A team of journalists from AL.com earned national recognition for reporting that exposed predatory policing in the small town of Brookside.

Reporters John Archibald, Ashley Remkus and Ramsey Archibald won the George Polk Award for local reporting, Long Island University announced today.

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 bilk poor residents of thousands of dollars, increasing revenue by 640 percent over two years. 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. Two months later, the state legislature passed a law restricting Alabama towns from using revenues from fines and fees to supply more than 10 percent of their budgets.

“The impact of this work has been swift and powerful in Alabama,” said Kelly Ann Scott, editor-in-chief and vice president of content. “The work is a testament to the power of local journalism to shine a light on problems and prompt real change in the communities we serve. It all starts with listening to people, asking questions and unraveling the problem. This work had the kind of impact you strive to have as a journalist.

“We’re honored to be recognized and proud of the impact that local investigative journalism had here in Alabama.”

John Archibald, the lead reporter for the project, working with investigative reporter Ashley Remkus, data reporter Ramsey Archibald and investigative editor Challen Stephens, chronicled the rise of the Brookside Police Department and continued reporting through its downfall. The work was supported by Ivana Hrynkiw, who led engagement efforts for AL.com, and former staffer Joe Songer, who contributed photography.

The reporting on Brookside was part of a series, Banking on Crime, that examined policing for profit in Alabama. The Lipman Foundation at Columbia University awarded AL.com and Reckon a grant that underwrote expenses for the reporting and for the production of a documentary. Pulled Over/Pulled Under was a collaboration between AL.com and Reckon, with contributions by Anissa Latham-Brown, Sydney Batten, Amanda Khorramabadi, Kavolshaia Howze, Marsha Oglesby, R.L. Nave, Tamika Moore, and freelancers Jeremy Burns and Taj Devore-Bey.

Other George Polk Award winners also unmasked the false underpinnings of a crypto currency empire; disrupted a private equity giant’s plan to glean huge profits from homes for disabled patients; examined lethal plundering of the Amazon rainforest; detailed the use of hapless migrants to help a governor score political points; revealed allegations of irregularities in a prominent university president’s scientific research; highlighted a growing prosecutorial tool that lacked scientific basis, and published the leak of a controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion.

The other winners are:

• The staff of the New York Times-Foreign Reporting
• Videojournalist Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, video producer Vasilisa Stepanenko and reporter Lori Hinnant of the Associated Press-War Reporting
• Josh Gerstein, Alex Ward, Peter Canellos and the staff of Politico-National Reporting
• Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke of Reuters-State reporting
• Kendall Taggart, John Templon, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed News- Health Reporting
• Ian Allison and Tracy Wang of the digital currency news source CoinDesk-Financial Reporting
• Terrence McCoy of The Washington Post-Environmental Reporting
• Eliza Shapiro and Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times-Education Reporting
• ProPublica reporter Brett Murphy-Justice Reporting
• Sarah Blaskey, Nicholas Nehamas, Ana Ceballos, Mary Ellen Klas and the staff of the Miami Herald-Political Reporting
• Correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Senior Producer Kavitha Chekuru and Executive Producer Laila Al-Arian-Foreign Television
• Shimon Prokupecz and his CNN crew-National Television Reporting
• Lynsey Addario of The New York Times-Photojournalism award
• Theo Baker of The Stanford Daily-Special Award for uncovering allegations that pioneering research co-authored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a renowned neuroscientist, was supported in part by manipulated imagery and that Tessier-Lavigne and his associates failed to avail themselves of opportunities to correct the record. Baker’s reporting spurred the university to engage an outside counsel who has assembled a panel of experts to investigate the allegations.
• Freelance journalist Alex Perry for Outside Magazine-Sydney H. Schanberg Prize

The George Polk Awards were established in 1949 by LIU to commemorate George Polk, a CBS correspondent murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. The awards, which place a premium on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results, are conferred annually to honor special achievement in journalism. The latest winners were selected from 515 submissions of work that appeared in print, online or on television or radio, nominated by news organizations and individuals or recommended by a national panel of advisors.