Police, Equity And Municipal Finance: A Comparison Of St. Louis County, MO And New Jersey Traffic Enforcement
Michael Tomasino
16 March 2015
Over the last three years, St. Louis County municipalities have chronically violated the constitutional rights of indigent citizens by issuing unreasonable amounts of traffic tickets – tickets accompanied by slews of hefty fines and court costs. When indigent citizens are unable to pay the aforementioned, they are thrown in jail for extended periods of time. Civil rights groups allege that these practices, which are performed solely as a means of funding municipal endeavors, have created the functional equivalent of debtor prisons. The Rutgers Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity, or CLiME, conducted an extensive study of northern and central New Jersey municipalities to determine the extent in which the tactics deployed in St. Louis are used in the Garden State.
The August 2014 shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown has bought the questionable policing and sentencing tactics of St. Louis County municipalities to the forefront of national debate. In September the ArchCity Defenders, a group of legal professionals who provide pro bono representation to indigent citizens from the greater-St. Louis area in both criminal and civil matters, published its Municipal Courts White Paper. The White Paper summarized the results of the Defenders’ St. Louis County-wide 60-court observation, which was conducted to determine the extent of constitutional rights violations of citizens by municipalities that used traffic regulation and policing as a budget-balancing tool. Ultimately, the Defenders determined that municipalities had issued an exorbitant number of tickets and summons to indigent drivers, and it further determined that municipalities would jail these drivers upon their inabilities to pay the aforementioned infractions. On February 8, 2015, the Defenders filed a federal class action suit against the city of Ferguson on behalf of 15 plaintiffs whom have allegedly been subjected to debtor prisons as a result of their inabilities to pay traffic tickets, minor summonses, and the fees necessary to vacate arrest warrants. The suit alleges that the city failed to adequately determine if these citizens’ indigent statuses hindered their ability to pay – violating constitutional law which expressly mandates that a defendant’s poverty serve as a consideration at sentencing.
Consistent with the Defenders’ suit, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division issued its Report summarizing the Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department on March 4, 2015. The hundred-plus page document contained two overarching premises. The first of which was the Department of Justice’s undeniable finding that Ferguson’s law enforcement efforts were primarily focused on revenue generation. Second, was the Department’s finding that the Ferguson Police were in chronic violation of pattern-and-practice abuses. The Department of Justice defines “pattern or practice” violations as discriminatory actions that comprise an individual’s regular practice, opposed to isolated instances. Moreover, the Department of Justice only determines that a pattern or practice abuse exists when a “defendant has a policy of discriminating, even if the policy is not always followed.”
In response to the Defenders’ White Paper and suit, as well as the Department of Justice’s finding of pattern-and-practice abuses, the Rutgers Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity conducted its own study to determine: “To what extent do local governments in (northern and central) New Jersey employ constitutionally-violative police and prosecutorial practices as a means of funding municipal endeavors?” In particular, the CLiME, by way of comparative analysis, reviewed New Jersey traffic policies to determine if inequities similar to those perceived by the Defenders existed in the Garden State. Unlike St. Louis County, where municipalities such as Ferguson, funded more than 20% of their overall budgets by attaching hefty fines to motor vehicle violations and low-level municipal offenses, New Jersey townships opted not to fund large chunks of their budgets through traditional policing and sentencing tactics. Instead, Garden State cities employed backdoor techniques and cutting edge technology to suppress citizens in a manner that appeared less discriminatory at first glance. However, New Jersey’s ‘non-prejudiced’ practices often subsidized larger percentages of municipal budgets than did those deployed by St. Louis County.
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