![]() The judge and both prosecutors are white. Louis Post-Dispatch, blacks make up less than eight percent of the Florissant police force. In addition to moving its municipal court to a gymnasium, just last week the council voted to add a $10 fee to every ordinance violation to fund a new, larger courthouse.Īccording to the St. Town officials claimed the old courtroom was too small to accommodate all the defendants and attorneys, plus journalists, families, and observers. But in Florissant, the city council had a particularly odd response to the order. After critics like the ArchCity Defenders pointed out that this violated the Missouri Constitution, a circuit court judge ordered these towns to change their policies. Defense attorneys say some courts still haven’t gotten the message. ![]() Until recently, the Florissant court was one of many that had barred outsiders from its proceedings. I follow Wyrsch down a sidewalk that leads to a gymnasium where the town will be holding court tonight. Wyrsch and I are supposed to meet for the evening session of the Florissant Municipal Court. It’s a little after 7 pm on a sticky August evening in Florissant, Missouri, when I meet James Wyrsch, Khazaeli’s law partner, but I am at first a little confused. ![]() There’s also a widely held sentiment that the police spend far more time looking for petty offenses that produce fines than they do keeping these communities safe. ![]() To many residents, the cops and court officers are just outsiders who are paid to come to their towns and make their lives miserable. Residents of these towns feel as if their governments see them as little more than sources of revenue. In Flordell Hills, it’s 91 percent and 25 percent respectively. In Velda City, for example, blacks make up 95 percent of the town, but just 20 percent of the police. Louis County municipalities where blacks made up 10 percent or more of the population found just one town where black representation on the police force was equal or greater than the black presence in the town itself. (Disclosure: Khazaeli is also a personal friend.) “But I think Ferguson really showed just how much that can be a problem.” A recent St. “It was always apparent that police don’t usually have a lot in common with the towns where they work,” says Javad Khazaeli, whose firm Khazaeli Wyrsch represents municipal court clients pro bono. Locals say the cops and court officers often come not only from different zip codes, but from completely different cultures and lifestyles than the people whose fines and court fees fund their paychecks. They hadn’t been fined for having trash on their property, only for not paying for the only legal method the town had designated for disposing of trash. In a white paper released last month (PDF), the ArchCity Defenders found a large group of people outside the courthouse in Bel-Ridge who had been fined for not subscribing to the town’s only approved garbage collection service. Louis’s light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing “saggy pants,” business license violations and vague infractions such as “disturbing the peace” or “affray” that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations. ![]() A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. ![]()
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