One of the things that angers our inner cities is the unfairness and lack of
Due Process in a Fee-Driven State.
The Justice Department recently reported on criminal law enforcement and the use of courts as a revenue-generation machine in Ferguson, Missouri. We have a widespread problem of policing for profit in light of two classic Supreme Court cases on due process, and two very recent Court of Appeals cases that focus specifically on the due process implications of a justice system dependent for funding on those people it "serves." When everyone participating in the justice system is aware that the system itself depends on sufficient revenue from fines, fees, and forfeitures, that very dependency is a conflict of interest sufficient to violate due process rights. The modern judicial system – and, indeed, the entire law enforcement apparatus – depends upon extracting money from a steady stream of individuals who appear before it creating an untenable vested interest in charging and collecting and resulting in a fundamentally unfair system. There are a number of solutions and there is Supreme Court support for this approach in a surprising place.
White, Penny and Reynolds, Glenn Harlan, Due Process in a Fee-Driven State (September 14, 2020). Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=
Yeah, I saw that the other day but I didn't have time to read it.
I agree with the concept though, it makes sense. Judges and courts side with cops mostly because the traffic the cops drag into the court system supports them and feeds their families.
I'm on pg 10 of 25. Court Precedent is pretty clear, you can't judge a situation where you have a stake in the outcome. It's a very good paper. I'm just stumped on the section on Ferguson. Ferguson started funding the city on citations and tickets, doubling the number of citations and fine revenue over a about a 2 year period and the Black community took the brunt. While the "Little Giant" clearly attacked the officer, and the officer was fully justified in stopping him with lethal force, the anger in the black community at the police was already at a boiling point, but, the driving force behind the unjust policy was the City Council.
They promoted and applauded the officers that stepped up their ticket writing and gave less desirable assignments to officers that didn't produce enough tickets and citations. When the City demanded more revenue, the police demanded more officers, and the City gave it to them. While these citations and fines doubled, serious crime didn't double, the entire police department was heavily dedicated to "revenue production". And this is the part that stopped me in my tracks. They actually had officer training to teach them how to add multiple citations to single events, and for their citation counts, each citation is counted. So, an open container is one. An open container, failure to wear seat-belt and missing tail light is 3 citations, and they trained them to increase their citations per ticket. Now here is the real catcher, in Ferguson, you can be cited for "Manner of Walking". Apparently, if there is a sidewalk, you are supposed to walk on the sidewalk. If there is not a sidewalk, you can walk in the street, but you must be a close to the curb as possible, if you fail to do so, you are cited for "manner of walking". So, when tickets ramped up, 96% of the increase in "manner of walking" tickets were citations in the black community.
Then they trained the police to cite them for 3 different violations on each encounter: failure to use the sidewalk/manner of walking/ and impeding traffic.
Well, a few trips to the store, and you get hit with the red lights, then hit with three citations, and pretty soon the whole black community is starting to seethe, then Michael Brown robs the liquor store, the cop stopped him for "manner of walking", Michael Brown charged and tried to get his gun and ended up dead, but the town was already primed to explode by all this unjust fee collection on backs of the Black community.
Anyway, good read, this part about Ferguson was news to me and was just a minor part of the paper used as an example.
