Retired Birmingham Police Capt. Jerry Wiley used to raise a lot of eyebrows with his views on police work.<\/p>\n
He still does, really.<\/p>\n
Because when his officers wanted to show their dedication to the job by going out and ticketing as many small-time offenders as they could find, he told them to stop. He\u2019d rather have them on the streets.<\/p>\n
When officers bragged about knowing where to find \u201clow-hanging fruit\u201d to rack up a whole buffet of tickets and arrests, he told them to focus on the prime directive: being visible in the neighborhoods to prevent crime.<\/p>\n
And when superiors asked why the number of misdemeanor arrests fell in the high-crime Birmingham precinct he commanded, he asked them to trust him.<\/p>\n
It was way back in 2010, but it worked enough to grab some attention. His precinct, Birmingham\u2019s West Precinct, made 4,000 fewer misdemeanor arrests than it had the year before, he said. But crime in the precinct fell. Burglary of homes dropped 15%, Auto theft and robbery dropped 7%. Robberies at businesses fell by almost two-thirds.<\/p>\n
Some said it was a fluke, sure. But Wiley doesn\u2019t believe that.<\/p>\n Jerry Wiley, retired Birmingham Police Dept. captain. He worked for the BPD for 30 years. Wiley walks the streets of Ensley that he once patrolled. (Joe Songer for AL.com).Joe Songer <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure we prevented robberies. I know that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we prevented burglaries and break-ins and that was really a big thing at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n How? Well he told his subordinates and superiors \u2013 he tells anyone who will listen, still \u2013 that making arrests for petty offenses does not always translate into preventing crime.<\/p>\n Sometimes, it just creates more.<\/p>\n Criminalizing Poverty<\/b><\/p>\n The late Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Clarence Thomas did not see eye-to-eye, as you can imagine.<\/p>\n But they agreed \u2013 in fact, all of the U.S. Supreme Court justices agreed in 2019 \u2013 that cities and towns making bank by charging citizens high fines and fees and seizing property worth far more than their debt, were a threat to American freedom, not to mention in conflict with the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Ginsberg in that ruling<\/a> talked about the history of using criminalization to suppress and oppress people \u2013 especially people of color and those in poverty \u2013 with roots stretching most deeply into the Reconstruction South.<\/p>\n \u201cFollowing the Civil War, Southern States enacted Black Codes to subjugate newly freed slaves and maintain the prewar racial hierarchy,\u201d she wrote in the Timbs v. Indiana decision<\/a>. \u201cAmong these laws\u2019 provisions were draconian fines for violating broad proscriptions on \u2018vagrancy\u2019 and other dubious offenses.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s true. Alabama newspapers from way back tell those histories too well, and a bit too casually.<\/p>\n As in the case of an enslaved Mobile, Ala., man named Paul who was found \u201cloitering around a citizen\u2019s premises\u201d in 1859. Paul \u2013 no last name was given or expected, as the intent was to dehumanize and discount — was punished with \u201c39 stripes.\u201d<\/p>\n Which meant lashes, of course.<\/p>\n Simple as that.<\/p>\n Or after the war, in 1870, when Nathan Harris, \u201cone of the little Negro thieves with which the city is infested,\u201d was found loitering at a grocery store in the midst of \u201ca lot of pigs-feet bones and crumbs of crackers\u201d under a table. \u201cHe was required to give a bond of $200 (estimated at more than $4,000 in today\u2019s money) for his appearance before the city court,\u201d a Mobile newspaper wrote, adding \u201cwhich he can\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the point. And too often still is.<\/p>\n Criminalization race and poverty were common after the Civil War.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Criminalization was epidemic after the Civil War. But it didn\u2019t end with Reconstruction or the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n Using the law to control and profit off poor people in general, and poor Black people in particular, continued through the 20th century. Especially in the South, where the convict-lease system incentivized incarceration to provide cheap labor and enrich private contractors. It survived through that whole century and stormed again into the 2000s, as private probation companies invaded states like Georgia and Alabama and many more. The fines those companies charged hit especially hard after the financial crisis in 2008. In Harpersville in Shelby County, then-Circuit Judge Hub Harrington was so shocked at the way poor people were squeezed by ballooning fines and fees that he famously declared it a \u201cdebtor\u2019s prison\u2019’<\/a> and shut it down.<\/p>\n It is still happening in places like Marion County, where a number of people \u2014 including U.S. Army veteran Charles Anderson<\/a> \u2014<\/a> were jailed last year for their inability to pay old court fines. In Castleberry in southern Alabama, media scrutiny of a revenue-driven speed trap a few years ago led, at least temporarily, to the dissolution of the police department<\/a>.<\/p>\n It happened in Ferguson, Mo., where in the years before Michael Brown was shot by police, the city churned fines and fees for revenue, issuing more than four times as many tickets annually as it had citizens. Ferguson used municipal court revenue to pay almost a quarter of the city budget, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report,<\/a> and some residents were tossed in jail for missing a single payment.<\/p>\n In the days leading up to Brown\u2019s death, Black drivers were 66% more likely to be stopped by police than whites, according to \u201cProfit and Punishment,\u201d<\/a> a new book by Tony Messenger, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.<\/p>\n After Brown\u2019s killing and the report, the Missouri Legislature set a 20% cap on the amount of revenue cities could take from minor traffic violations. Generally, the Institute for Justice argues<\/a> that cities that rely on fines and fees for more than 10% of their revenue bear scrutiny for what it calls \u201ctaxation by citation.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Jerry](\"https:\/\/www.al.com\/resizer\/XHHZkRkYlXdCuzuRQM_tPIBjVdU=\/1280x0\/smart\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/advancelocal\/3GZUXB77U5EITCYVX5NOVEQLVU.jpg\")
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