Of the parties in Ferguson municipal government most directly criticized in the Department of Justice Report, only city attorney Stephanie Karr remains in office. She remains on contract as a principal at Curtis, Heinz, Garrett, and O’Keefe, the Clayton firm with contracts at all levels of municipal government throughout St. Louis County.
The DOJ revealed a revenue scheme, where the police chief boasted to the city manager that his officers were bringing in good money by issuing tickets. Most notoriously, the DOJ reported Ferguson police officers competing to see who could write the most citations from a single traffic stop. Those citations were prosecuted by the city attorney in proceedings presided over by the municipal judge, whose oath compels him or her to be a neutral arbiter of justice, not a collection agent for the municipality. Court records are kept by the court clerk.
Of those players in Ferguson, Court Clerk Mary Twitty was fired because she sent one of the racist emails that the DOJ uncovered circulating on the Ferguson server. (Sgt. William Mudd, the police official who responded to Darren Wilson as his supervisor on the crime scene after Wilson killed Michael Brown Jr. – and who testified in support of Wilson before the grand jury – also was fired for sending a racist email.)
Ferguson City Manager John Shaw, Chief of Police Tom Jackson and Judge Ronald Brockmeyer all resigned in the wake of the DOJ report. All had their fingerprints on Ferguson’s “taxation by citation” revenue scheme. Only the city attorney who prosecuted most of those cases, Stephanie Karr of Curtis, Heinz, Garrett, and O’Keefe, remains. Even as Ferguson finalizes a consent decree with the DOJ, and considers appointing a new council member who will vote on that agreement, Karr remains at the table, ruling on points of law.
This seems wrong to Ground Level Support, an activist group that includes some of the most local and committed Ferguson protestors. On October 29, they sent a stinging disciplinary complaint to the Missouri Supreme Court, requesting a criminal investigation into Karr’s work in Ferguson and demanding that she be barred from work in municipal courts while the investigation is pending.
The American has thus far failed in getting Karr to respond to any allegations against her, though she tends to reply to decline, rather than ignore the paper’s requests. She certainly responded to criminal accusations against her lodged with the state’s highest court, which holds the power of suspending her license to practice law. On January 11, she sent the high court a 10-page letter with enclosures, attempting to rebut Ground Level Support – and the DOJ – in detail. She portrayed herself and her colleagues in Ferguson as victims of persecution by the protestors and DOJ.
“This complaint is yet another attempt to impugn my reputation merely by ascribing a purported universal bias infecting everyone affiliated with the City of Ferguson and everyone affiliated with police, courts or the criminal justice system in general,” she wrote.
The most amazing thing about this victim routine is it excludes the Department of Justice from “the criminal justice system in general,” because she views the DOJ as lined up with the protestors throwing rocks at her reputation. She writes that “the Ferguson Municipal Court operated within applicable law and was simply not the institution portrayed by the various groups of protestors and the DOJ.”
Ground Level Support would not be dismissed so easily. On January 26, they responded to Karr’s response by directing the court back to the DOJ report that Karr tried to dismiss in her victim’s plea. They remind the court that the Ferguson city clerk complained to the judge and police chief that the prosecutor’s fines were too low: “We need to keep up our revenue,” the clerk wrote. Between 2011 and 2015, the DOJ reported, the prosecutor – Karr – raised fine recommendations to get that revenue up to snuff.
They also reminded the court about Karr’s low regard for “constitutional stuff,” you know, that part of “the criminal justice system in general” that guarantees the rights of the accused. From the DOJ: “The Court Clerk asked what the Prosecuting Attorney does when an attorney appears in a red light camera case, and Ms. Karr responded: ‘I usually dismiss them if the attorney merely requests a recommendation. If the attorney goes off on all of the constitutional stuff, then I tell the attorney to come and argue in front of the judge – after that, his client can pay the ticket.’”
Ironically, one client who did not have to come before the judge – in this case, the judge in Hazelwood – was Brockmeyer, the judge in Ferguson. When they were working together in Ferguson, the DOJ reported, Karr fixed a red light camera ticket for Brockmeyer in Hazelwood, where Karr also was (and is) city attorney. “I would appreciate it if you would please see to it that this ticket is dismissed,” Brockmeyer wrote to Karr in October 2013. She responded the next day, “I worked on red light matters today and dismissed the ticket that you sent over.”
Defending herself to the Missouri Supreme Court, after Ground Level Support reminded the court of this fixed ticket, Karr said she dismissed the judge’s ticket because of a case that was pending in the court of appeals.
“However, that excuse was not brought up in the DOJ’s interview of Ms. Karr,” Ground Level Support reminded the court. “The DOJ reviewed over 35,000 pages of records, as well as thousands of emails and other electronic materials, and nowhere did they note that Ms. Karr was dismissing red light camera tickets pending the outcome of the court of appeals case. They did note ‘after Mr. Brockmeyer demanded the ticket be dismissed, the next day, Ms. Karr dismissed it.’”
Karr does more municipal court work than just in Ferguson and Hazelwood. In the online resume that Ground Level Support quotes to the court, she claims to represent City of Bel-Nor (city prosecutor, 2001 – present); City of Brentwood (special counsel, 2007 – present); and Municipal Parks Grant Commission (general counsel, 2005 – present), with former gigs with the City of New Melle and City of Pasadena Hills.
And that just begins to suggest the reach of her firm, Curtis, Heinz, Garrett, and O’Keefe. Its attorneys also represent the municipalities of Bellefontaine Neighbors (where citations and stops were being utilized to evaluate and promote police) and Edmundson (where the mayor included a letter with police officer paychecks reminding them that the tickets they wrote funded their pay).
In fact, Curtis, Heinz, Garrett and O’Keefe is one of the few things that unites our otherwise fragmented region, serving as an almost invisible skeleton for the status quo. On any given night in St. Louis County, its attorneys can be found in city council meetings for one of the 27 municipalities they serve as city attorneys, guiding part-time elected officials, whose terms will come and go under their watch, on critical decisions for their communities and the region. Meanwhile, in courtrooms, often just down the road, other members of the firm keep a key funding source for the status quo humming along. All told, the firm’s attorneys serve as prosecutor or judge in another dozen municipalities.
Ferguson may or may not sign a consent decree with the DOJ. The city may or may not decide to have its day in court against the feds instead. Karr may or may not remain contracted by the Ferguson to advise on its legal matters. She may or may not remain a member of the Missouri Bar to adviser her firm’s other clients as well. What is clear from the reach of Curtis, Heinz, Garrett and O’Keefe, fixing Ferguson’s problems would only be the beginning of court reform in St. Louis County.
