"If you went to a very affluent area in St. Louis County, how long do you think a program would last where speed cameras were put up on arterial roads coming into subdivisions, and people were given letters saying they were going to be arrested? It would last about five hours,” Belmar said. “You know that and I know that, and that’s part of the problem."
Indeed.
The Ferguson Protests Worked
Were the riots costly and destructive? Yes. But reform never would have happened without the unrest.
"FERGUSON, Mo. -- Nearly a half-century ago, a University of Missouri law professor named T.E. Lauer issued a warning. Missouri’s network of municipal courts, he wrote, were “a modern anomaly” generally “overlooked or ignored as the misshapen stepchildren of our judicial system.”
"It was “disgraceful,” he argued, that poor people accused of municipal ordinance violations didn’t receive lawyers. Arresting and confining citizens for petty violations of municipal codes was unnecessary. Many municipalities, he wrote, had clearly “conceived of their municipal courts in terms of their revenue-raising ability,” and those financial incentives influenced judges' decisions. He questioned whether the term “kangaroo court” would “too often validly apply to municipal court proceedings.”
"That was 1966. The Civil Rights Act was two years old. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive, and Barack Obama had just turned 5. Dozens of young girls in St. Louis were treated for minor injuries sustained at a Beatles concert. George Wallace, who had tried to prevent black students from enrolling at a public university after promising “segregation forever,” was governor of Alabama.
"In the ensuing decades, those “kangaroo courts” enabled small towns, especially in St. Louis County, to pad their budgets by extracting fines from people for extraordinarily minor violations of municipal codes -- under threat of jail. Arrest warrants were issued for thousands of people, for supposed crimes like wearing baggy pants, missing a special sticker on their car, or failing to subscribe to a designated trash service. Residents who had to endure these local courts described them as “out of control,” “inhumane,” "crazy,” “racist,” “unprofessional” and “sickening.”
"The decades between Lauer's warning and 2014 brought no significant reforms to Missouri's municipal courts. Then, on Aug. 9, a Ferguson police officer's bullet that killed 18-year-old Michael Brown brought an end to the inaction.
"Police left Brown's body in the street for hours, and a community that had felt abused by the authorities for years erupted. Vandalism broke out, along with peaceful protests, and militarized police departments aggressively cracked down. The clashes attracted international news coverage. Riots and protests injured numerous people and caused extensive property damage. The controversy surrounding Brown's killing and the police response left the community reeling.
"But the protests, in many ways, worked. Those abusive municipal court practices, which many residents said had fueled widespread disrespect for authority, are being reined in. And the outcry spread far beyond the Midwest. In many ways, the Ferguson protests changed America.
Missouri overhauled its municipal courts
"Nine months after Brown’s death, the Missouri legislature passed a bill that capped the amount of revenue that municipalities can collect from tickets. Gov. Jay Nixon signed the legislation last month, saying that when “the practices of municipal courts fail the basic tests of fairness and equality -- those failings reflect on our entire judicial system.” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), a leading supporter, said he doesn’t believe the bill would have happened without the protests in Ferguson.
"St. Louis County's municipal courts didn't kill Michael Brown. But they were a major contributor to the outrage and distrust that was on display in Ferguson following Brown’s death.
“For me, after August and being from the St. Louis area and growing up in North County, I felt the desire to try to right a wrong in how justice was playing out in our municipal courts, or the absence of it,” Schmitt said. “The long lines outside of municipal courts next to pawn shops shocked the conscious, and I think it compelled people -- regardless of their party -- to want to do something about it.” Schmitt said the attention “brought together a broad coalition.”
"Law enforcement leaders said Ferguson was a wake-up call.
“If not for the unrest, we wouldn’t have seen municipal court reform. It’s certainly a game-changer,” said Kevin Ahlbrand, president of Missouri’s Fraternal Order of Police and a member of the Ferguson Commission, created by the governor to correct economic and social conditions that fueled the unrest.
"St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told The Huffington Post it was “a shame that we haven’t had the political will before 2014” to look at the municipal courts."
More >>
Indeed.
The Ferguson Protests Worked
Were the riots costly and destructive? Yes. But reform never would have happened without the unrest.
"FERGUSON, Mo. -- Nearly a half-century ago, a University of Missouri law professor named T.E. Lauer issued a warning. Missouri’s network of municipal courts, he wrote, were “a modern anomaly” generally “overlooked or ignored as the misshapen stepchildren of our judicial system.”
"It was “disgraceful,” he argued, that poor people accused of municipal ordinance violations didn’t receive lawyers. Arresting and confining citizens for petty violations of municipal codes was unnecessary. Many municipalities, he wrote, had clearly “conceived of their municipal courts in terms of their revenue-raising ability,” and those financial incentives influenced judges' decisions. He questioned whether the term “kangaroo court” would “too often validly apply to municipal court proceedings.”
"That was 1966. The Civil Rights Act was two years old. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive, and Barack Obama had just turned 5. Dozens of young girls in St. Louis were treated for minor injuries sustained at a Beatles concert. George Wallace, who had tried to prevent black students from enrolling at a public university after promising “segregation forever,” was governor of Alabama.
"In the ensuing decades, those “kangaroo courts” enabled small towns, especially in St. Louis County, to pad their budgets by extracting fines from people for extraordinarily minor violations of municipal codes -- under threat of jail. Arrest warrants were issued for thousands of people, for supposed crimes like wearing baggy pants, missing a special sticker on their car, or failing to subscribe to a designated trash service. Residents who had to endure these local courts described them as “out of control,” “inhumane,” "crazy,” “racist,” “unprofessional” and “sickening.”
"The decades between Lauer's warning and 2014 brought no significant reforms to Missouri's municipal courts. Then, on Aug. 9, a Ferguson police officer's bullet that killed 18-year-old Michael Brown brought an end to the inaction.
"Police left Brown's body in the street for hours, and a community that had felt abused by the authorities for years erupted. Vandalism broke out, along with peaceful protests, and militarized police departments aggressively cracked down. The clashes attracted international news coverage. Riots and protests injured numerous people and caused extensive property damage. The controversy surrounding Brown's killing and the police response left the community reeling.
"But the protests, in many ways, worked. Those abusive municipal court practices, which many residents said had fueled widespread disrespect for authority, are being reined in. And the outcry spread far beyond the Midwest. In many ways, the Ferguson protests changed America.
Missouri overhauled its municipal courts
"Nine months after Brown’s death, the Missouri legislature passed a bill that capped the amount of revenue that municipalities can collect from tickets. Gov. Jay Nixon signed the legislation last month, saying that when “the practices of municipal courts fail the basic tests of fairness and equality -- those failings reflect on our entire judicial system.” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), a leading supporter, said he doesn’t believe the bill would have happened without the protests in Ferguson.
"St. Louis County's municipal courts didn't kill Michael Brown. But they were a major contributor to the outrage and distrust that was on display in Ferguson following Brown’s death.
“For me, after August and being from the St. Louis area and growing up in North County, I felt the desire to try to right a wrong in how justice was playing out in our municipal courts, or the absence of it,” Schmitt said. “The long lines outside of municipal courts next to pawn shops shocked the conscious, and I think it compelled people -- regardless of their party -- to want to do something about it.” Schmitt said the attention “brought together a broad coalition.”
"Law enforcement leaders said Ferguson was a wake-up call.
“If not for the unrest, we wouldn’t have seen municipal court reform. It’s certainly a game-changer,” said Kevin Ahlbrand, president of Missouri’s Fraternal Order of Police and a member of the Ferguson Commission, created by the governor to correct economic and social conditions that fueled the unrest.
"St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told The Huffington Post it was “a shame that we haven’t had the political will before 2014” to look at the municipal courts."
More >>
