Ferguson, Population of 21,000 Yet 16,000 People Have Outstanding Arrest Warrants?

originally posted by: jude11
www.nbcnews.com...
refreshingnews99.blogspot.in...

In Ferguson -- a city with a population of 21,000 -- 16,000 people have outstanding arrest warrants, meaning that they are currently actively wanted by the police. In other words, if you were to take four people at random, the Ferguson police would consider three of them fugitives.

How is this even possible? It's clear to me that the police are using the black community as a revenue source. And many wonder why tensions are high? One shooting is not the reason IMO but rather the icing on the cake. It only takes a spark for a powder keg.

Cant really make this a black thing without more info. Maybe a revenue source but all residents must be included at this point.

a reply to: jude11

I think the impression of the OP is a bit incredulous, but Semper explains it for me And maybe if we could see the the Bench warrants comparisons to other municipalities to see if this indeed is a unique situation to Ferguson or the norm as Semper mentioned.

That said, I don't think the rest of the report should be discounted, these findings were interesting :

- A similar pattern emerged inside Ferguson's municipal court, where data indicated that the town targeted blacks for arrests on outstanding warrants

- 96 percent of those arrested during traffic stops solely because of an outstanding warrant were black, investigators found.

- Black drivers were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched during traffic stops, but were less likely to be found holding anything illegal.

- Blacks were also the focus of 88 percent of instances in which police used force to subdue someone.

There is a lack of trust in the Ferguson community along racial lines and from what I can see ( i am no expert reading one report) there is discrepancies in the way the black community is treated. I do hope they find a way forward, sadly the media are unlikely to allow that to happen. The burden of this change is on this community of Ferguson itself, but everyone else with an agenda will stick their beaks in. Sometimes, though we do have to stick them in if a racial inequity needs to be addressed.

How to do that? I don't really know

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

As of December 2014, 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants issued by the Ferguson Municipal Court, most of them for minor violations such as parking and traffic infractions.

The years mentioned had nothing to do with this part of the article I can see?

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: jude11

As of December 2014, 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants issued by the Ferguson Municipal Court, most of them for minor violations such as parking and traffic infractions.

That is the only statement made about the outstanding warrants. Nowhere does it say the warrants are for "residents" only.

It's an afterthought at the end of the article. I'm sure it's meant to sensationalize the story since some would assume its residents, even though that is not stated to be the case I can see.

The thousands upon thousands of warrants that are issued, according to the DOJ, are "not to protect public safety but rather to facilitate fine collection." Residentsare routinely charged with minor administrative infractions.

I guess I'm not seeing the term residents clearly.

Seeing that you are SURE "it's meant to sensationalize" what else is there?

Jude11

a reply to: jude11

I guess I'm not seeing the term residents clearly.

I guess I'm not seeing where the 16,000 warrants are only for residents.

a reply to: jude11

I'll help.

It turns out that nearly everyone in the city is wanted for something. Even internal police department communications found the number of arrest warrants to be "staggering". By December of 2014, "over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants that had been issued by the court." The report makes clear that this refers to individual people, rather than cases (i.e. people with many cases are not being counted multiple times). However, if we do look at the number of cases, the portrait is even starker. In 2013, 32,975 offenses had associated warrants, so that there were 1.5 offenses for every city resident.

Link

a reply to: eisegesis
That doesn't really help. How about showing us where (in the report ,not the blog which makes the claim) it says that the 33,000 offenses were committed by residents.
www.justice.gov...

a reply to: zazzafrazz

NPR has an article about this and linked to a page showing outstanding warrants for FY 2013.

There's only 3 municipalities that have high numbers, Ferguson is second only to Kansas City, which is ridiculously high.

The other high municipality is also in Jackson County (Independence), what's going on there, I wonder?!

Anyway, the list..

www.courts.mo.gov...

As others have noted, the Ferguson courts appear to work as an orchestrated racket to extract money from the poor. The thousands upon thousands of warrants that are issued, according to the DOJ, are "not to protect public safety but rather to facilitate fine collection." Residents are routinely charged with minor administrative infractions. Most of the arrest warrants stem from traffic violations, but nearly every conceivable human behavior is criminalized. An offense can be found anywhere, including citations for "Manner of Walking in Roadway," "High Grass and Weeds," and 14 kinds of parking violation. The dystopian absurdity reaches its apotheosis in the deliciously Orwellian transgression "failure to obey." (Obey what? Simply to obey.) In fact, even if one does obey to the letter, solutions can be found. After Henry Davis was brutally beaten by four Ferguson officers, he found himself charged with "destruction of official property" for bleeding on their uniforms.

Sounds like a science experiment gone wrong. I'm sure many small cities across the country are victimizing their population to help balance the budget. They kept it up for too long and the people have had enough. If you have any question why America has lost faith in it's law enforcement this is why. Its all about the Benjamin's.

Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of $2,635,400 [...] According to a court employee, the docket for an average court session may include as many as 1,500 cases. Assuming an 80% conviction rate, the average fine in a case resulting in a guilty verdict would be $275.

In addition to such heavy legal prosecution, Ferguson and other municipal courts engage in a number of operational procedures that make it even more difficult for defendants to navigate the courts. For example, a Ferguson court employee reported that the bench routinely starts hearing cases 30 minutes before the appointed time and then locks the doors to the building as early as five minutes after the official hour, a practice that could easily lead a defendant arriving even slightly late to receive an additional charge for failure to appear.

Link

a reply to: Phage

Regardless of people being residents or not, it seems that Ferguson is on the very high end of arrest warrants issued, that much at least is true.

The numbers are ridiculous in a "free country", regardless of if its sensationalized. But even with that, it is impossible to make sense of what the article is saying without a benchmark or some kind of comparative analysis to give you context.

Is this ratio that is being talked about really all that high in comparison with other communities? I see a comparison to Boston, but the comparison is using different numbers entirely. Its not a "same/same", so not context can really be gained.

I am horrified by the sheer scale of the municipal thuggery that the numbers show. But have no idea if it is particularly stark in comparison to the "norm", given there is not representation of what "norm" is.

a reply to: Chadwickus

Those figures are incorrect. As explained in the DOJ report.

In the wake of several news accounts indicating that the Ferguson municipal court issued over 32,000 warrants in fiscal year 2013, court staff determined that it had mistakenly reported to the state of Missouri the number of charged offenses that had warrants (32,975), not the number of people who had warrants outstanding (9,007).

www.justice.gov...

a reply to: Chadwickus
Yes. The Ferguson police seem to be very...enthusiastic. And, according to the DOJ, they tend to concentrate on blacks.

a reply to: Phage

Hmm well the office of state courts needs to fix their stats then.

Ferguson looks like it will be getting a complete overhaul, and it is severely needed.

3/12/2015
Missouri Supreme Court Stops Ferguson Motorist Shakedown
Supreme Court of Missouri puts appellate court judge in charge of Ferguson court to address misconduct.

Judge Roy L. RichterA US Department of Justice report released earlier this month called into question the predatory tactics of traffic police and municipal court in Ferguson, Missouri. The high court decided on Monday to clear the bench and put Court of Appeals Judge Roy L. Richter in charge of all the city's cases in the St. Louis County municipal court.

"Judge Richter will bring a fresh, disinterested perspective to this court's practices and he is able and willing to implement needed reforms," Chief Justice Mary R. Russell said in a statement. "Extraordinary action is warranted in Ferguson, but the court also is examining reforms that are needed on a statewide basis."

The Justice Department report concluded that the Ferguson Police Department conducted unconstitutional traffic stops in which black motorists and passengers were arrested on "failure to comply" charges if they refused to submit to roadside questioning. When the resulting charges and traffic tickets were challenged, the accused rarely found a sympathetic ear, according to the report.

"The Ferguson municipal court handles most charges brought by FPD, and does so not with the primary goal of administering justice or protecting the rights of the accused, but of maximizing revenue," the report concluded. "The impact that revenue concerns have on court operations undermines the court's role as a fair and impartial judicial body."

One woman who received a parking ticket in 2007 was charged $1091 in fines and fees because of the multiple arrest warrants the court issued against her for failing to appeal in court. Often those failures to appear were not the fault of the motorist.

"We have also found evidence that in issuing citations, FPD officers frequently provide people with incorrect information about the date and time of their assigned court session," the report explained.

The court issued 9007 arrest warrants in 2013, thanks in part to Ferguson's expansion of the list of offenses that require the accused to appear in person in court to include minor traffic violations. In these cases, the driver must appear even if he is not contesting the charge.

"Requiring an individual to appear at a specific place and time to pay a citation makes it far more likely that the individual will fail to appear or pay the citation on time, quickly resulting, in Ferguson, in an arrest warrant and a suspended license." the report explained.

And to play devils advocate...

In the wake of last month’s killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer, their frustrations with the police and local courts had boiled over, pressuring elected city officials this week to scale back municipal penalties that had helped fill the city’s coffers even as they had lightened the wallets of the poor.

This all seems to be initially motivated by money. If the majority of the city or town is a specific color, than anything the town does to generate income through the courts is going to look racist.

On Tuesday, the City Council decided to abolish fines that are routinely issued if a defendant fails to show up for court, repeal a “failure to appear” law that led to many incarcerations, and give people a month to come forward and void their warrants. It also created a special docket for defendants who have difficulty making payments on outstanding fines and moved to establish a civilian review board to oversee the Police Department, which is under investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Link

Which numbers do the DOJ's report reflect? The numbers were high before the shooting, but the study was done after. Not sure what to think.

St. Louis Municipal Court on Monday cancelled 222,000 arrest warrants for traffic offenses after the killing of unarmed teen Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson exposed systemic disparities in local law enforcement.

The warrants were automatically eliminated and offenders will now have three months to get a new court date to face those previous charges, according to the city. The warrant amnesty includes all moving and non-moving traffic violations that do not include alcohol related charges, DWI/DUI or leaving the scene of an accident.

Link

Just another move to save face. A couple of years from now and these number will significantly be reduced. We are analyzing warrants at the peak of corruption. Many of those warrants have been dropped.

a reply to: Blaine91555

In the previous paragraph it states "From 2011-2013..."


Then in the paragraph you shared it says "As of December 2014..."



So I took it to mean they were gauging stats between those four years.



Edit: However that could be "As of December 2014" for the year starting Jan 1st 2014.

Stop making sense! You are ruining the narrative that Police are racist power mongers!!

I guarantee after some more of the mass media's destructive lies about Ferguson, the place will become a virtual wasteland. The only stores left will be liquor stores. They're so busy turning it into a little Detroit, they forgot about the people who are trying to live there. Disgusting.
a reply to: Blaine91555