Police in Brookside ordered a young man to take off his clothes as they searched him for marijuana on a dark roadside two years ago, a new federal lawsuit alleges.

Kwame Wright is suing the town of Brookside, two police officers and former Chief Mike Jones, alleging violations of his constitutional rights.

The case is the latest in a series of lawsuits — one of at least 16 — filed against the town, its officials or current and former officers in the town of about 1,200 people north of Birmingham.

“When he made me get out of the car, I felt belittled when he made me strip,” Wright told AL.com. “The only thing I had on was my socks.”

According to the complaint, Wright, who was 26 at the time, was riding in a car with Kaitlyn Mishae Russell and Lonnie Pratt on the night of Nov. 13, 2021, when Brookside police stopped them. The lawsuit says the police accused them of speeding and claimed to smell marijuana in the vehicle.

The two police officers took Wright out of the car, made him remove his clothes at the side of the road, and ordered him to pull his underwear to his knees and show them his genitals as they searched for drugs, according to the lawsuit.

“As Plaintiff Wright was undressing at the direction of the Officer, in freezing cold weather on the side of the road, in the Defendant Town of Brookside, Defendant Officer kept exclaiming and repeating ‘I know you got it,”’ lawyers wrote in the complaint.

The suit says the officers brought in a drug sniffing dog but didn’t find any drugs. They let the group leave without issuing any tickets or taking anyone to jail, according to the lawsuit.

Attorneys Johnathan F. Austin and Richard A. Rice filed the lawsuit in federal court in Birmingham on Tuesday on behalf of Wright, Russell and Pratt. The lawsuit accuses the officers of constitutional and state violations of false arrest and unlawful search and seizure. The lawyers said they plan to file an update in court records later with the names of both officers.

Birmingham attorney Richard Warren Kinney III of Porter Porter & Hassinger is representing Brookside in the lawsuit. He did not respond to a request for comment. Court records don’t list an attorney for former Chief Jones.

Austin said Jones is named in the lawsuit because he allowed a pervasive culture of abuse.

Wright, who told AL.com that he suffers from anemia, said he informed the officers that he could not be in the cold for long periods, but his medical issues were ignored.

“That didn’t matter to him,” Wright said. “We were outside literally an entire hour.”

Wright called the lawsuit an important effort to bring to light abuse by law enforcement.

“I want it to be known what’s going on and I want it to be stopped,” he said. “I know I’m not the only Black male who stays in Brookside.”

Austin in an interview with AL.com, said: “Everyone is cloaked with the veil of innocence until proven guilty, yet this police officer was the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury. I don’t think any police department in America will condone that type of behavior, except in Brookside, Alabama.”

Russell, the driver, is white and lives in Brookside. She said she suspects race played a role.

”They saw a white female and two Black males. Of course, he’s going to humiliate them or me,” Russell said.

Policing in Brookside came under scrutiny after reporting by AL.com in 2022 revealed that the town used money from traffic stops to increase its revenue by 640 percent in two years. By 2020, fines and forfeitures came to account for nearly half of the town’s revenue.

Soon after the initial reporting in AL.com, Chief Jones resigned and left town, and half of the police force quit or got forced out. The State Legislature responded by passing new laws to address abuse, including one that restricts towns from using fines and fees to fund more than 10 percent of their budgets.

“I’ve never gone through anything like that,” said Wright of the traffic stop. “I thought their job was to protect and serve. I didn’t feel protected or nothing.”