Eighteen-year-old George Brookover was cruising around town with three friends in the summer of 1968. It was the weekend, it was warm, and they were counting down the days until they could start the next chapter of their lives.
In the Glencairn neighborhood—just a block or two from where his law office would eventually be—a police car clocked them. More than 50 years later, Brookover is the mayor of East Lansing. He doesn’t recall what prompted ELPD to pull him and his friends over, but the officer would discover that the young men were traveling with contraband that was illegal in the city: alcohol.
Prohibited by the original 1908 city charter, alcohol could not be sold, purchased or consumed within city limits…