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Ferguson Police Acted as Revenue Agents, Fining Everything

9 years 11 months 2 weeks ago

The back story to the anger in Ferguson: police were acting as revenue agents, collecting fines from everything that moved.

Via Reason: Fees, fines, and petty law enforcement: Little ticky-tack violations can pile up quickly and are enough to drive even the most civic-minded citizens crazy. But they can also create an undercurrent of hostility between citizens and the government officials who are supposed to serve them. Former Reason writer Radley Balko uncovered a pattern of overzealous fee-collection in the suburbs of St. Louis county forThe Washington Post and speculated that the overbearing law enforcement helped create a pressure-cooker environment that finally exploded in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting.

"When you have towns like those in St. Louis county that get in some cases, 40 percent of their municipal revenue in fines and fees, they have chosen a very expensive way of taxing their population, one that creates maximum hassle and maximum hostility," says Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and publisher of the blog Overlawyered.

Watch the video above for Reason TV compilation of America's 3 Most Fee-Ridden Cities which include Detroit, MI, Ferguson, MO and Bell, CA.

(Continued at the link above.)