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

a person has appeared in court but been unable to resolve the citation because of the missing
information. In June 2014, for instance, a court clerk wrote to an FPD officer: “The above ticket
. . . does not have a speed in it. The guy came in and we had to send him away. Can you email
me the speed when you get time.” Separate and apart from the difficulties these omissions create
for people, the fact that the court staff routinely add the speed to tickets weeks after they are
issued raises concerns about the accuracy and reliability of officers’ assertions in official records.
We have also found evidence that in issuing citations, FPD officers frequently provide
people with incorrect information about the date and time of their assigned court session. In
November 2012, court staff emailed the two patrol lieutenants asking: “Would you please be so
kind to tell your squads to check their ct. dates and times. We are getting quite a few wrong
dates and times [on tickets].” In December 2012, a court clerk emailed an FPD officer to inform
him that while he had been putting 6:00 p.m. on his citations that month, the scheduled court
session was actually a morning session. More recently, in March 2014, an officer wrote a court
clerk because the officer had issued a citation that listed the court date as ten days later than the
actual court date assigned. Some of these emails indicate that court staff planned to send a letter
to the person who was cited. As noted below, however, such letters often are returned to the
court as undeliverable. It is thus unsurprising that, on one occasion, a City employee who works
in the building where court was held wrote the Court Clerk to tell her that “[a] few people
stopped by tonight looking for court and I referred them to you.” The email notes that one
person insisted on providing her information so the employee could “vouch for her appearance
for Night Court.” The email does not identify any other individual who showed up for court that
night, nor does it state that any steps were taken to ensure that those assigned the incorrect court
date did not have Failure to Appear charges and fines imposed, arrest warrants issued against
them, or their licenses suspended.
Even if the citation a person receives has been properly filled out, it is often unclear
whether a court appearance is required or if some other method of resolving a case is available.
Ferguson has a schedule that establishes fixed fines for a limited number of violations that do not
require court appearance. Nonetheless, this list—called the “TVB” or “Traffic Violations
Bureau” list—is incomplete and does not provide sufficient clarity regarding whether a court
appearance is mandatory. Court staff members have themselves informed us that there are
certain offenses for which they will sometimes require a court appearance and other times not,
depending on their own assessment of whether an appearance should be required in a given case.
That information, however, is not reliably communicated to the person who has been given the
citation.
Although the City of Ferguson frequently bears responsibility for giving people
misinformation about when they must appear in court, Ferguson does little to ensure that persons
who have missed a court date are properly notified of the consequences that result from an
additional missed appearance, such as arrest or losing their driver’s licenses, or that those
consequences have already been levied. If a person misses a required appearance, it is the
purported practice of court staff to send a letter that sets a new court date and informs the
defendant that missing the next appearance will result in an arrest warrant being issued. But
court staff do not even claim to send these letters before issuing warrants if an individual is on a
payment plan and misses a payment, or if a person already has an outstanding warrant on a
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