage to the mass of documentation possessed by the Salvadorian Government, which proved what the Mary Knoll Mission nuns were doing in the country. Mary Knoll is in service in many countries, and placed a leading role in bringing Communism to Rhodesia, Moçambique, Angola and South Africa.
  16. To cause a total collapse of the world’s economies and engender total political chaos.
  17. To take control of all foreign and domestic policies of the US.
  18. To give the fullest support to supranational institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank of International Settlements, the World Court and, as far as possible, make local institutions less effective, by gradually phasing them out or bringing them under the mantle of the UN.
  19. To penetrate and subvert all governments, and work from within them to destroy the sovereign integrity of the nations represented by them.
  20. To organize a world-wide terrorist apparatus[Al-queda, ISIS, ISIL, etc.] and to negotiate with terrorists whenever terrorist activities take place. It will be recalled that it was Bettino Craxi, who persuaded the Italian and US Governments to negotiate with the Red Brigades kidnapers of Prime Minister Moro and General Dozier. As an aside, Dozier was placed under strict orders not to talk what happened to him. Should he ever break that silence, he will no doubt be made “a horrible example of”, in the manner in which Henry Kissinger dealt with Aldo Moro, Ali Bhutto and General Zia ul Haq.
  21. To take control of education in America with the intent and purpose of utterly and completely destroying it. By 1993, the full force effect of this policy is becoming apparent, and will be even more destructive as primary and secondary schools begin to teach “Outcome Based Education” (OBE).

Related

Conspirators’ Hierarchy – The Story of The Committee of 300 by Dr. John Coleman
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/johncolemancommof300order14mar05.shtml

The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations by Dr. John Coleman (Oct. 3, 2006
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/tavistockarticlesindex04jun04.shtml

All of this is underway. I choose to believe that there are conscious people in this country and around the world. The non-elected, greedy, power-hungry,  and lacking thereof physical and intellectual attributes that are considered powerful; attractive, and respectable, will slide beneath the substrata. They will emerge again because their negative drive will force them to do so.

In-Vesica is about a balance between the world some people think that they have the right to create for others, despite not being asked, and the consciousness that everyone came into this world to learn how to use.

Categories
Police

Police in this tiny Alabama town suck drivers into legal ‘black hole’

Since the events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the death of Michael Brown, I became aware of the most minor infractions the police served Black people creating revenue for the town and keeping the all-white city council employed. The story below is about another town doing similar things.

Updated: Jan. 20, 2022, 3:00 p.m. | Published: Jan. 19, 2022, 7:00 a.m.

The town of Brookside, Alabama holds municipal court once a month. The courtroom and the parking lot are packed with people. Police must direct traffic before the 1 p.m. court session starts. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer

By John Archibald | jarchibald@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.”

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.

Related: Pastor, sister say rogue police force sought revenge

By 2020 Brookside made more misdemeanor arrests than it has residents. It went from towing 50 vehicles in 2018 to 789 in 2020 – each carrying fines. That’s a 1,478% increase, with 1.7 tows for every household in town.

The growth has come with trouble to match. Brookside officers have been accused in lawsuits of fabricating charges, using racist language and “making up laws” to stack counts on passersby. Defendants must pay thousands in fines and fees – or pay for costly appeals to state court – and poorer residents or passersby fall into patterns of debt they cannot easily escape.

“Brookside is a poster child for policing for profit,” said Carla Crowder, the director of Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, a nonprofit devoted to justice and equity. “We are not safer because of it.”

“It could be more”

Brookside now faces at least five lawsuits. Advocates for justice reform, cops in other jurisdictions, even Jefferson County’s top law enforcement officials, have begun to question the town’s tactics, and its need for an expanding force.

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[Can’t see the chart? Click here.]

“It’s my understanding that a guy can go out there and I mean, he can fall into a black hole,” Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr said of drivers getting entangled financially. “You know, we’ve had a lot of issues with Brookside.”

Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway said the same.

“We get calls about Brookside quite regularly because they really go outside their jurisdiction to stop people,” Pettway said. “Most of the time people get stopped, they’re going to get a ticket. And they’re saying they were nowhere near Brookside.”

Police stops soared between 2018 and 2020. Fines and forfeitures – seizures of cars during traffic stops, among other things – doubled from 2018 to 2019. In 2020 they came to $610,000. That’s 49% of the small town’s skyrocketing revenue.

“This is shocking,” said Crowder. “No one can objectively look at this and conclude this is good government that is keeping us safer.”

Because people overwhelmed by debt have been shown to turn to crime to pay their fines “an argument can be made that this kind of policing creates crime,” Crowder said.

Brookside Police Chief Mike Jones, who spearheaded the change and grew the police department tenfold, at least, calls the town’s policing “a positive story.” Mayor Mike Bryan – a former councilman who assumed his position last year after the death of the previous mayor – sits and nods in agreement.

Jones said crime when he took over was higher than it appeared from numbers the town reported to the state. He said response times were long because Brookside often had to rely on the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department for service.

He said 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.”

Stories of how Alabama legal systems criminalize poverty. Written with the support of Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.

When Jones was hired as chief in 2018, he was the only full-time police officer, he said in sworn testimony for a lawsuit filed against him and the city. By last summer, he said in a deposition, Brookside had hired eight additional full-time officers and several part-timers.

Asked in December how many officers were on staff, he refused to say, citing “security” concerns, though police staff sizes are reported regularly to the government for public consumption.

A department of nine officers in a 1,253-person town is far larger than average. Across the country, the average size of a force is one officer for every 588 residents, according to a Governing Magazine study that examined federal statistics.

Last year, based on Jones’ testimony, Brookside had at least one officer for every 144 residents.

Sheriff Pettway gaped at the Brookside ratio. “I could take over the whole county with numbers like that,” he joked.

Then this month the Brookside department posted on Facebook that it had hired six more officers “in an effort to expand our dedication and commitment to provide superior community service & protection.”

A one-store town

Brookside until recently was known for its quirky Russian food festival and the state’s only onion-domed Russian Orthodox Church. It’s a former mining town, its population about the same as it was a decade ago. Fewer than 100 of its residents graduated college.

Brookside is a poor town, 70% white, 21% Black, with a small but growing Hispanic population and a median income well below the state average. The town survives on the fringes of Birmingham with tax revenue from the Dollar General, which forms the totality of its commercial district.

In 2018, when the town had one full-time police officer and a few part-timers, it reported no serious crimes to the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. Brookside Police did patrol the 1.5-mile stretch of Interstate 22 within their jurisdiction and wrote tickets that brought in $82,467 in fines. That contributed a 14% chunk of the city’s total income, a number that would be considered high in much of America.

But Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared after that, and the town’s law-enforcement goals — and its reputation — changed.

Brookside, which in 2018 had one full time police officer, now parks a riot control vehicle — townspeople call it a tank — outside the municipal complex and community center. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer

By 2020 officers in the sleepy town were undergoing SWAT training and dressing in riot gear, even as the city continued with only a volunteer fire department. It parked a riot control vehicle — townspeople call it a tank — outside the municipal complex and community center. Traffic tickets, and criminalizing those who passed through, became the city’s leading industry.

“We’ll make you famous!”

The police department’s Facebook page – it claims more than a million visitors – became a vehicle for public shaming with embarrassing mugshots and derision for those who owe fines and fees – “Turn yourself in. If we have to come get ya, we’ll make you famous!”

“When you look at their Facebook pages it’s almost like they are bullies. I’ve seen it,” DA Carr said. “I don’t condone it, but you know, I’m not the chief out there.”

And it’s not an idle threat. Arrests on Brookside warrants went from zero to 243 in the span of two years, according to statistics Chief Jones presented to the council.

Jones — again as Mayor Bryan nodded — said the goal of the department is only to help people.

“It’s not about making a dollar,” Jones said.

Yet the town with no traffic lights collected $487 in fines and forfeitures in 2020 for every man, woman and child, though many of those fined were merely passing by on I-22.

Total town income more than doubled from 2018 to 2020 – from $582,000 to more than $1.2 million – as fines and forfeitures rose 640%.

” height=”452″ src=”https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png” width=”320″ style=”cursor: move; background-color: rgb(178, 178, 178);”>

[Can’t see the chart? Click here.]

Jones and Bryan said neither the town nor the police department relies on the revenue officers bring in. In fact, they said in November they didn’t know how that money is spent.

Audits by Philip Morgan & Co., covering at least five consecutive years, pointed out as a shortcoming that the town did not have a budget or a policy of adopting one annually. The audits show, however, how the town came to depend on the ticket money.

As more tickets brought in more money, the town began to spend much more. From 2018 to 2020, spending on police rose from $79,000 to $524,000, a 560% increase. The town’s administrative expenditures rose 40% and overall spending jumped 112%, from $553,000 in 2018 to $1.2 million in 2020.

In December the mayor provided AL.com a budget document, based on previous years’ audits. It did not feature a breakout of the police department.

Asked why that was the case, Bryan responded there had been an error, that the heading for the ‘Municipal Court Fund’ was actually the police department budget. “Sorry for the typo,” the mayor wrote.

That document budgeted $646,620 to the police this year.

The town also provided a set of police stats Jones presented to the Brookside council to push for more resources and authority.

It showed that total arrests – custodial, misdemeanor and felony – rose 1,109% from 2018 to 2020. Brookside police made 4.4 arrests in 2020 for every household.

It showed police in 2020 patrolled 114,438 miles in the 6.3-mile town and issued more than 3,000 citations – a 692% increase from 2018.

“We don’t care about tickets,” Jones said. “We don’t like writing tickets.”

‘99 percent of them are lying’

Yet that is hard to swallow for those who line up for court and face financial ruin because of citations. Like those on Dec. 2.

John Walker was stopped in Brookside for following too closely.

“Do you understand what you are charged with?” the judge asked on that first Thursday in December.

“No,” he said. “No.”

Walker told the judge he will fight the charge.

Mayor Bryan dismissed the complaints of those who must appear in court. “Everybody’s got a story,” he said. “And 99% of them are lying.”

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[Can’t see the map? Click here.]

Yet the Brookside stories come at an alarming rate.

Sandra Jo Harris, a 52-year-old grandmother, claims in a lawsuit she pulled off I-22 at Cherry Avenue on Jan. 8, 2020, as she often did when she went to visit her daughter. It was nearing dusk, and as she drove into the neighborhood she didn’t think much about the unmarked black SUV with tinted windows on the side of the road. She turned on her lights, according to her lawsuit, because of the approaching darkness.

But when she did, the unmarked SUV pulled into the street, crossed the center line and sped toward her car, blue lights flashing. She was not speeding, or breaking the law, she argued in the suit. She pulled to the side of the road as the SUV pulled behind her, and a wrecker simultaneously parked nearby. It frightened her, and led to more trouble.

Officers, dressed completely in dark, unmarked uniforms approached her, and one accused her of flickering her lights to warn others of their presence, her suit alleges. Unsure what was happening, Harris dialed 911. But an officer grabbed the phone and threw it to the ground, breaking it, the lawsuit says. Police put her in a patrol car and searched her vehicle for drugs.

Harris’ lawyers contend she was taken to the Brookside jail, strip-searched, and told she could be jailed up to two days. She had an asthma attack and a panic attack, but when she knocked on the door to alert a guard, a jailer said if she continued to knock she would be charged with attempting to escape. Eventually she was given an inhaler and treated by paramedics.

Police charged Harris with flickering her lights – or “nuisance of casting lights from motor vehicle on real property at night,” which she argues did not happen and eventually was dropped. She was also charged with resisting arrest. A report quoted in the suit claimed she “tighten (sic) arm muscles from getting handcuff (sic).”

In addition, the police charged her with making a false 911 call, obstructing government operations by refusing to give proper papers, and disorderly conduct for yelling for others to come out of their homes. They let her out of jail at midnight, long after her family had made bond.

Her lawyers argue that the city uses “obscure possible violations” to justify stopping and searching passersby, hoping to add more offenses in a sort of highway lottery to fill the coffers.

“Brookside has operated its police and court system with the primary objective of obtaining revenue from motorists traveling on or near Interstate-22,” Harris’ lawyers wrote in a suit filed last year. “It has had a continued practice of stopping and ticketing scores of vehicles daily, doing so without probable cause or reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.”

K9 Cash

Brookside has two drug-sniffing dogs — one named K9 Cash — to search the cars of stopped motorists.

Most of the vehicles Brookside Police drive are unmarked, and tinted.

Chief Jones testified under oath that just one of the 10 Brookside vehicles is painted with police striping, but nine others bear no emblems, and seven are tinted all the way around, making it impossible to see inside. Jones testified his officers wear gray uniforms with no Brookside insignias.

Brookside, Alabama Police dog K9 Cash

In another case, Brookside police last year confiscated a 2014 Honda Civic owned by a man named Sean Wattson, even though Wattson was not driving and was not in the car, according to a lawsuit he filed against the town. He lent his car to a friend, who was pulled over and arrested for drug possession.

Wattson claims he was unaware of the drugs. Still, police seized his car, and refused to return it, though they didn’t begin official forfeiture proceedings.

Both lawsuits continue.

Secret agent names

Neither the mayor nor chief would talk about pending litigation, but both said they have reviewed the cases involved, including bodycam footage, and said they found no wrongdoing on the city’s part. They would not share the footage.

Jones blamed the lawsuits on “ambulance-chasing attorneys.”

But lawyers and law enforcement officers across central Alabama have raised questions about things in Brookside they say they have never otherwise come across.

Lawyer Martin Weinberg had a client in Brookside, a young man named Thomas Hall, who was stopped for speeding and found with a small amount of marijuana.

He was charged with misdemeanor possession, but also five counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, for:

  • Rolling papers
  • The baggie that held the marijuana
  • Cigar wrappers
  • A small jar “that once may have held marijuana”
  • And a small tray that “might have” been used to roll a joint

The names of the officers were not listed on the tickets in secretive Brookside. Instead, the arresting officer was listed as “Agent JS,” while the assisting officer was “Agent AR.”

A judge set Hall’s fines at $6,000, and he had to post $12,000 bond while he appealed the case, an amount Weinberg considered excessive, and one that would prevent defendants without money or support from arguing their cases in state court.

Hall did appeal, and a Jefferson County judge ultimately dismissed the charges.

Bill Dawson, a lawyer who has represented several clients in Brookside, said defendants have faced possession charges for a joint, with paraphernalia charges tacked on for the paper it was rolled in.

“I’ve never seen a possession case split like that,” he said. “It’s unheard of.”

“False left-lane violation”

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.

“It was something that I should not have been stopped for,” Brumlow said in sworn testimony. “And while sitting in court I heard that half the court was also stopped for the same thing.”

Brumlow pleaded not guilty, and had to go to court over and over again as the case was postponed. A court worker told her she would have to plead guilty or go to driving school. She fought it instead.

Dawson argued in a lawsuit against Brookside and Chief Jones that “Brookside has continuously used the false left lane violation as a reason to stop and detain hundreds of motorists. The motive … was to generate revenue for Brookside.”

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.”

“This was an intentional policy of the city and my niece just happened to get caught up in it and happened to challenge it. And it broke her heart, it broke my heart.”

“Creating a law”

Ramon Perez felt that way as well, sitting in the courtroom and hearing defendants plead to the same charges over and over.

He’d been stopped for rolling the stop sign, which he disputes, and speeding, which he also disputes. He was also ticketed for improper signal, though he can’t even fathom how that might have occurred. He was cited for driving with a suspended license — a matter he thought he’d cleared up — but he doesn’t blame Brookside for that.

It is what happened after the stop that is most concerning to him. He feels the police saw him as prey, and treated him as such.

Ramon Perez showed up for court in December ready to fight traffic citations he got in Brookside. He decided to plead guilty and pay the fines after seeing how others were treated.

Perez is Hispanic, and his passenger was a Brookside resident, also Hispanic, who didn’t have her purse with her, Perez said. The officer said he would take them both to jail because she didn’t have her ID.

Which is another problem altogether, Sheriff Pettway said.

“We don’t have a law that says if you don’t have ID, you go to jail,” he said. “If you want to go out there and do something like that, you are creating a law.”

Perez said the officer “went absolutely crazy” over her lack of ID. “He was very ugly from the start.”

Ultimately another officer took Perez to his friend’s house to retrieve her ID, he said. His car was towed — with apologies from the tow-truck driver — costing him several hundred dollars.

Perez ultimately decided to pay the $1,100 fine — on top of hundreds he’d already spent to get his towed car back — and get the heck out of Brookside.

Which is exactly what the town is banking on, according to those who have watched Brookside grow into one of Alabama’s biggest, most troublesome traffic traps.

Perez is angry at his treatment. But he also worries for relatives and employees who live in Brookside. Not all of them can afford to pay their fines as he did, and some have been put on payment plans.

“I feel bad for those guys who struggle,” Perez said. He is still torn, wondering if he should have fought the town harder.

“I should have brought a lawyer, but right now my time is not there,” he said. “But my behavior was right. I know that.”

Sheriff Pettway said those who face charges in Brookside and want to ensure justice can get a bond and appeal their case.

“It may cost some money to go through that process,” he said. “But if you want real justice, I think you’ll go through the process. Fairness and real justice, I believe, is something people are looking for when it comes to law enforcement.

Pettway also said issues with Brookside could draw the attention of the federal government.

“I think it’s one of those situations … that could possibly bring in the feds with some oversight,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they opened up an investigation. You can’t do what’s going on over there.”

This story was published with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.

The town of Brookside, Alabama holds municipal court once a month. The courtroom and the parking lot are packed with people. Police must direct traffic before the 1 p.m. court session starts. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer

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