Outstanding Balko "Poverty to Prison" article on the 80 plus "CopLands" surrounding St. Louis

[Anti Federalist]

Way too much to copypasta, I highly recommend a read.

Puts the Ferguson riots into a new light.



How municipalities in St. Louis County, Missouri profit from poverty

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/

<snip>

In 2000, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in a series of articles that motorists passing through the tiny town of Bel-Ridge (also on Natural Bridge Road) were getting pulled over for running a red light at an intersection where the light had previously always flashed yellow. The complaining motorists reported seeing the light suddenly change to red while they were in the middle of the intersection. After several complaints, an engineer with the Missouri Department of transportation went out to observe what was going on.

As it turns out, in 1998 Bel-Ridge police had received permission from the DOT to install switch at the light that allowed an officer to manually convert it to red. The switch was installed so an officer could allow children from a nearby school to safely cross the road. But the engineer witnessed police switching the light to red when there were no children present at the intersection at all, just as groups of cars were passing through. Another officer would then pull one or more cars over and issue them tickets. Bel-Ridge police denied the allegation, and insisted that officers only switched the light to red when children needed to cross. But the engineer found that most of the morning tickets were issued between 9 and 10:30am, when school was already in session. The Post-Dispatch noted that in 1996, two years before the switch was installed, Bel-Ridge derived 29 percent of its annual revenue from traffic fines. In 1999, the first full year after the switch was installed, that figure jumped to 44.8 percent.

[phill4paul]

Theye are fooking extortionists. At every level. I'll not pay them a dime if I can help it. If Theye wish to extort through force then they should expect the same in kind.

[Mani]

I sent this to a friend who's starting to wake up. I've been feeding her bits and pieces and crumbs over time to get her to see things without me blasting her at all once. She couldn't wrap her head around how fucked up the whole thing is, she asked me a couple of times, "But how is this legal??", "What the hell is an occupancy permit!"

[CPUd]

The one where the cops were manually switching the traffic lights to red was pretty wild. Also the towns that have more outstanding warrants than people living there.

Alabama has spots like that, too between Montgomery, Dothan and Atmore. That's where most people leave the I-65 when driving to FL.


The system is set up to catch people passing through; if someone is from out of state, they usually don't have to go to court, just send money. The locals get caught up in it because they are required to go to court, and they don't have the money.

[Mach]

Just like someone said in the comments over there..... if you get 4 tickets and you don't even show up to court, you know, what's going to happen..... most of the article was a bunch of, boo-hoo, emotional draw. I don't deny or argue that they sit around and try to crank money into their coffers but, that's what all governments do, no surprise there.... Cops - To Protect and Serve (their Administrations).

I know all about those municipalities, I grew up in North County (ex: Ferguson) if you have any questions just ask away.... I was a white teen and it wasn't any different for us, pull us over, and be dicks to us, and chuckle as they do it, not to mention, try to talk threats and see how, we would, react... if someone with us would have a warrant, they would just give the secret white boy code and then we'd go about our day...... just another day. ;)

[kcchiefs6465]

Just like someone said in the comments over there..... if you get 4 tickets and you don't even show up to court, you know, what's going to happen..... most of the article was a bunch of, boo-hoo, emotional draw. I don't deny or argue that they sit around and try to crank money into their coffers but, that's what all governments do, no surprise there.... Cops - To Protect and Serve (their Administrations).

I know all about those municipalities, I grew up in North County (ex: Ferguson) if you have any questions just ask away.... I was a white teen and it wasn't any different for us, pull us over, and be dicks to us, and chuckle as they do it, not to mention, try to talk threats and see how, we would, react... if someone with us would have a warrant, they would just give the secret white boy code and then we'd go about our day...... just another day. ;)
Okay. What do you mean by that?

[Mach]

Here.......

.....they would just give the secret white boy code and then we'd go about our day...... just another day. /s



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k

[kcchiefs6465]

Here.......

.....they would just give the secret white boy code and then we'd go about our day...... just another day. /s



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cxNR9ML8k
Lol. That's what I figured... was a little drunk.

If these municipalities are anything like the ones I know of, the tickets would be bullshit, and the police tape worms on the collective colon of the public. I had multiple tickets which eventually had my license suspended.

I was a passenger and received a seat belt ticket three houses down from where we were leaving. I received another seat belt ticket when I took off my seat belt before they arrived to the car window. I had a couple turn signal violations simply as a means to bring out a K9 unit and rummage through my shit. I literally use my turn signal to pull into driveways.

Eventually I was pulled over to point of having my license suspended. And then, you know what, I went to jail for driving on a suspended license.

Got out and then later got two DUIs on one traffic stop when I blew a .01 (the legal limit was .08 though being under twenty one at the time it was .02) Quite literally every person I know has a DUI out of that little pissant town.

I'm white as well. It didn't stop them from pulling guns on me, threatening me with dogs, throwing me in the mud, ripping my car to shreds, and fabricating evidence quite regularly. A few of the stops should have resulted in lawsuits but I was pretty much just a kid then.

As far as if you have four tickets and don't show up to court you know what's going to happen.... perhaps so. But perhaps fuck them and their courts. I'd be willing to bet if she paid the extortionist out of hand through mailing in a money order they'd have been just happy as could be. But don't waste your time in front of a biased system and overtime paid tick and you deserve a cage... or at the least, ought not complain when you find yourself within one. Am I right?

[Mach]

Exactly, I know what you're talking about, I know it all, pretty much like it is everywhere, I guess...... mine was a small-older-off-to-the-side kind of neighborhood, not as suburban as some other North County places but just as greedy.

[Lucille]

They decided to make it worse.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/12/liberal-revolt-over-spending-bill-white


Ferguson, Missouri, officials plan to issue more citations in their town to increase revenue. Brilliant.

Ferguson to Increase Police Ticketing to Close City’s Budget Gap
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-12/ferguson-to-increase-police-ticketing-to-close-city-s-budget-gap.html


“There are a number of things going on in 2014 and one is a revenue shortfall that we anticipate making up in 2015,” Blume said. “There’s about a million-dollar increase in public-safety fines to make up the difference.”
[...]
Government dependence on police fines is a larger issue in surrounding St. Louis County, especially among its “poor” and “small” communities, Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis Municipal League, said in a telephone interview. The poverty rate in Ferguson was 22 percent in 2012, the latest year for which data is available, compared with a national average of 15 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

“They said they weren’t going to go after poor people, so to speak, to fund their budget, but I guess that’s changed, Fischesser said. [...]
‘‘For Ferguson to respond to all of this and say that increasing ticketing was a good idea is outrageous,” Scott Sifton, a Missouri state senator who sponsored one of the pieces of legislation, said in a telephone interview.

[Lucille]

And The Winner In The "Worst Idea At The Wrong Time" Category Is...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-13/and-winner-worst-idea-wrong-time-category


Why? Because according to Bloomberg, in order to close a municipal budget gap - and keep in mind the prevailing poverty in the region has been widely attributed as one of the reason for the escalating violence on either side of the law - Ferguson plans to boost revenue from public-safety fines and tapping reserves.

According to Ferguson's finance director, Jeffrey Blume, revenue from violations, which already represents the city’s second-largest source of cash after sales taxes, are projected to rise to 15.7% of receipts in fiscal 2015, up from 11.8% currently. In 2013, fines brought in $2.2 million, or 11.8 percent of the city’s $18.62 million in annual revenue, according to budget documents.

This means that local cops will now have an even bigger, and more aggressive quota of miscellaneous, petty offenses to fill, in order to collect money from an already impoverished population, and in the process antagonize said population even further, more than likely leading to the same if not worse outcomes that caused the riots in the first place.
[...]
And so the Catch 22 of modern insolvent America emerges: while the seaboard megapolises continue to thrive on the back of the financialization of the US service economy thanks to some $300 trillion in derivatives (if only for the time being), the poorer cities in America's heartland are caught in a toxic spiral whereby poor populations are unable to pay enough sales tax to keep city funding afloat, and so cities are forced to resort to forced, and armed, Police extraction of "municipal revenues", adding widespread anger to what already is a combustible mix of poverty and resentment, and worsening it at every turn, until it finally all spontaneously combusts when popular anger explodes leading to such events as the Ferguson riots. This should also help explain the unprecedented, and stealthy, militarization of police forces across the United States in the past year.
[...]
Unfortunately, since there are countless other cities just like Ferguson and just as many police forces who just happen to be the last bastion of "municipal revenue collection", the probability of future social violence across America rises exponentially.
[...]
They will go far wider before the realization that yet another municipal US bankruptcy is inevitable. As for the fate that lies before a soon to be insolvent and very violent Ferguson, Bloomberg is politically correct: it "may risk worsening community relations with increased citations and weakening its credit standing by reducing a rainy-day fund."

A more accurate summary is that what has happened so far in the poor St. Louis suburb is only an appetizer of what is to come, not only in Ferguson itself but across America, where kicking of responsibility, accountability and simple math, has become next to impossible.