The Problem Is Bigger Than Ferguson
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
MARCH 12, 2015
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The Justice Department’s exposé of the bigoted law enforcement practices at play in Ferguson, Mo., has rightly led to an exodus of officials from the town government. In the week since the report was made public, the police chief, the city manager and the municipal court judge have all stepped down, and the city’s court has been placed under state supervision.
The situation took a tragic turn early Thursday morning when two police officers were shot and wounded during a demonstration. Police officials should not use the shootings as an excuse to clamp down on legal, peaceful demonstrations. That would only inflame tensions, making the climate worse.
The housecleaning among the political leadership in Ferguson is a necessary step. But the illegal and discriminatory measures uncovered by the Justice Department are not limited to that troubled municipality. Indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that Ferguson is not even the worst civil rights offender in St. Louis County and that adjacent towns are also systematically targeting poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops to rake in fines, criminalizing entire communities in the process.
St. Louis County has some 90 municipalities, some of which get 40 percent or more of their revenue from traffic fines and fees from petty violations. Drivers can pass through several towns in just a few miles on a single road. Those detained in one town are often dragged through the courts or jails of other communities. At the moment, civil rights lawyers are suing nearly a dozen towns either for illegally jailing people who are too poor to pay fines or for assessing fines and fees that lawyers allege are illegal to begin with.
An especially striking class action suit has recently been filed against the city of Jennings, which shares a border with Ferguson. It charges the city with violating the Constitution by jailing indigent defendants because they are unable to pay the fines associated with minor violations.
Instead of being allowed to make affordable payment arrangements, the complaint says, these impoverished plaintiffs were “threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement at the mercy of local officials until their frightened family members could produce enough cash to buy their freedom or until city jail officials decided, days or weeks later, to let them out for free.”
Instead of being allowed to make affordable payment arrangements, the complaint says, these impoverished plaintiffs were “threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement at the mercy of local officials until their frightened family members could produce enough cash to buy their freedom or until city jail officials decided, days or weeks later, to let them out for free.”
The plaintiffs say they have been held in filthy cells smeared with mucus, blood and feces and sometimes kept in the same dirty clothing for weeks. In each of the last two years, the complaint says, “inmates have committed suicide in the Jennings jail after being confined there solely because they did not have enough money to buy their freedom.” Lawyers allege that one plaintiff, a grandmother, was illegally held in the Jennings jail at least 19 times. She fears that she could be arrested at any time and hauled back in.
Ferguson’s perverted system of justice is not unique in the county. The Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor, Vanita Gupta, made that point last week when she said that “Ferguson is one dot in the state, and there are many municipalities in the region engaged in the same practices a mile away.”
She added that “it would be a mistake for any of those neighboring jurisdictions to fold up their hands. They should absolutely take note of this report.” The Justice Department may need to sue other towns with bad records and join some of the pending lawsuits to make this point.
As for Ferguson, the police department has clearly broken the trust of the city it is supposed to serve.
One way to solve that problem is to dissolve the department and hand the policing function over to the county itself. But cleaning up that one town won’t necessarily help its residents if they continue to be ensnared in the deplorable justice systems operating elsewhere in St. Louis County.
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