Revenue agents are out of control.
'Twenty-two percent of Ferguson residents live below the poverty line, and 21.7 percent receive food stamps. The unemployment rate in the town is 14.3 percent, or more than double that of St. Louis County and Missouri as a whole.
“Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”
Exacerbating the problem, the report says, are "a number of operational procedures that make it even more difficult for defendants to navigate the courts." A Ferguson court employee reported, for example, that “the bench routinely starts hearing cases 30 minutes before the appointed time and then locks the doors to the building as early as five minutes after the official hour, a practice that could easily lead a defendant arriving even slightly late to receive an additional charge for failure to appear.”'
I shouldn’t be surprised that local governments still practice that sort of blatant corruption. It seems like something you’d expect only in a Third World country, but it probably goes on all over the United States.
“lead a defendant arriving even slightly late to receive an additional charge for failure to appear.”
I can’t for the life of me imagine being late to a court date. It’s not a good idea for any situation.
Did you like the part where the cop could turn a yellow light into a red light with the switch of a button....and then issue tickets for running a red light?
Such an abuse of power, and then cops wonder why the public doesn’t trust them.