Why blacks can't breathe
 

Because many of them have someone on their back.......

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/1...-folks-breathe

And golly gee, what did I say about legislation coming down the pike, and lawsuits getting ready to bubble to the surface over the star courts? Surprise, surprise, surprise.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...0acf144ef.html

Here is the pOST article..



Lawyers from St. Louis University, ArchCity Defenders and a law firm filed lawsuits earlier this week against seven St. Louis County municipalities, alleging they charge illegal fees in their municipal courts.

The defendants are the cities of Beverly Hills, Ferguson, Fenton, Jennings, Pine Lawn, Wellston and Velda City.

The lawsuits, filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court, seek class-action status. The suits ask the circuit court to decide whether the municipal court fees violate state law. They ask for an accounting of who paid fees and how much was paid, and demand reimbursement to defendants who were forced to pay fees to avoid jail time or warrants.

In the case against Pine Lawn, Danette White alleges a warrant was issued for her arrest about Nov. 21, 2013, and a bail of $250 was set. She claims she paid that bail plus a $35 warrant recall fee about Aug. 2.

The suit claims the fee was collected illegally.

Brian Krueger, Pine Lawn’s city administrator, said he investigated White’s claim on Tuesday and couldn’t find any evidence in municipal court records that White had paid a warrant recall fee.

“I’d like to see the receipt,” he said. If she could produce one, he said, he would have cause to look deeper at his city’s municipal court.

Paul Rost, attorney for Fenton, declined to comment until he had read the lawsuit. Stephanie Karr, lawyer for Ferguson, and Donnell Smith, lawyer for Velda City, said they had not seen the lawsuit. Representatives of the other municipalities could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuits were filed by the same lawyers from St. Louis University and the nonprofit group ArchCity Defenders who have been criticizing municipal courts in St. Louis County for months, as well as lawyers with Campbell Law LLC in St. Louis.

A report by ArchCity Defenders on Aug. 14 blasted the area’s municipal court system for jailing clients who can’t afford to pay fines, for mistreating them in court and for blocking outsiders from seeing what goes on.

ArchCity Defenders criticized municipal courts in three cities — Bel-Ridge, Florissant and Ferguson — calling them “chronic offenders” and “prime examples of how these practices violate fundamental rights of the poor, undermine public confidence in the judicial system and create inefficiencies.”

Abuses by municipal courts have attracted greater scrutiny since the fatal shooting Aug. 9 of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. The shooting set off protests that included demands to improve operations in police departments and municipal courts. The lawsuits come less than a week before a Ferguson Commission meeting scheduled for Monday to discuss predatory municipal court practices.

In October, Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich said that his office would audit at least 10 municipal courts from across the state over the next year — including Ferguson, Bella Villa, Pine Lawn and St. Ann — to make sure they are “about justice and not revenue.”

He said much of his focus would be on a state law capping traffic ticket income at 30 percent of a municipality’s general operating revenue and requiring anything more to be sent to the state for education.

Brendan Roediger, a law professor with St. Louis University and one of the plaintiff lawyers, said the lawsuits were part of a strategy to bring wider reforms to the municipal court system.

“Our goal is to stop cities from filling their coffers with illegal fees and from continuing to conduct for-profit policing,” Roediger said.

In the Ferguson lawsuit, plaintiff Darrick Reed claimed he paid the city a $50 fee to cancel an arrest warrant when he appeared in court to answer to the charge. According to his complaint, the fee is illegal in the state of Missouri and is charged “as a means of profiting from the issuance of traffic tickets and other violations.”

The practice is “detrimental to the community as a whole, as it increases incarceration rates, reduces faith in the court system, creates distrust by citizens of the court, and results in financial harm to the community,” the suit claims.

The suits also include a claim under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act, the state’s consumer fraud statute, alleging the cities attempted to deceive defendants into paying the fees.

The lawyers said the seven suits were just the beginning; they expect to file lawsuits against other cities in St. Louis County.

WTF are you guys talking about? I heard Dr. Ben Carson on Fox saying it's a level playing field now.

Sheltiedave, does Ferguson and other areas around St. Louis County have red-light traffic cameras?
If so how much is the fee? I got hit up for $500 bucks for rolling on right here in Riverside County (Riverside CA).

Thanks Dave. That paywall is a bitch to get around at the St. Louis Post/Dispatch,

We have some automated cameras, but reaction has been mixed. The smaller municipalities don't like them, because they only get a portion of the fees, rather than 100%. And when you have to pay $250 for the bench warrant, $50 for the no show, and $150 for the ticket, it becomes unaffordable.

And the cops sit on the roads and just camp on the people who have tickets. When I mentioned that people had a hard time holding jobs because the cops liked to fuck with them, it is the truth. If you do the math, when you get lucky in Ferguson and find a full time, $8/hr job, you first have to pay the now $450 ticket fine before you can use the @$%$@ car. I walked with a friend who happens to be a cop, and the first 51 cars we ran in the Canfield complex had outstanding tickets from throughout St. Louis.

Being poor, being in certain municipalities, and having a target on your back is not a walk in the park, and knowing you will get pulled over every week you drive your car makes for a good deal of stress and belligerence. For many of them, if you can't find a job you can walk to, or on a bus route, forget about it.

That is a real horror story.

No wonder so many people hate the Cops.

Traffic cameras are all over the place around here too. But it ain't the cops who make these fucked up laws. Politicians will do all sorts of crazy shit to avoid raising taxes. Instead they come down on traffic offenders, impose hospitality taxes on hotel and rental car customers, and establish user fees for things that were once free.

Tom, it is only the tip of the iceberg. The Ferguson cops had the police station and the Quick Trip covered. The governor had the malls, libraries, and gas stations and post offices covered. No one covered the businesses, so when the riot and fires broke out, like I predicted - Mark that down as a FACT, Finn - it naturally occurred at the businesses. No law enforcement there, at all.

And the Governor still will not return the call from the Ferguson mayor asking for National Guard response from the night of the riot.

The Ferguson PD acts like a leech on the poorest people in Ferguson, and then is a no show when it comes to protecting the people and businesses they make a living not serving. They will soon be toast, as they currently are going through some interesting Federal interviews. There is a reason Brown's buddy did not have his interview transcripts released, and some of the other loose ends are now being chased down by really serious law enforcement types.