By Harriet Alexander For Dailymail.com
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The chief of police of a small Alabama town has been forced to resign after allegations that his force was pulling over people who criticized them on Facebook, and stopping people for spurious traffic violations to fill their coffers.
Mike Jones, chief of Brookside police, 10 miles northwest of Birmingham, resigned on Wednesday.
The lieutenant governor of Alabama, Will Ainsworth, has requested an audit of the police force and town – home to 1,300 people.
Brookside has only one retail store and a volunteer fire department, but at least one police officer for every 144 people. By 2020, the police force made half its revenue from fines and forfeitures, according to local media.
The issues with the police have been going on for several years, and ensnared multiple local residents.
Mike Jones, chief of police of Brookside, Alabama, resigned on Wednesday
Michelle Jones has been campaigning against Brookfield police for the past three years
Michelle Jones told AL.com that she complained to the Alabama attorney general’s office three years ago.
She had been pulled over in May 2019, and was fined $160 for running a stop sign – which she insisted she did not do.
Jones began criticizing the police in a series of interviews, and online.
She said she told them, in 2020: ‘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.’
Her Facebook page is full of images of the police pulling people over.
In September 2019, she posted a photo captioned: ‘ABC33/40 – Brookside Police Department of Brookside, AL – On Interstate 22 Writing Illegal Tickets.’
A commentator asked if she was pulled over again, and Jones replied: ‘No. Working on something.’
Rev. Vincent Witt, a Baptist preacher and chaplain of the city of Lipscomb, said that he was pulled over in June 2019 in his brand new Cadillac, which had a paper license plate as the official one was yet to be delivered.
Witt said the officer called him a ‘f****** n*****’, and when he complained he and his sister – who was not even with him at the time – were charged with impersonating a police officer, with their faces plastered across CrimeStoppers websites.
Rev. Vincent Witt filed a complaint against Brookside police after they pulled him over and racially abused him
Lisa Ward, a candidate for Alabama senate, said she was threatened by the Brookfield police chief when she posted criticism of the force on Facebook
Will Ainsworth, the lieutenant governor of Alabama, has ordered an audit into Brookfield’s town and police force
Another woman, Lisa Ward, a candidate for Alabama’s senate, shared a story by AL.com about the rogue police force on Facebook, and said the police chief then tried to intimidate her.
A local man, who did not want to give his name, told AL.com that he was pulled over by police for no reason, and was reprimanded.
The man told AL.com that the officer said: ‘The chief’s pretty upset about that post you put on Facebook,’ adding that: ‘any more backlash like that towards his police department and it’ll be far worse than a ticket.’
‘I just stared at him,’ the man said. ‘I was just looking at him like, so this is what this stop is about? I was in pure shock.’
Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group