Pastor, sister say rogue Alabama police force sought revenge

It started about as bad as it can get. Then it got worse.

Rev. Vincent Witt, a Baptist preacher and chaplain of the city of Lipscomb, is angry as he talks about his trip through the Brookside police jurisdiction in north Jefferson County.

It cost him a job. It cost him money. It cost him reputation, he says.

It began in June of 2019. Witt stopped at a stop sign in Brookside, a burg with only one retail store and a volunteer fire department, but at least one police officer for every 144 people. He turned left in his new black Cadillac, and an officer stopped him almost immediately.

Witt said the officer, identified in a federal lawsuit as Marcus Sellers, told him he stopped the Witts because his car had a paper tag.

“It’s a brand new car,” Witt recalled saying. “I just bought it a few days ago.”

The officer said the Witt’s car fit the description of one recently stolen, according to the federal lawsuit Witt has since filed. As Witt pulled his ID out of his wallet, the officer noticed his chaplain’s badge and asked about it. Witt said he explained that he is chaplain for the city of Lipscomb.

“I said, ‘Do you pull everybody over like this?’” Witt recalled in a recent interview with AL.com. According to the lawsuit, the officer responded, “‘Look you f***ing n***** just stay out of Brookside.’”

Officer Sellers did not respond to requests for comment.

For the Witts, that was just the beginning.

Witt is fighting Sellers, the city, its police chief and Lt. Bo Savelle, in a federal lawsuit that alleges malicious prosecution and defamation, among other things. He’s one of at least five people currently suing the police in the town of just 1,253 people.

Witt said after the traffic stop he went home, and promptly made a complaint. He said he called the Brookside police department and asked for the chief. The next morning Savelle, a lieutenant, returned his call — asking for “Officer Witt” — and told him to come in and make a complaint. Witt replied that he was not an officer but a chaplain, adding that, “Brookside is a real racist police department.”

Witt said he decided filing a complaint wouldn’t do any good.

But it didn’t go away, he said.

In days to come, Witt and his sister, Tareya, were charged with impersonating police officers. Witt said his sister was not in the car when he was stopped nor aware of the incident at all. Brookside police splashed their faces on the department’s Facebook page, which trafficks in embarrassing mugshots and claims to have more than a million visitors. The post said Tareya and Vincent Witt were wanted by police.

Crime Stoppers, a website that displays fugitives and offers a reward for information leading to their capture, also featured their photos.

Tareya Witt, a longtime federal worker, told AL.com she got a text from a friend on a Sunday morning when she was going to hear her brother preach at a church where he was applying for a job. It said “Hey. I hope this isn’t true,” and showed her the Crime Stoppers picture of her brother, and then her. It was a picture taken from her driver’s license.

“After the church service was over,” she said, “I pulled him (Vincent) to the side and showed him the picture. And he was like, ‘What? Oh, I guess they’re getting me back because I called to report how they treat people.’ I said, ‘Well, where did they get my name from because I wasn’t even in the car?’”

Brookside Mayor Mike Bryan and Police Chief Mike Jones said they could not talk about on-going litigation.

“We, along with our attorney, have reviewed” the footage of that and other cases that spawned lawsuits, Jones said. “I’ve not found wrongdoing.“

”No,” the mayor said in agreement. “No.”

Tareya Witt said she was shocked and frightened to be drawn into the situation, to be charged and publicly humiliated as a criminal when she had nothing to do with the case. If police could blithely paint her as a criminal, she wondered, what else would they do?

When she saw the photos online she immediately notified her boss, who was understanding. But she still wonders who saw that Facebook post or the Crime Stoppers listing.

Vincent Witt said he lost work because of it.

“I was going to be sent to another church and I actually lost that job to the other church because people weren’t sure about this case. So they gave it to another guy.”

Brookside later dismissed their charges without explanation. Crime Stoppers took down their photos after intervention from Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway.

Pettway, who sits on the Crime Stoppers board, says he knows the Witt family, and believes their account.

“I don’t want Crime Stoppers to be involved in something that could possibly cause a lawsuit or cause someone to have a bad reputation,” he said.

He said he met with Brookside officers to talk about the case.

“I didn’t believe the sister was in the car at all,” he said. “I didn’t really feel comfortable with them trying to go forward with charges on the sister (Tareya).

Brenda Witt, Vincent’s wife, was in the car, according the suit and to the Witts. She is a Jefferson County employee, a security guard, and had her uniform on when they were stopped, Pettway said.

“I believed that was going to be a real black eye for that department,” the sheriff said. So I talked to them about it. I said ‘Hey, I think he had the wrong person on this warrant and it’s gonna cause some problems.’”

Pettway said Brookside officers claimed they had video, but they did not produce it.

“If they have videos to back it up, I wouldn’t have any problem with it, but I don’t think there’s any video to back anything that they have said,” Pettway said.

The Witt’s lawsuit contues in federal court. The Witts claim they were maliciously prosecuted by Brookside, that its officers intentionally and recklessly defamed them and caused them shame and financial harm.

Defense lawyers for Brookside argued that the officers had qualified immunity – a legal doctrine that protects police against lawsuits in many cases when they are on the job. U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon agreed in part.

But Judge Kallon, allowing the malicious prosecution and defamation claims to continue, wrote that “Given the alleged and, truthfully, bizarre conduct—issuing and approving fabricated charges against Pastor Witt and Ms. Witt for impersonating police officers, without probable cause, and publicizing the charges on Facebook and Crime Stoppers in retaliation for Pastor Witt’s complaint—the court is unconvinced that Officers Savelle and Jones are entitled to qualified immunity.”

He went on to say “Taken together, at this stage, the complaint plausibly alleges that Officers Savelle and Jones pursued and publicized charges against Pastor Witt and Ms. Witt willfully, maliciously, fraudulently, in bad faith, and/or beyond their authority.”

Kallon did rule that it was legal for officers to stop the Witts for the paper tag, as courts have said police are allowed to stop vehicles to make sure the paper tags are not more than 20 days old, as required by law. Thus Kallon ruled it could not be seen as a racially motivated stop, though his language was sharp.

“This alleged conduct is reprehensible, and it harkens back to the dark period in our nation’s history when officers blatantly displayed racist tendencies and weaponized their badges to keep minorities from certain communities under the guise of ‘law enforcement.’ It was shameful then and more so now for law enforcement to continue to allegedly behave in this manner.”

This story was published with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.

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