11 Insanely Corrupt Speed-Trap Towns: CAUGHT STEALING FROM MOTORISTS, THESE TOWNS DISBANDED THEIR POLICE FORCES OR EVEN DISBANDED THEIR GOVERNMENTS ALTOGETHER.

AuthorCiaramella, C.J.

CASTLEBERRY, ALABAMA

THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS recently investigated the tiny town of Brookside, Alabama, a place "with no traffic lights and one retail store [that] collected $487 in fines and forfeitures for every man, woman and child." Income from fines and forfeitures comprised a whopping 49 percent of the town's budget. Lawsuits allege that Brookside police officers made up charges to soak vehicle owners for thousands of dollars in fines.

Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth is asking for an official state audit of the town and its police force. That doesn't bode well for Brookside officials, in light of some recent history and similar stories across the country from decades past.

In 2017, the News reported that Castleberry, Alabama, with a population of about 500, was generating revenue through what amounted to highway robbery. More than a dozen lawsuits claimed that Castleberry officers illegally arrested and searched motorists, seizing their cash and cars without filing charges or even paperwork. In the ensuing scandal, Castleberry trimmed its police force down to just two part-time police officers.

Speed-trap towns--that is, small towns that raise revenue through unreasonably aggressive and sometimes illegal traffic enforcement--are a scam nearly as old as the automobile itself.

"The 'speed trap' industry as practised by rural constables shows little abatement in this country and some concerted movement must be made by automobilists as a class if they would secure immunity from annoyance and extortion as individuals," the New York Sun opined in 1907. As early as 1908, the Automobile Club of America published lists of towns known for speed traps and rigid traffic enforcement.

Over the decades, speed-trap towns have popped up, gained notoriety, and in some cases stopped existing as a consequence of their thieving. Reviewing newspaper archives, Reason found 10 U.S. towns with especially corrupt traffic enforcement. Most ended up disbanding their police departments, and some disincorporated entirely.

WILMER, ALABAMA

BEFORE BROOKSIDE AND Castleberry, there was Wilmer, Alabama, a small town of about 500 situated near Mobile. In the early 1990s, Wilmer controlled eight miles of U.S. 98, a popular route for drivers coming from Mississippi's dry counties to stock up on booze. In the short stretch of U.S. 98 that Wilmer policed, the speed limit changed six times.

Wilmer gained such an obnoxious reputation that one local business, Snuffy Smith's antique store--which also sold liquor, pigs' feet, ammunition, and bait--put up a 12-foot sign that read, "MOTORISTS BEWARE. SPEED TRAP NEXT 6 MILES."

The local district attorney investigated Wilmer in 1992 and concluded that the town had been running a speed trap for the past decade to keep itself afloat. Several former Wilmer police officers said the mayor and town council gave them ticket quotas to meet. The district attorney warned Wilmer to knock it off or he would seek a court order against the town.

Meanwhile, local residents had grown so fed up with the town's lousy reputation and financial quagmire--it didn't have the tax base to survive without the speed trap--that they decided to exercise a nuclear option in Alabama's state code that allows towns with populations under 1,100 to disincorporate voluntarily.

The town held two votes to dissolve itself. The first attempt was thrown out in court, but the second vote stuck. Residents successfully voted 184-73 in favor of disincorporation. Wilmer wiped itself off the map in 1993.

Alas, dissolving a town doesn't make every town problem go away. Wilmer had around 3,200 outstanding traffic tickets when it dissolved. Because no one knew what to do with the many checks and money orders that later arrived to settle those tickets, they just sat around in a Mobile courthouse. When drivers who'd been nabbed by Wilmer's speed trap went to renew their licenses, some of them as far away as New Mexico and New Jersey, they found out they couldn't because of their debt to a nonexistent town.

Snuffy Smith's warning stayed up until at least 2009. The speed trap was long gone, but the sign, like Ozymandias, stood as a warning to passing mayors with grand dreams.

FRUITHURST, ALABAMA

IN 1975, ALABAMA Attorney General Bill Baxley declared that the small hamlet of Fruithurst, near the Georgia border, was "the worst speed trap in the nation" and "a terrible blot on the good name of Alabama."

Baxley and the Alabama Motorists Association had started...

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