Maybe this should be submitted instead of the linked article? (March 4, 2015)
Not that this detracts from the shock. Even if it's mostly warrants of people passing through the town, that is horrifying.
It takes a dim view of the warrants though:
The large number of warrants issued by the court, by any count, is due exclusively to the fact that the court uses arrest warrants and the threat of arrest as its primary tool for collecting outstanding fines for municipal code violations. With extremely limited exceptions, every warrant issued by the Ferguson municipal court was issued because: 1) a person missed consecutive court appearances, or 2) a person missed a single required fine payment as part of a payment plan. Under current court policy, the court issues a warrant in every case where either of those circumstances arises — regardless of the severity of the code violation that the case involves. Indeed, the court rarely issues a warrant for any other purpose. FPD does not request arrest or any other kind of warrants from the Ferguson municipal court ; in fact, FPD officers told us that they have been instructed not to file warrant applications with the municipal court because the court does not have the capacity to consider them.
Searching through the report I can't find any information to support the statistic they give. Specifically:
According to the court’s own figures, as of December 2014, over 16,000 people had outstanding arrest warrants that had been issued by the court. In fiscal year 2013 alone, the court issued warrants to approximately 9,007 people. Many of those individuals had warrants issued on multiple charges, as the 9,007 warrants applied to 32,975 different offenses.
No where in the body of this statement does it specify how many of the people to whom warrant's were issued are residents. The other link aside from the report in the article is: http://www.npr.org/2014/08/25/343143937/in-ferguson-court-fi...
Which states quote:
In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson — a city of 21,135 people — issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations.
Note that the report corrects the 32,975 statistic to 9,007 warrants - where as the former number is the count of criminal charges. Furthermore no where in the NPR article does it state how many of those warrants issued were for Ferguson residents.
Combined with conclusions such as:
The DOJ report shows not just a racist criminal justice system, but one in which the very act of being alive has been made a crime, and in which nearly every resident is wanted by the law at every moment of every day.
I'm inclined to call it shoddy journalism.
Must make it easier to get people to not vote... (I know, link goes to an old story, but it happens every presidential election)
I do have to wonder how representative Fergusin's leadership is of its electorate.
