Mobile County man has been to jail 97 times in 29 years, records show

By Jillian Kramer
February 07, 2010, 5:40AM
LINK

MOBILE, Ala. — “You’ve been to jail 97 times?” the reporter inquired on a recent morning.

“Oh, probably more than that, ma’am,” replied the man on the other end of the line, William Bradley Bankston.

In fact, the 47-year-old has been booked into Mobile County Metro Jail on freshly filed charges more times than anyone else in the modern era of record-keeping there.

He’s passed through the Canal Street jail on at least 97 occasions in 29 years. At least three-quarters if those bookings followed drinking bouts and public displays of drunkenness, records reflect.

The conversation with Bankston concluded something of a quest for the Press-Register, which began analyzing jail data late last year to discover who’d been in and out the most times.

Bankston kept the jail doors spinning because, by his own admission, he has a history of drinking and making scenes.

“I used to be real wild when I drank,” Bankston said.

Eight years ago, a sheriff’s deputy spotted Bankston on McLeod Road swinging a baseball bat at passing cars, threatening them with drunken force as they whizzed past his home.

When the deputy caught up to Bankston, he was cursing to himself, a nearly empty bottle of “Irish Rose” wine and the bat at his side, according to the crime report.

Bankston served 90 days in jail after he was found guilty of disorderly conduct and public intoxication, records show.

A year later, in 2003, Bankston came home in a drunken daze on an August night and shoved his father, according to another deputy’s account.

The father, who was 62, had rebuffed his son’s attempt to take and sell his stereo. Charges stemming from that incident were later dropped.

Fourteen days later, Bankston was jailed again on charges of disorderly conduct and public intoxication. A judge sentenced Bankston to one year at the county jail, where Bankston wrote in a letter, “I clean up after each meal. That’s sweeping, mopping, every day four or five times a day and whenever needed, seven days a week. I keep to myself and do as I am told.”

But Bankston soon pleaded for a sentence reduction, writing to a court clerk, “I hate to bother you. I know you got a tremendous job to do. It’s just that this jail is about to drive me insane.”

He was released from his sentence in April 2004.

Bankston — who has long worked at an area plant nursery, according to the Sheriff’s Office — remained out of jail and sober, he says, for two years. But again he was charged with public intoxication in 2006 and 2007.

Last October, according to court records, Bankston was charged with third-degree burglary after a Theodore man accused him of throwing a brick through his bedroom window and stealing a vacuum cleaner, aluminum ladder, bar stools, tools and paint supplies.

The case was later dismissed by a grand jury.

“Oh, Lord,” Bankston said of the October incident. “There’s nothing to that. I’m flying right now.”

That arrest, however, marked one of only 15 jail bookings for Bankston that did not involve public intoxication.

In his first arrest, in 1981, he was accused of being a pedestrian under the influence.

“He sticks to his familiar vices,” said Lt. Nina Gordon, who has worked at the jail for 25 years. “He comes in his regular drunk self and sleeps it off.”

The senior officers know Bankston well, Gordon said. “He’s a humble person and he’s a very respectful person. He’s not a troublemaker when he’s here,” she said.

Asked about the recent tapering off of his jail visits, Bankston said, “I just got tired of going. You just get a regular schedule going and pass the time away, you read, you write. You watch TV. Not that there’s ever anything good on those TVs.

“I was in there pretty often,” he said. “It was causing me too many problems.”