U.S. Justice Department Report on the Ferguson Police Department

Rather, the court almost always imposes a monetary penalty payable to the City of Ferguson,
plus court fees. Nonetheless, as discussed in detail below, the court issues arrest warrants when
a person misses a court appearance or fails to timely pay a fine. As a result, violations that
would normally not result in a penalty of imprisonment can, and frequently do, lead to municipal
warrants, arrests, and jail time.
As the number of charges initiated by FPD has increased in recent years, the size of the
court’s docket has also increased. According to data the City reported to the Missouri State
Courts Administrator, at the end of fiscal year 2009, the municipal court had roughly 24,000
traffic cases and 28,000 non-traffic cases pending. As of October 31, 2014, both of those figures
had roughly doubled to 53,000 and 50,000 cases, respectively. In fiscal year 2009, 16,178 new
cases were filed, and 8,727 were resolved. In 2014, by contrast, 24,256 new offenses were filed,
and 10,975 offenses were resolved.
The court holds three or four sessions per month, and each session lasts no more than
three hours. It is not uncommon for as many as 500 people to appear before the court in a single
session, exceeding the court’s physical capacity and leading individuals to line up outside of
court waiting to be heard. Many people have multiple offenses pending; accordingly, the court
typically considers 1,200-1,500 offenses in a single session, and has in the past considered over
2,000 offenses during one sitting. Previously there was a cap on the number of offenses that
could be assigned to a particular docket date. Given that cap, and the significant increase in
municipal citations in recent years, a problem developed in December 2011 in which more
citations were issued than court sessions could timely accommodate. At one point court dates
were initially scheduled as far as six months after the date of the citation. To address this
problem, court staff first raised the cap to allow 1,000 offenses to be assigned to a single court
date and later eliminated the cap altogether. To handle the increasing caseload, the City
Manager also requested and secured City Council approval to fund additional court positions,
noting in January 2013 that “each month we are setting new all-time records in fines and
forfeitures,” that this was overburdening court staff, and that the funding for the additional
positions “will be more than covered by the increase in revenues.”
III.
FERGUSON LAW ENFORCEMENT EFFORTS ARE FOCUSED
ON GENERATING REVENUE
City officials have consistently set maximizing revenue as the priority for Ferguson’s law
enforcement activity. Ferguson generates a significant and increasing amount of revenue from
the enforcement of code provisions. The City has budgeted for, and achieved, significant
increases in revenue from municipal code enforcement over the last several years, and these
increases are projected to continue. Of the $11.07 million in general fund revenue the City
collected in fiscal year 2010, $1.38 million came from fines and fees collected by the court;
similarly, in fiscal year 2011, the City’s general fund revenue of $11.44 million included $1.41
million from fines and fees. In its budget for fiscal year 2012, however, the City predicted that
revenue from municipal fines and fees would increase over 30% from the previous year’s
amount to $1.92 million; the court exceeded that target, collecting $2.11 million. In its budget
for fiscal year 2013, the City budgeted for fines and fees to yield $2.11 million; the court
exceeded that target as well, collecting $2.46 million. For 2014, the City budgeted for the
municipal court to generate $2.63 million in revenue. The City has not yet made public the
actual revenue collected that year, although budget documents forecasted lower revenue than
9