If I was going to drive through Brookside, Alabama, would you have advice for me?

Don't.

John Archibald is a columnist at Alabama.com.

Don't at all?

My advice to you is don't.

And the reason he is warning you to stay away from Brookside, a small town just outside of Birmingham, is simple.

It's the cops.

The only reason you would go that direction is if you're going from, say, Birmingham to Memphis or something like that, on Interstate 22, but they've managed to acquire a mile and a half of police jurisdiction

on the interstate. So that's where they make their money.

Making money from pulling people over on the highway is not news.

But the way the police in Brookside do it, that is.

And I've covered a lot of communities like this that did the same sort of thing,

but just never quite on the same scale.

I mean, half of your city budget coming from fines and forfeitures,

nobody can look at that and say that's the way, you know, government was designed to run.

It's interesting in Alabama because a state legislator years ago was arrested, was ticketed twice for speeding.

He had a law pass and said, you know, towns under 19,000 cannot issue speeding tickets on the interstate.

That's a very bespoke law.

Right.

But the police here get around it because they don't, they can't stop you for speeding. So if your tag lights too bright or your tag lights too dim, they'll pull you over. And if you're following too closely, they say, or if you're driving too long in the left lane, they say they will pull you over.

Brookside is a small town.

There is one commercial building, the Dollar General.

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