A town in Alabama turned itself into a speed trap and now tickets make up nearly half of the town's income

• Brookside, Alabama, became a notorious speed trap after it hired a new police chief in 2018.
• The Birmingham Times reported that nearly half of Brookside's revenue in 2020 came from forfeitures and fines.

A small town in Alabama steadily grew its police force in recent years, and it now rakes in nearly half of its revenue from traffic fines and forfeitures alone, according to a report from The Birmingham News.

Brookside, Alabama — a town of just 1,253 people — hired Police Chief Mike Jones in 2018. At the time, he was the force's only full-time officer.

But the town consistently hired more officers in the years since, and as a result, traffic stops in the area have skyrocketed, the Birmingham News reported.

Since Jones' hiring in 2018, the town's revenue from ticket fines and forfeitures has ballooned from $82,467 in 2018 to $610,307 in 2020, amounting to close to 49% of Brookside's total revenue, the Birmingham News reported, citing local crime data.

The number of arrests also grew by 1,109% between 2018 and 2020, with local police making more misdemeanor arrests than it had residents in 2020, the Birmingham News reported.

As the number of officers on the Brookside force grew, so did the number of police vehicles possessed by the department, the Birmingham News reported.

Jones declined to tell The Birmingham News how many officers his team has for "security" concerns, though he previously testified that the town has at least one officer for every 144 residents in Brookside.

Residents of Brookside told The Birmingham News that many of the police department's vehicles are unmarked and have tinted windows, and that officers don't wear uniforms that feature any Brookside Police insignia.

The residents also told The Birmingham News that Brookside officers have also tried to issue tickets and punishments for laws that either do not exist, like threatening to jail someone for not possessing their ID, and for distributing citations to people with no basis.

Despite what his residents say, Brookside's mayor, Mike Bryan, accused "99%" of people complaining about their citations of lying in a statement to The Birmingham News.

"Everybody's got a story," the mayor told The Birmingham News.

A report from the Institute of Justice in December 2020 graded Alabama as a whole a D- for its civil forfeiture laws.

The report said officers are incentivized to engage in forfeitures, as the state doesn't track forfeiture spending and law enforcement agencies get to keep 100% of forfeiture proceeds.

Neither the Brookside Police Department nor the town's mayor immediately responded to Insider's request for comment.