We have often championed the courage of the mostly young, mostly black protestors who rose up against police abuse in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown Jr., but just as impressive and consequential has been the activism of legal advocates who are using the protest movement’s momentum to reform municipal court abuses in the St. Louis region. Of course, the police and courts are intimately connected, as the Department of Justice report on Ferguson revealed an unconstitutional and unethical collusion between cops and courts to raise revenue for the city through aggressive – even competitive – ticketing.
Like the police protest movement, the court reform movement has many leaders, but the most active and influential have been the attorneys at ArchCity Defenders and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics. They issued a lengthy statement last week advancing the settlements they reached with the cities of Jennings and Velda City as models for sweeping reform of municipal courts in the St. Louis region. If it sounded like a recent Post-Dispatch editorial on this subject, it’s because these attorneys have the ear of the Post editorial board and have shaped its arguments about court reform in great detail.
“Temporary, voluntary, and unmonitored internal policies in 81 separate part-time courts with part-time judges and prosecutors will not solve the problems that plague our region,” the attorneys wrote in the statement. “Under the current piecemeal approach to reform, there is nothing to stop these municipalities from going back to old policies in the near future. Had these municipalities responded positively to the community’s demand for true amnesty in August 2014, Ferguson and other cities could have been working on meaningful reform for the last 12 months. Instead, they waited for a year of sustained protest, federal litigation, state legislation, the Department of Justice investigation, and the Ferguson Commission’s calls to action. The steps these cities are taking are half-measures and do not adequately respond to the community’s demands.”
They then spelled out what “uniform, permanent and enforceable” municipal court reform would look like – and it looks a lot like the court-enforceable agreements they reached with the cities of Jennings and Velda City: elimination of cash bail, immediate release on signature or unsecured bond on a first arrest, establishment of a meaningful inquiry into a person’s ability to pay, elimination of the payment docket, conversion of unpaid fines and fees to civil judgment, no warrants or jailing for the failure to pay, and dismissal and forgiveness of all fines and fees on cases dating prior to March 12, 2015. And, most centrally and crucially: “abolition of the currently existing municipal court system and creation of a regional court system, open full time, with professional staff.”
While these reforms may seem elementary to anyone who respects the U.S. Constitution over a municipality’s need to raise revenue (and enforce ordinance violations), these legal advocates and the protest community are up against a deeply entrenched court system governed by a myriad municipal policies, laws and elected officials. Frank Vatterott, a municipal judge chairing an internal court reform committee, has made it clear in his public comments that his committee thinks the wider public generally trusts the municipal court system and wants vigorous enforcement of ordinance violations. This is clearly a defense of the white middle-class status quo that is little impacted personally or disbursed by this predatory behavior.
Legal advocates – and the Post, at their insistent urging – have called on the Missouri Supreme Court to take the lead in instituting sweeping court reform in the region. Initial indicators from the high court are not encouraging. On September 1 the court released an interim report from its municipal court reform working group, which has met only twice by conference call. This group lists the widespread unconstitutional practices that have led legal advocates (and editorial writers) to hiss fire, but cites them mildly as “issues that may be appropriate for study.” We side with the fire hissers on this one. These are not issues appropriate for study, but well-documented, unconstitutional abuses of the public – particularly poor and black people – by the government. It should have stopped in August of last year; today is not soon enough.
