Expose of small-town police department's 'predatory policing for profit' wins AL.com one of six Sidney Hillman Prizes

Reporters John Archibald, Ashley Remkus and Ramsey Archibald

AL.com, the news organization that until recently printed newspapers for Alabama's three largest cities, has won a Sidney Hillman Prize for revealing what the judges called a "exposé of predatory policing for profit" by a police department in Brookside, Ala., pop. 1,253, northwest of Birmingham.

"Brookside police drove unmarked cars, patrolled beyond town limits, stopped cars for simply driving in the left lane, and signed tickets cryptically as Agent JS and Agent JT. Jett’s Towing Co. suspiciously showed up on the side of the road at the same time as police stops. The police went from towing 50 vehicles in a year in 2018 to 789 vehicles in 2020. Those fines funneled back into the force itself," said the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which presents the awards. The series "prompted the Alabama legislature to pass a measure restricting towns across the state from using revenues from fines and fees to supply more than 10 percent of their budgets." The police chief, hired in 2018, increased revenue from fines and forfeitures by 640% from 2018 to 2020, and the town's part-time municipal judge and prosecutor also got outsized pay raises. The police chief resigned after the first story. Read more here.

The series won the prize for web reporting. For those for books, newspapers, podcasts, magazines, and opinion and analysis, click here. The prizes, "for journalism in the service of the common good." are named for a labor leader "who believed that a free press was essential to a fair and equal society."