Fleece Force: How Police And Courts Around Ferguson Bully Residents And Collect Million

ASADENA HILLS, Mo. — “Lacee Scott?” the judge called. The 23-year-old rose from a hard black plas­tic chair, walked past the fire­place and stood before the table at the front of the liv­ing room.

From the out­side, the house is bare­ly dis­tin­guish­able from oth­ers on the street — brick, three bed­rooms, built in 1948. Over the entrance, how­ev­er, there is a sign iden­ti­fy­ing it as City Hall. Once a month, the liv­ing room, with its lamps, hard­wood floors and clock on the man­tle, becomes a court­room. Those with busi­ness before the judge first check in with the clerk in the din­ing room before tak­ing a seat among the rows of chairs set up in the fam­i­ly room.

Scott, a senior at Alabama A&M University, had lived in Pasadena Hills dur­ing high school. Her father, a for­mer St. Louis County police offi­cer, works for Walgreens. Her moth­er is the prin­ci­pal of a local ele­men­tary school. Last sum­mer, when Scott was home vis­it­ing her fam­i­ly, a notice was placed on her car.

Parking had nev­er been an issue in her qui­et, sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ty. Pasadena Hills is small, with a pop­u­la­tion of less than 1,000. But the munic­i­pal­i­ty had recent­ly passed an ordi­nance requir­ing those park­ing overnight to dis­play a $10 res­i­den­tial park­ing stick­er on their vehi­cles. The notice ordered Scott to come to City Hall to obtain the sticker.

The city office has exteme­ly lim­it­ed busi­ness hours, how­ev­er. The sev­en-hour dri­ve from Huntsville, Alabama, back to Pasadena Hills also made it dif­fi­cult for Scott to appear in per­son. Soon, the city began mail­ing her threat­en­ing letters.

“They sent me a let­ter and said there would be a war­rant out for my arrest if I didn’t come back for this,” Scott told The Huffington Post of her court appear­ance. “For $10. For park­ing in front of my house.”

Such expe­ri­ences are not uncom­mon in St. Louis County. According to ascathing report from the U.S. Department of Justice released this month, author­i­ties in near­by Ferguson rou­tine­ly abused the rights of res­i­dents, who were viewed “less as con­stituents to be pro­tect­ed than as poten­tial offend­ers and sources of rev­enue.” Attorney General Eric Holder said the Ferguson Police Department had essen­tial­ly served as a “col­lec­tion agency,” with offi­cers com­pet­ing to see who could issue the largest num­ber of cita­tions.

A num­ber of Ferguson offi­cials have resigned in the wake of the DOJ report, includ­ing the police chief, Thomas Jackson, and the munic­i­pal court judge, Ronald Brockmeyer. Yet the prob­lems with munic­i­pal courts in St. Louis County extend far beyond Ferguson.

In dozens of inter­views with The Huffington Post over the past sev­er­al months, res­i­dents have called the sys­tem “out of con­trol,” “inhu­mane,” “crazy,” “racist,” “unpro­fes­sion­al” and “sick­en­ing.” Some have told sto­ries of being slapped with large fines for minor vio­la­tions and threat­ened with jail if they couldn’t pay.

“Everyone’s got a hor­ror sto­ry about the police,” for­mer St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch told HuffPost in a recent inter­view. “And most of that hor­ror sto­ry relates back to being tick­et­ed for some minor violation.”

Even before the DOJ released its report, the need to change the way St. Louis County’s many tiny munic­i­pal­i­ties oper­ate had become a ral­ly­ing cry among pro­test­ers, law­mak­ers and even mem­bers of law enforcement.

Last year, Missouri’s attor­ney gen­er­al filed suit against sev­er­al munic­i­pal­i­ties for vio­lat­ing state law regard­ing the col­lec­tion of rev­enue through traf­fic fines.

In December, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson said he believed some munic­i­pal­i­ties “vic­tim­ize those whom they are designed to pro­tect.” In February, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called some of the cur­rent prac­tices “immoral.”

“If you think that tax­a­tion of our cit­i­zens through traf­fic enforce­ment in St. Louis County is bad, you have no idea how bad it is,” Belmar said.

There are 90 sep­a­rate munic­i­pal­i­ties in all, home to 11 per­cent of Missouri’s total pop­u­la­tion. The largest is Florissant, an area of 12 square miles with over 52,000 res­i­dents. The small­est, the vil­lage of Champ, has just six hous­es. Population: 13.

Police are an over­whelm­ing pres­ence in St. Louis County. Nationally, the United States has rough­ly 2.4 police offi­cers for every 1,000 res­i­dents, accord­ing to FBI sta­tis­tics. In many parts of St. Louis County, the ratio is much high­er. Beverly Hills, Missouri, with few­er than 600 peo­ple cov­er­ing just 13 blocks, has 14 offi­cers on its police force.

As in Ferguson, many of these police depart­ments and local courts gen­er­ate mas­sive amounts of rev­enue for city cof­fers. Municipalities in St. Louis County took in $45 mil­lion in fines and fees in 2013 — 34 per­cent of the amount col­lect­ed statewide — accord­ing to Better Together St. Louis, a non­prof­it work­ing to improve munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment in the St. Louis region.

The munic­i­pal courts lie at the heart of this sys­tem. There are 81 in all. Some are housed in gov­ern­ment build­ings that were built for pub­lic use. Others, like the ones in Pasadena Hills or near­by Country Club Hills, have been set up in build­ings designed as res­i­den­tial homes. Kinloch holds court in the cafe­te­ria of an aban­doned ele­men­tary school. In Beverly Hills, the police depart­ment and court share a build­ing with a phar­ma­cy. There’s an ATM in the lob­by, and a pay­day loan out­let is con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed next door.

The reach of these courts extends beyond traf­fic and park­ing vio­la­tions. Some munic­i­pal­i­ties require occu­pan­cy per­mits for those who live in their juris­dic­tions, which in prac­tice means peo­ple can be fined for sleep­ing over at their boyfriend or girl­friend’s house. In some munic­i­pal­i­ties, over­grown grass or fail­ing to sub­scribe to a des­ig­nat­ed trash col­lec­tion ser­vice are offens­es that can ulti­mate­ly lead to an arrest record.

Even cloth­ing choic­es can be a tar­get. Pine Lawn has a munic­i­pal code thatbans sag­gy pants. One man received a $50 fine in 2012 for wear­ing pants that were too big for his waist, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. After he missed two court dates asso­ci­at­ed with his fash­ion crime, he was slapped with two addi­tion­al $125 fines, and for a time, there was a war­rant out for his arrest.

The ways in which St. Louis County’s munic­i­pal courts have abused their author­i­ty have unit­ed a bipar­ti­san coali­tion of state leg­is­la­tors, activists and law enforce­ment offi­cials who agree on the need for reform.

Last month, the state Senate passed leg­is­la­tion that would crack down on munic­i­pal­i­ties that use their courts to gen­er­ate rev­enue. That leg­is­la­tion is cur­rent­ly being debat­ed in the state House. The state Supreme Court has also stepped in to help fix the munic­i­pal court in Ferguson. Federal civ­il rights law­suits have been filed against some munic­i­pal­i­ties. And the Justice Department has said that munic­i­pal­i­ties across St. Louis County should take its report on Ferguson as a warning.

“There are many oth­er munic­i­pal­i­ties in the state of Missouri, and in fact in the coun­try at large, that are engaged in the same kind of prac­tices,” one DOJ offi­cial told reporters this month. “They are now on notice.”
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