Thank you-it isn’t original-a similar thing has happened in a couple of the tourist-trap rural towns with less than 1000 or so people in this part of the state in the last few years over disagreements with the citizens.
There were no ethnic/racial overtones to any of it-while there are a few families of other ethnic/racial ancestry here, most of the population in this area is primarily Caucasian and pretty evenly divided ethnically between Latino and Anglo/WASP. The main complaint was that the cops harassed tourists to get money from fines of all kinds, which hurts the tourist business-a big deal-and also complaints against cops for doing the same thing to local people to get money, resulting in several persons targeted winning big bucks lawsuits against the town/county-most unwise.
In one case, the cops went to the courthouse and quit, and in another a town council defunded the PD, eliminating it. The policing duties went either to the county sheriff or to a town marshal who was chosen. In both cases, it has worked very, very well-no more lawsuits, complaints of harassment, lost business revenue, etc-and no increase in crime...
If it works out here where frontier justice is still practiced sometimes, it might work for Ferguson, too...
Thank you for your reply and additional information.