To spur rapid growth, Brookside police plundered the town’s small population. The town’s median household income of roughly $38,000 was significantly less than the state’s median income of roughly $50,000. As a result, the cops targeted the same people over and over. In 2020, Brookside “made more misdemeanor arrests than it has residents.” That same year, the police averaged 1.7 tows and 4.4 arrests for every household in town. Rather than search for a large windfall in the form of taxing extreme wealth (a mainstay of Leftist policies) and rather than produce large amounts of wealth via prison construction (as California had), the police levied small charges on the poor, which was not unlike regressive cigarette or soda taxes. With enough tickets, they accumulated enough to fund a small branch of local government in a tiny municipality. Given the town’s relatively low income, the cops were skimming not off the top but off the bottom.
Directed mostly by profit and engaging with a relatively ordinary population, police justifications for ticketing quickly became absurd. Tickets ranged from charges for driving too close to another vehicle to driving in the left lane and to flickering car lights, all in a six road town. In one case, the police even charged someone found with a joint for possession and then tacked on a paraphernalia charge for the paper it was rolled in. Only in the eyes of money hungry cops could one object smoked in one sitting become two things, two charges, and two payments. As Archibald writes, “Brookside officers have been accused in lawsuits of fabricating charges…and ‘making up laws’ to stack counts on passersby.” This was not simply overticketing; it was gluttonous.
Brookside’s over-policing effectively privatized public space, making it a risk simply to leave one’s home. It also ballooned the city budget. In 2020, the police accumulated $610,000 from fines and asset forfeitures, which constituted nearly half of the total city revenue. As a result, the city’s revenue grew from roughly $580,000 to $1.2 million in 2020. What looked like a windfall for the town, however, was a problem for individuals.
In one case, Anyl Pascal was held in jail after a traffic stop. After five days, the town officials told Pascal that his bond was either $7200 or $8200 cash, a fee they claimed was necessary to fix the door that he had supposedly broken. In court, he pled guilty in the hopes of later appealing to the Jefferson County Circuit Court, and the judge ordered Pascal to pay “$7210 in fines and court costs.” When he and his attorney left, the judge then found Pascal guilty of nine more charges, which more than doubled his fines. This lacked even the appearance of a trial; this was a stick-up. Rather than tax to pave streets and rather than building toll roads, the police transformed roadways into a casino, wherein drivers are lucky to break even on one night but, over time, enough people would lose that the house would always make a profit.