Friday, August 22, 2014

Donald Sterling's Girlfriend vs. Donald Sterling's Rentals. Ferguson's Cops vs. Ferguson's System.

Economic predation can lead to bad things.

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...the City Council chamber also serves as home to the incredibly busy and extremely profitable Ferguson municipal court.
A report issued just last week by the nonprofit lawyer’s group ArchCity Defenders notes that in the court’s 36 three-hour sessions in 2013, it handled 12,108 cases and 24,532 warrants. That is an average of 1.5 cases and three warrants per Ferguson household. Fines and court fees for the year in this city of just 21,000 people totaled $2,635,400.



The sum made the municipal court the city’s second-biggest source of revenue.

...“For example, a Ferguson court employee reported 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.”

...The clients felt sure they were being targeted because they were black and poor, and told the lawyers tales of unfair treatment by everybody from the cops to the bailiffs to the judges.
“I’ll be real honest, I didn’t believe them,” Harvey says.

...Impoverished defendants were frequently ordered to pay fines that were triple their monthly income. Some ended up with no income at all as they sat in jail for weeks, awaiting a hearing.

Source.

3 comments:

  1. BINGO! Everything else is conversation...,

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  2. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Divide.html?id=y_XRngEACAAJ

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  3. I find it impressive they manage to handle a case every 34 seconds. Who says government isn't efficient?

    John I always like Taibbi, I'll check it out.

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