A recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that described the way that the small St. Louis County municipality of Pagedale was condemning inhabited, livable houses and levying fines for petty housing code violations. A subsequent editorial  drew an explicit line between this practice and the over-reliance on revenue generated by traffic violations which was condemned in a recent Department of Justice report. In both cases, poorer citizens bear the brunt of the abuse of municipal power.

With my sincere apologies to those good people who have really tried to bring the lessons of Ferguson home and act upon them, a particular aspect of the misdeeds described seemed emblematic of how many in the St. Louis region have reacted to the issues that have risen in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown and the subsequent protests. This passage among others in the article struck me as jaw-dropping:

At a recent demolition hearing, Mayor Mary Louis Carter told one homeowner after another where they needed to focus their work if they wanted to keep their property: “The first emphasis should be the exterior,” she said repeatedly. One house needed new plumbing, electrical work, a new roof and foundation. Do the outside work first, Carter instructed the homeowner’s lawyer, “it’s a long time before he’s going to be able to use lights or plumbing.”

The mayor explained: “We want to bring our property values up and make our neighborhood look nice.”

Fix the outside and we don’t need to worry about what is on the inside. The folks who live in the houses can deal with the lack of plumbing as long as we don’t have to see or hear about it – and God forbid, as long as it can be kept from anyone looking to buy a house in the neighborhood.

Isn’t this emphasis on keeping up appearances what lies behind the bellyaching of those folks who, beginning a few days after Michael Brown’s death, began moaning about how all this negative publicity would “hurt” Ferguson and the St. Louis region in general? I can’t help but think it’s funny how I didn’t hear too much about any of these concerned citizens going out of their way to deal with issues of race and abuse of police power before the protesters who were the genesis of Black Lives Matter made a little noise. Maybe if anybody had been paying attention before, we might never have had had to deal with front page “Ferguson” on the national – and international – stage.

And isn’t it possible that it is genteel annoyance that our plumbing problems are out in the open for all to see that animates the desire to bring charges against the reporters who witnessed and told the world about the inept response to the Ferguson situation? According to Think Progress:

St. Louis County police are suddenly levying an onslaught of charges against journalists who covered the Ferguson protests last year, accusing them of minor offenses days before the statute of limitations is up. This week alone, three journalists have been charged for interfering with on-duty officers – a full year after their arrests. The recent developments follow an ongoing trend of criminalizing journalists for doing their jobs.

Two of the reporters possibly face $1000 fines and up to a year in jail for “interfering with officers.” Their crime?:

On a separate occasion, several officers – many of whom were armed with assault weapons – entered the restaurant and ordered patrons to leave. Journalists, including Lowery and Reilly, were told they could stay, but the officers later returned and told them they had to leave. Both were arrested and detained for not leaving fast enough, and were released without charges hours later.

As Martin Baron, Executive Editor of the Washington Post, which employs one of the Reporters, Wes Lowery, noted, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/us/arrested-in-ferguson-2014-washington-post-reporter-wesley-lowery-is-charged.html?_r=0 he “should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority.”

Let’s see. Abuse of police authority? Wasn’t that the problem to begin with? Only this time it doesn’t have anything to do with us getting our metaphorical linen all dirty, but about punishing and/or impeding folks who expose our dirty linen. Because if nobody knows we soiled our underclothes, doesn’t that mean we’re as bright and shining clean as a new penny?

The post The Ferguson dilemma: When keeping up appearances is not enough appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As many people around the country have recently learned, if you want a fair shake, don’t get ensnared in the legal system of Ferguson, Missouri. The recent DOJ report laid bare not just the institutional racism of the Ferguson Police Department, as well as that municipality’s “revenue-by- cop” scheme for financing city services; it also documented the unfair practices of its municipal court.

This afternoon, the Missouri Supreme Court weighed in, calling for the immediate transfer of all Ferguson municipal court cases to St. Louis County.

That move is a serious rebuke to Ferguson, where—as anyone caught in the Ferguson judicial vortex can tell you—warrants, traffic fines, and financial penalties for failure-to-appear routinely pile on top of one another and often result in what is, in effect, debtor’s prison.

The Missouri Supreme Court described its action as “.intended to help restore public trust and confidence in the Ferguson municipal court division.”

Collection by cop
You’ve probably already read about many of the abuses. The New York Times described some of them this way:

The [Ferguson] revenue-generating enterprise described in the [DOJ] report begins with the police, who, under pressure to “fill the revenue pipeline,” compete with one another to see how many citations they can issue in a single traffic stop. Those cited are then summoned before a court to face fines that city officials boast are among the highest in the region, with hundreds of dollars levied for such violations as “peace disturbance,” “failure to comply” and “manner of walking.” For all three violations, more than nine out of 10 of those cited were black.

There goes the judge

There has also been a lot of publicity around here about the man who serves as Ferguson’s municipal judge. Judge Ronald J. Brockmeyer is reported to owe as much as $170,000 in tax liens against his home—at the same time that he has been sentencing others—whose fines exceed their means—to jail time for being in arrears.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

Brockmeyer was criticized in the DOJ report for acting as a revenue-generator for the court and the city, helping to bring in millions through “creative” use of fines and fees, while dismissing tickets for himself and friends. The report also rapped him for instilling fear in traffic defendants, even jailing one man for 10 days because the man refused to answer questions in court.

After the MO Supreme Court action, Brockmeyer immediately resigned his position in Ferguson, but he will continue as municipal court judge in neighboring Breckenridge Hills and as municipal court prosecutor in nearby Dellwood, Vinita Park and Florissant—where he can presumably continue to do similar damage. Brockmeyer reportedly was paid $20,000 a year for his duties in Ferguson.

It’s not just Ferguson

Arch City Defenders, a non-profit that provides pro bono legal services for people with cases in municipal courts in the St. Louis, recently released a report that reveals similar judicial abuses in other municipalities in North St. Louis County. Examples, in small communities near Ferguson, include:

Statistics for Bel-Ridge, Missouri
•Bel-Ridge’s 2014 budget estimates that it will collect $450,000 in fine revenue ($385,000 in 2013, a $65,000 increase)
Or, an average, an increase of about $450 per Bel-Ridge household—making municipal court fines the largest single source of revenue in the budget

Statistics for Beverly Hills, Missouri
•Population: 574 (92.68% African-American)
•Size of town: .09 square miles
•Police force: 14, which also provides services to neighboring Velda Village Hills
•Cases filed in 2013: 3,250 traffic tickets, 1,085 ordinance violations
•$221,164.63 in court fines and fees
•26.37% of Revenue from Fines and Fees

Statistics for Calverton Park, Missouri
•Population: 1,293 (42.23% African-American)
•Size of town: .41 square miles
•Police force: 7
•Cases filed in 2013: 5,039 traffic tickets, 2,436 ordinance violations
•$484,066.56 in court fines and fees
•66.32% of general revenue from fines and fees

The list goes on. You can read the complete Arch City report here.

People who, for so many years, have been victimized by the unjust practices of these municipalities, are not surprised by these numbers. For the rest of us, it’s time to wake up and push harder for change.

The post MO Supreme Court closes Ferguson’s kangaroo court: Who’s next? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Ferguson has consequences—and some of them may be positive.

The tragedy of Michael Brown’s death in August 2014 has been a consciousness-raiser with ramifications far beyond the boundaries of one small municipality called Ferguson. Demonstrators have used the event to highlight a range of unfair laws and policies in Ferguson—and in many other cities. And in what appear to be glimmers of awakening toward a more just system, some cities, including Ferguson, have been altering their policies. Here are some examples:

St. Louis City bans the box
For job-seekers with criminal records, employment applications can be a huge roadblock, because many include a check-box that indicates a previous felony conviction. It’s a disqualifier—even for people who have completed their sentences, finished parole and are “off paper.” And knowing that the box is waiting to trap them, many people feel that the job market is a hopeless place for them, and simply don’t bother to apply.

In October 2014, St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay apparently saw the light and issued an order to ban the box from employment applications for city government jobs.

Philadelphia recently enacted a similar policy. Under Philadelphia’s new rules, “Ban the Box” provisions:

-Require employers to remove questions about criminal convictions from their job applications.
-Prevent employers from asking about criminal convictions during your first job interview.
-Protect job applicants from having criminal background checks done before the first job interview.
-Prohibit employers from firing you or making any other employment decision based on a closed case that did not result in a criminal conviction

Ferguson changes its failure-to-appear policy

The Ferguson Municipal Court no longer will levy a separate charge for “failure-to-appear,” a charge that adds what many call an undue, extra burden on defendants. Also, the Ferguson City Council is considering capping fine income at 15 percent of the city’s total revenue.

Municipal court reforms

As reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis County recently proposed that the County Municipal Court do away with a $25 fee levied for infractions of county ordinances, in an effort to alleviate “the hardships that can result from large fines and costs for even minor infractions of the law.”

A newly formed St. Louis County Municipal Court Improvement Committee, a group of six municipal judges, lawyers and court administrators, will look at ways to reduce reliance on fines and bench warrants for revenue. That’s something critics say is a root cause of tension between people running the municipalities and people living in them.

Warrant amnesties
For a limited time, coinciding with the winter holiday season, 65 of St. Louis County’s 90 municipalities are allowing defendants with outstanding warrants to go to the municipal court in question during regular business hours and have all their warrants dismissed, if they post a $100 bond. The payment will not dismiss the underlying citations. Participants will be given a new court date and must show up to avoid getting another warrant.

The City of St. Louis has a similar program, instituted as a direct results of problems brought to light as a result of unrest in Ferguson. Under this plan, the City’s municipal court will automatically clear outstanding warrants for nonviolent traffic violations and allow offenders to reset the court dates without a fee. so long as they act by year’s end. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls this approach “the most progressive warrant forgiveness program in the region”. Under the program, about 220,000 outstanding warrants issued before Oct. 1, 2014 in the city will automatically be forgiven.

Creating a “warrant-free zone”

University City, an inner-ring St. Louis suburb, has eliminated a practice that discouraged citizens from attending city council meetings. The City Council has made itself a “warrant-free zone,” meaning that University City citizens with outstanding warrants for non-criminal charges will no longer be subject to arrest if they attend council meetings.

Councilman Stephen Kraft, one of the two sponsors, called the resolution symbolic and said in a statement that residents “can come and talk to your government without fear of being arrested.”

Of course, these changes do not answer all questions or address the much deeper, institutionalized problems that make life unduly difficult, especially for low-income and African-American residents of these communities.It’s not going to be enough for cities and courts to make small-bore changes, congratulate themselves on their new-found enlightenment, and stop there. Many citizens and civic groups are calling for many more sweeping, systemic reforms–and not just in Ferguson, Mo. But baby steps count, too.

The post After Ferguson: Small reforms, big potential appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The power to indict or not indict Darren Wilson—the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—is completely in the hands of St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch. I think this because, in 2007, I served on the St. Louis County grand jury overseen by McCulloch himself.

My time on the St. Louis County grand jury is probably very much like that of current jurors. Here’s how it worked when I was there, and what I learned that is influencing how I look at the case against Darren Wilson:

The summer session of the St. Louis grand jury met every Wednesday for 16 weeks, starting in May. The jury consisted of 12 people. We started as members of the general jury pool. None of us was selected for a regular jury, but at the end of the day, a group of about 50 of us were asked if we would consider volunteering for the grand jury.

A judge explained to us that the St. Louis County grand jury is not an investigative body. [Those kinds of grand juries are usually convened separately, he said.] Rather, the jury we would be on would serve as an alternative to preliminary hearings, to take on part of the load otherwise handled by judges in courtrooms. We had to be available for all [with some excusable absences] of the 16 sessions, from 8:30 am to 5 p.m. The judge then asked for volunteers, and he briefly interviewed each of us. About a week later, I received notice that I had been empaneled.

On our first day, after meeting the judge who would supervise our work [but not be present in the room], McCulloch came into the grand jury room and briefed us on the importance of our work as grand jurors. He explained that our job was to listen to witnesses and to decide—not whether the accused were guilty or innocent—but whether the prosecutor had presented enough evidence to merit a trial, where a trial jury would rule on guilt or innocence. If there was enough evidence, we would vote for a bill of indictment. Neither the prosecutor nor the witnesses [nor a judge] were in the room when we deliberated and voted. After we’d reached our decision, the jury foreman signaled the prosecutor—by pressing a button—to come back in and get the result.

On some Wednesdays, we heard as many as 50 cases. That is not a typo. In many instances, there was one witness—the arresting officer—and the presentation took 10 minutes or less. Defense witnesses and those accused of crimes were not invited. And in most cases—I’d say 95 percent of them—it took just a few minutes of discussion for us to conclude [via voice vote] that an indictment was justified. Occasionally we turned down the indictment. In one case, when we voted against indictment, the prosecutor came back into the room and said that he pretty much knew that’s what we’d do, because even he thought the evidence was flimsy.

And that is why I’m pretty sure that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch can make the Darren Wilson grand jury go whichever way he wants.

Remember: the vast majority of witnesses that McCulloch’s prosecuting team brings to the grand jury are police officers. He relies on them to make his cases. They are his allies. It seems clear that he has to be reluctant to piss them off by indicting a police officer for what Darren Wilson purportedly did. [By the way, unlike some people, I don’t believe that the fact that McCulloch’s father was a cop–killed in the line of duty–presents a conflict of interest. But I do wonder if there’s a question of loyalty here, because of McCulloch’s reliance on cops as witnesses in other cases.]

McCulloch has options: He can present the case against Wilson any way he wants, to get the outcome he wants. Depending on who testifies, and what evidence is brought in, he can make it look like excessive force by Wilson, or he can make it look like a justified shooting in the line of duty. He can present the case in all its nuanced details, or he can streamline it. He can bring in eyewitnesses—or not. He can show the infamous convenience-store videotape—or not. The length and tone of the case is entirely up to him. [We hear, in news reports that McCullough is saying that the case will take more than one day to present. If that’s true, it could mean that he is preparing a thorough and even-handed case–which is what citizens should expect.]

The grand jury can ask as many questions as it wants, and I’m sure they will, if they are doing their jobs as directed. But, as it has been said many times, a good prosecuting attorney can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. However, that assertion also implies the inverse, as well: If the prosecutor doesn’t want an indictment, he or she can make that happen, too.

So, I’ll be watching closely. If there is no indictment in the Darren Wilson case, it could be because the prosecutor himself didn’t want it and presented the weakest possible case. [We will never know, as St. Louis County grand jury deliberations are secret—you’re not supposed to talk about them outside of the jury room. If there is a subsequent trial, the case presented by the prosecution will be indicative of what transpire in the grand jury hearing, as prosecutors often practice their court cases on the grand jury.]

Personally, I’m hoping for the indictment, so that there is a public trial, where a jury can decide what should happen—or not happen—to Darren Wilson.

The post Inside the grand jury: Prosecutor in Michael Brown case holds all the cards appeared first on Occasional Planet.