A team of journalists from AL.com earned a Scripps Howard Award for their reporting on the town of Brookside and policing for profit across Alabama.

John Archibald, Ashley Remkus and Ramsey Archibald earned the award in the Local/Regional Investigative Reporting category from the Scripps Howard Fund.

Working with AL.com investigative editor Challen Stephens, the reporters examined abuses by the Brookside Police Department and identified the worst speed traps in Alabama.

“It’s an honor to be recognized for work that mattered to the people we wrote about, the people whose lives were turned upside down by a rogue police force,” said Stephens. “It’s not often in journalism that you see such uniform outrage from both sides of the aisle and witness such clear and immediate remedies.”

The reporting revealed how the police force in Brookside, a town of 1,253 people, used proceeds from fines for nefarious citations and arrests and forfeitures to increase the town’s revenue by 640 percent over two years. The fines and forfeitures came to account for nearly half of the town’s revenue by 2020.

The reporting led to immediate and lasting changes, including freeing people from jail. The police chief, his top lieutenant and more than half of the force resigned or were forced out within two weeks of AL.com’s initial story. State lawmakers passed multiple new laws, including one that restricts Alabama towns from using revenues from fines and fees to supply more than 10 percent of their budgets.

“What’s more, we fought throughout 2022 to secure sufficient records to be able to warn Alabama drivers about the small towns that choose to write speeding tickets to help fund local government,” Stephens said.

Read the reporting here:

The Brookside series also won a Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, the George Polk Award for local reporting and the Hillman Prize for web journalism, among other honors.

The work was supported by Ivana Hrynkiw, who led engagement efforts for AL.com, and former staff photographer Joe Songer, who took the photos.

The Scripps Howard Awards judges selected this year’s finalists from 780 entries across 14 categories.

Other finalists in the local/regional investigative reporting category are KARE 11 (Minneapolis) Investigates and The Charlotte Observer | The News & Observer.

See the full list of winners here.