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

2010, the court has collected more revenue for Failure to Appear charges than for any other
charge. This includes $442,901 in fines for Failure to Appear violations in 2013, which
comprised 24% of the total revenue the court collected that year. While the City Council
repealed the Failure to Appear ordinance in September 2014, many people continue to owe fines
and fees stemming from that charge. And the court continues to issue arrest warrants in every
case where that charge previously would have been applied. License suspension practices are
similarly unchanged. Once issued, arrest warrants can, and frequently do, lead to arrest and time
in jail, despite the fact that the underlying offense did not result in a penalty of imprisonment. 21
Thus, while the municipal court does not generally deem the code violations that come
before it as jail-worthy, it routinely views the failure to appear in court to remit payment to the
City as jail-worthy, and commonly issues warrants to arrest individuals who have failed to make
timely payment. Similarly, while the municipal court does not have any authority to impose a
fine of over $1,000 for any offense, it is not uncommon for individuals to pay more than this
amount to the City of Ferguson—in forfeited bond payments, additional Failure to Appear
charges, and added court fees—for what may have begun as a simple code violation. In this
way, the penalties that the court imposes are driven not by public safety needs, but by financial
interests. And despite the harm imposed by these needless penalties, until recently, the City and
court did little to respond to the increasing frequency of Failure to Appear charges, and in many
respects made court practices more opaque and difficult to navigate.
1. Court Practices Impose Substantial and Unnecessary Barriers to the Challenge
or Resolution of Municipal Code Violations
It is a hallmark of due process that individuals are entitled to adequate notice of the
allegations made against them and to a meaningful opportunity to be heard. See Cole v.
Arkansas, 333 U.S. 196, 201 (1948); see also Ward v. Vill. of Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57, 58-62
(1972) (applying due process requirements to case adjudicated by municipal traffic court). As
documented below, however, Ferguson municipal court rules and procedures often fail to
provide these basic protections, imposing unnecessary barriers to resolving a citation or
summons and thus increasing the likelihood of incurring the severe penalties that result if a code
violation is not quickly resolved.
We have concerns not only about the obstacles to resolving a charge even when an
individual chooses not to contest it, but also about the trial processes that apply in the rare
occasion that a person does attempt to challenge a charge. While it is “axiomatic that a fair trial
in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process,” Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc.,
556 U.S. 868, 876 (2009), the adjudicative tribunal provided by the Ferguson municipal court
appears deficient in many respects. 22 Attempts to raise legal claims are met with retaliatory
conduct. In an August 2012 email exchange, for instance, the Court Clerk asked what the
21 As with many of the problematic court practices that we identify in this report, other municipalities in St. Louis
County also have imposed a separate Failure to Appear charge, fine, and fee for missed court appearances and
payments. Many continue to do so.
22 As discussed in Part II of this report, City officials have acknowledged several of these procedural deficiencies.
In 2012, a City Councilmember, citing specific examples, urged against reappointing Judge Brockmeyer because he
“often times does not listen to the testimony, does not review the reports or the criminal history of defendants, and
doesn’t let all the pertinent witnesses testify before rendering a verdict.”
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