Ferguson, Missouri

A sad fact I heard on the radio yesterday was that of the 15,000 residents eligible to vote, 1500 showed up at the polls in the last election.

Registering people to vote is actually a positive action that might provide people a sense of control they obviously feel they lack right now. Provide a sense of control, and the protests will end sooner.

It is probably the smartest thing people could do to begin to regain a sense of order. Of course, gassing them and making them jump through hoops to express themselves is a fine alternative.

Tanglebones wrote:

Some honesty from CNN:
https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x240qqo

That is, maybe, the single best link so far.

If you haven't already: WATCH that. It's about two minutes, and it's not directly upsetting. No violence, just a reporter talking about the situation.

This article brings up a point that I haven't heard talked about much: http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-pro...

“Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”

When a city depends on fines and court fees for necessary revenue, it both disproportionately harms the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the community, and encourages cops to constantly arrest people for the smallest matters.

Demyx wrote:

This article brings up a point that I haven't heard talked about much: http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-pro...

“Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”

When a city depends on fines and court fees for necessary revenue, it both disproportionately harms the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the community, and encourages cops to constantly arrest people for the smallest matters.

I've seen a number of articles on this, actually. It's not getting the attention it fully deserves, but it's out there.

SixteenBlue wrote:
Demyx wrote:

This article brings up a point that I haven't heard talked about much: http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-pro...

“Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”

When a city depends on fines and court fees for necessary revenue, it both disproportionately harms the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the community, and encourages cops to constantly arrest people for the smallest matters.

I've seen a number of articles on this, actually. It's not getting the attention it fully deserves, but it's out there.

Someone (Malor, Paleo, Prederick?) Posted that earlier here or in the Police State thread. I agree that it's an incredibly important point that I had never thought of, that largely fine based communities operate based on an enormously regressive financial scheme.

Yonder wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
Demyx wrote:

This article brings up a point that I haven't heard talked about much: http://www.newsweek.com/ferguson-pro...

“Despite Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court fees comprise the second largest source of revenue for the city, a total of 2,635,400,” according to the ArchCity Defenders report. And in 2013, the Ferguson Municipal Court issued 24,532 arrest warrants and 12,018 cases, “or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household.”

When a city depends on fines and court fees for necessary revenue, it both disproportionately harms the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the community, and encourages cops to constantly arrest people for the smallest matters.

I've seen a number of articles on this, actually. It's not getting the attention it fully deserves, but it's out there.

Someone (Malor, Paleo, Prederick?) Posted that earlier here or in the Police State thread. I agree that it's an incredibly important point that I had never thought of, that largely fine based communities operate based on an enormously regressive financial scheme.

I imagine it also leads to a very "us vs them" mentality and continues the cycle of racism as minorities are targeted more often.

And it might make you more likely to try to avoid an arrest (by fleeing), or it might make you more angry in the face of an arrest, if you know that whatever bullsh*t reason you're being brought in on is going to consume what few finances you have.

It's not just Ferguson, The American Police State Has Arrested a Third of Us.

What is the full impact of the past two decades of the War on Crime? The Wall Street Journal says the FBI currently has close to 80 million Americans in its criminal databases—"nearly one out of every three American adults."

The Journal's numerical overview of the outlines of the extent of America's arrest records is breathtaking. It connects the dots between an upsurge in the number of police, an increase in arrests, and the consequences of all those arrest records, which can be almost impossible to delete from permanent records, even if they did not lead to a conviction. Here are the findings of a 16 -year-long Labor Dept. survey of Americans in their 20s:

Researchers report that more than 40% of the male subjects have been arrested at least once by the age of 23. The rate was highest for blacks, at 49%, 44% for Hispanics and 38% for whites. Researchers found that nearly one in five women had been arrested at least once by the age of 23.

They further determined that 47% of those arrested weren't convicted. In more than a quarter of cases, subjects weren't even formally charged.

If you've ever failed a background check—and you've been arrested for even the most minor (or unjustified) infraction—you can console yourself with the fact that the War on Drugs and Crime and Poverty and Racism has been won, thanks to those 100,000 extra cops.

Malor wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Some honesty from CNN:
https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x240qqo

That is, maybe, the single best link so far.

If you haven't already: WATCH that. It's about two minutes, and it's not directly upsetting. No violence, just a reporter talking about the situation.

I still can't believe that came from CNN.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Malor wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

Some honesty from CNN:
https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x240qqo

That is, maybe, the single best link so far.

If you haven't already: WATCH that. It's about two minutes, and it's not directly upsetting. No violence, just a reporter talking about the situation.

I still can't believe that came from CNN.

That's sad, isn't it. The Fourth Estate has really let us down.

Yonder wrote:

Someone (Malor, Paleo, Prederick?) Posted that earlier here or in the Police State thread. I agree that it's an incredibly important point that I had never thought of, that largely fine based communities operate based on an enormously regressive financial scheme.

Ah, I must have missed it.

Demyx wrote:
Yonder wrote:

Someone (Malor, Paleo, Prederick?) Posted that earlier here or in the Police State thread. I agree that it's an incredibly important point that I had never thought of, that largely fine based communities operate based on an enormously regressive financial scheme.

Ah, I must have missed it.

It wasn't the same article, but this is what I posted in the police state thread.

-Jayhawker wrote:

I saw this posted by N'Gai Croal (@ncroal) on Twitter, and I think it starts to explain how this comes to be. I would add that I just finished my degree at UMSL, which is in North County. While it is surrounded by some poor areas, the number one issue I contended with was avoiding speed traps on the highway to school. When I saw how these towns really do rely on crime to fund their city, it explains a lot.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/18...

This exodus has left a ring of mostly middle-class suburbs around an urban core plagued by entrenched poverty. White flight from the city mostly ended in the 1980s; since then, blacks have left the inner city for suburbs such as Ferguson in the area of St. Louis County known as North County.

Ferguson’s demographics have shifted rapidly: in 1990, it was 74 percent white and 25 percent black; in 2000, 52 percent black and 45 percent white; by 2010, 67 percent black and 29 percent white.

The region’s fragmentation isn’t limited to the odd case of a city shedding its county. St. Louis County contains 90 municipalities, most with their own city hall and police force. Many rely on revenue generated from traffic tickets and related fines. According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent.

Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate.

With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were of black people — despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites.

Someone (Malor, Paleo, Prederick?) Posted that earlier here or in the Police State thread.

Wasn't me, and I missed it the first time, so I was glad to see it again.

Well, not glad, exactly, but I'm more educated. I've kind of known about this, but I hadn't realized it was such a large problem.

That's also a good article, thank you.

It's not just Ferguson, The American Police State Has Arrested a Third of Us.

Hell, I was arrested, and spent a night in jail, because my car was one or two days out of registration, and I was not aware that my license was suspended; I'd been late paying off a ticket, just forgot it, and then got a notice that my license was suspended. I immediately paid it (it was only like forty dollars), but was entirely unaware that I then needed to also go pay fees to that state's DMV. I just assumed it would be fixed automatically, and it wasn't. Ended up costing me hundreds and hundreds of dollars, even though the case was dismissed when I brought my paperwork into court. I was just a tiny bit sloppy, and got financially hammered.

The routine just.... general mistreatment, I guess, in a simple county jail was more than a little astonishing. They deliberately kept the temperature uncomfortable, for example, keeping the holding cells at something like 60 or 62 degrees, and then making sure people couldn't sleep by pulling everyone out of the cell once an hour, counting them, and putting them somewhere else. And the staff went way out of their way to be assholes, looking for any hint of disobedience.

The whole process was obviously and explicitly designed to be as degrading and humiliating as possible. Nobody should be treated like that.

edit: and it's not good for the guards, either. Treating people that way, day after day, can't be good for you.

edit edit: another example: during intake, the guard commented on the new jacket I was wearing. "Nice jacket," he said. "Steal it today?"

Part of the problem St. Louis has in dealing with this issue is that the city is independent of the county. It is basically land locked and cannot grow. When white flight took hold, it mean losing more than half of its population and tax base. At one time the county wanted to to become parti fate city, but the city said no. Once white flight devastated the city, it asked the county, which no longer wanted the problems of the city. There has been some movement once again to join the two, which would actually help everyone. But I kind of doubt it will happen.

There is a documentary a St. Louis filmaker did recently that explains this in relation to Spanish Lake, another city in North County that details this. In fact, it's topical enough that when looking for the trailer I found this story about a theater chain pulling it.

ST. LOUIS COUNTY – A local theater franchise has canceled plans to show a new documentary about race in St. Louis County.

According to Riverfront Times, Wehrenberg Theaters has decided not show the film "Spanish Lake" at local theaters when it's released this year.

The film chronicles the decline of the North St. Louis County town, "Spanish Lake."

The film's Facebook page posted the following statement:

SPANISH LAKE was planned to come back to St. Louis theaters on September 5th. However, Wehrenberg Theatres has decided to cancel the screenings due to the recent developments in Ferguson. We respect their decision and are sensitive to the tensions in the area, but we are disappointed because we believe the message of the film is more important than ever before.

NSFW because of racial language

This just passed my feed with the note, "A definite reason to riot, pillage, and seek revenge but a civilized society let's the established justice and law enforcement procure the offense"

You know, even though these cases are not remotely similar, people are taking any excuse to shake their head and throw all of the Brown issue out as "uncivilized."

http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/cri...

And this picture of throwing gang signs with the thugs is now getting passed around as proof* the black cops are all bad -

IMAGE(http://i1075.photobucket.com/albums/w440/sethpmason/10518696_275277069336623_9166044198667634785_n_zps88b778ad.jpg)

(*pictured above, two members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity showing their hand sign)

Bloo Driver wrote:

(*pictured above, two members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity showing their hand sign)

Sorry, I don't speak Muslim. I'm just going to assume that means "Thugs Stealing White Women and Jobs".

Yonder wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

(*pictured above, two members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity showing their hand sign)

Sorry, I don't speak Muslim. I'm just going to assume that means "Thugs Stealing White Women and Jobs".

And Yonder wins for dispelling my anger over how stupid it is that that photo is making the rounds like that.

IMAGE(https://s.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/cthEeHIm3qYp7tGLFVIw3w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/blogs/movietalk/obama-vulcan-jpg_160657.jpg)

Two more typical gangbangers.

Paleocon wrote:

IMAGE(https://s.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/cthEeHIm3qYp7tGLFVIw3w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/blogs/movietalk/obama-vulcan-jpg_160657.jpg)

Two more typical gangbangers.

Is that the cover of a new NWA album? Who replaced EZ?

Neelix with attitude

Bloo Driver wrote:

No joke. I mean because 1) The police at this point have shown multiple times they're willing to lie and cover up things, and 2) The store owner said he didn't report a robbery.

But please keep letting us know how we're all just spinning out of control here with nothing to actually add to the conversation.

Yeah Nomad the armchair mod positions are already filled.

Excellent. Now we just need laws guaranteeing that police video is the property of the public.

Paleocon wrote:

Excellent. Now we just need laws guaranteeing that police video is the property of the public.

That was my first thought when I saw this the other day.

Paleocon wrote:

Excellent. Now we just need laws guaranteeing that police video is the property of the public.

And that there are terribly severe penalties for police when their cameras mysterious malfunction or somehow get covered up.

Tuesday night:
KARG Argus Radio
VICE Livestream
Seems quieter than previous nights, though there are vague reports that the site of the new shooting has something happening.

The police appear to have used a cell jammer at least for a couple of minutes while pushing the crowd back for some reason. Argus went offline and moved back to Target, then got signal back. VICE came back after not too long, but their signal seemed a bit degraded when they did.