The Ferguson Municipal Court initiated a program on Sept. 9 intended to help non-violent offenders clear their arrest warrants – an action that came after the court was recently criticized for issuing the highest number of warrants in the state relative to its size and collecting $2.6 million from court fines and fees last year.
Up until Oct. 15, residents can get their warrants for minor traffic violations “recalled” without bond charges. However, if residents try to call the court clerk’s office right now, they’ll be out of luck. The office is currently changing locations, so the phones have been down for the last few days. In an interview with the St. Louis American, Stephanie Karr, municipal attorney for the City of Ferguson, said the only way to get warrants recalled right now is to walk into the clerk’s office.
So far, the city’s only public notice about the program is the court’s order signed by Ferguson Municipal Judge Ronald Brockmeyer on Sept. 5, she said. They are “still working on” getting a flier together to post the program’s details in the local newspaper, the Ferguson Times, she said.
The program was scheduled to start on Sept. 15, but she said the court took cases early when word spread through the media. As of Monday, 63 warrants had been recalled, she said.
Brendan Roediger, an assistant professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and a supervisor at the school’s Civil Litigation Clinic, said the city and the court have not done enough to make people feel comfortable to call or stop by the clerk’s office.
“The details of the program need to be out there before people are going to risk going to court,” he said. “You are going to need some serious details. I don’t know if that information is in writing anywhere.”
Roediger is among a group of SLU law professors – along with The Arch City Defenders, a nonprofit legal group – who wrote a letter to the mayor, James Knowles III, asking him to waive all pending fines and warrants for nonviolent offenses.
Last year, the city issued 24,532 warrants – about three per household, according to a recent Arch City Defenders report. In Ferguson, 86 percent of vehicle stops involved a black motorist, though African Americans make up just 67 percent of the population; in comparison, whites comprise 29 percent of the population but just 12.7 percent of vehicle stops.
The report criticized Ferguson for the disparity in its justice system.
“Unfortunately, the current policies adopted by the municipal court system lead to the impression of the courts and municipalities as racist institutions that care much more about collecting money—generally from poor, black residents—than about dispensing justice,” the report states.
John Ammann, director of the SLU Law Legal Clinic, said the warrant recall program is a positive step.
“We had called for a complete amnesty, but this is a step in the right direction,” he said.
Karr said if residents have a warrant related to a traffic violation, they can either have their attorneys call the court for them or call themselves and the warrants will be “automatically recalled.”
If they have warrants related to more than just traffic violations, they will have to pay a $100 bond to have their warrants recalled. No one will be arrested, as long as they don’t have felonies, she said.
“If you have felony out of St. Louis County or out of the state, I can’t say to those people they won’t be arrested,” she said.
They will not arrest residents if they have charges out of other municipalities, she said. But if they have felonies, she said, “there is a possibility.”
However, in order to really make a difference, Roediger said the program must be more aggressive.
“The reality is that they have 40,000 outstanding warrants,” Roediger said. “A month-long program where they don’t share the details – it’s not going to make a dent in the 40,000 warrants.”