FERGUSON • A day after the Department of Justice slammed Ferguson’s police and court systems for discriminatory practices that prey on the city’s black population, there was silence from the city and officials in nearby courts were either defiant or said they hadn’t read the report.
Ferguson Judge Ronald Brockmeyer, who was criticized in the scathing report, said he welcomed a reporter to visit his court in person to “report the actual facts as to how the court operates.” But he didn’t show up to court Thursday night in Dellwood, where he is prosecutor, and otherwise declined to comment through a series of emails.
There was also no comment from Ferguson Prosecuting Attorney Stephanie Karr, who works by day for a private law firm — Curtis, Heinz, Garrett & O’Keefe — whose partners are involved in just about all aspects of the region’s municipal court operations.
Karr was cited in the report for dismissing Brockmeyer’s red light camera ticket in Hazelwood, where she also serves as prosecuting attorney.
Matt Zimmerman, Hazelwood’s city manager, said he learned of allegations about Karr fixing Brockmeyer’s ticket through the newspaper. Zimmerman said the city is investigating that and the Justice Department’s report that a court clerk there and in Ferguson worked together to fix about a dozen tickets for others. He said it is too soon to say what the outcome of that investigation might be.
The Justice Department’s 102-page report criticized Ferguson’s police and court systems for operating “not with the primary goal of administering justice or protecting the rights of the accused, but of maximizing revenue.”
It said the court — with Brockmeyer at the helm — set escalating fines and used harsh tactics to secure collections while fixing tickets for friends and family in Ferguson and elsewhere.
Civil rights investigators said it was a case study of how other municipal courts could be operating in the area and encouraged those courts to change their ways. The report said it was “clear that writing off tickets between the Ferguson court staff and the clerks of other municipal courts in the region is routine.”
According to a report in the Kansas City Star, Gov. Jay Nixon told reporters Thursday: “Your hope, when you see something this jarring, is that (Ferguson) is an outlier. But deep inside you, you know there are still challenges throughout our state.”
The Missouri Supreme Court, which governs the state’s municipal courts, “has obtained the report and is in the process of reviewing it now,” said spokeswoman Beth Riggert. “The court will give it careful consideration.”
Several prosecutors, city attorneys and judges contacted Thursday said they couldn’t comment on the report’s findings because they hadn’t read it.
Among them was Frank Vatterott, the judge in Overland who is leading a voluntary municipal judges’ committee investigating reforms.
But on favors, he noted, “unfortunately ticket-fixing goes on in every city, every state. It just does. I don’t know that St. Louis is any different.”
He said ethical issues are a matter for the two commissions that review judges’ and lawyers’ conduct.
His committee, he said, “is working on programs to be uniformly fair, offer more alternatives to fines and jail, and help to defendants, such as public defenders and legal advisers, and to give better notice to defendants to understand their alternatives.”
Paul Fox, court administrator for the St. Louis Circuit Courts, said Presiding Judge Maura McShane was too busy to speak with a reporter Thursday or Friday, and could be limited in what she could say ethically while municipal courts are the subject of lawsuits.
The municipal courts are technically supervised by the circuit court, but McShane has argued that court rules limit her ability to make changes. She did in July ask the municipal courts to consider a voluntary order about public access. Several courts weren’t allowing children inside, leaving defendants with no choice but to be saddled with additional charges for missing their court dates or leaving their children unattended.
Some court and city officials outside of Ferguson took a defiant tone Thursday.
Brian Gremaud, an alderman in Vinita Park, one of the cities where Brockmeyer works as prosecuting attorney, said the Department of Justice report “all seems a little overblown.”
“We are taking too much power away from the police and courts if we criticize what they are doing to keep us safe,” he said. “They are just doing their jobs. I don’t think our courts are strong enough.”
In Breckenridge Hills, where Brockmeyer serves as judge, councilwoman Tamara Johnson said she didn’t think her city had problems.
“I’ve never heard a bad report against our judge. We don’t have elevated court fees. We try to keep everything fair … so we don’t have our names smeared all over the place as being a bad city,” she said.
Breckenridge Hills Mayor Jack Shrewsbury said the board actually had a closed door meeting recently to discuss firing Brockmeyer for being too lenient on court fines and jail time for offenders.
Shrewsbury said he was not surprised by the Justice Department’s report. “Do I think he did anything wrong?” Shrewsbury said. “No more wrong than any other attorney out there. You can go to any judge, any prosecuting attorney. That stuff happens everywhere.”
Tim Engelmeyer, who is prosecutor in three municipalities and judge in two others, said it is unfair to lump all the courts together “with a small number of poorly run courts.”
He said in an emailed response that the “vast majority” of cities in St. Louis County do not rely on their courts to survive. That said, he added, “Whether it is in municipal court, associate circuit court, circuit court or federal court, our system largely relies on monetary fines and incarceration as permissible ways to punish someone who has committed an offense.”
Jeff Ordower, executive director of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, a grass-roots group fighting for court reform, said the Ferguson report just touched the surface of unfair practices being carried out by the region’s municipal courts.
“This is a debt collections system that the police are asked to perform on behalf of the judges,” he said.
Ordower said municipal courts here operate on a three-tiered system: If you are friends with a judge or prosecutor, you can get your ticket dismissed. If you know or can hire a lawyer, you can get your ticket changed to a nonmoving violation so that it doesn’t affect your insurance rates. If neither apply, and you can’t make court or pay your fine, “all of a sudden you are a criminal and you are jailed.”
Patricia Gillespie, 61, of Velda Village, said she has experienced police departments acting like collection agencies and believes that they use ticket quotas.
She was at Pine Lawn’s court Thursday night for a $350 ticket she received for “obstructing traffic” in November when she was dropped off her 6-year-old grandson at Barack Obama Elementary School.
Of the abuses cited in Ferguson, she said, “it’s everywhere around St Louis.”
Joel Currier of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
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