{"id":7443,"date":"2015-03-06T12:50:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T17:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myparkingsignblog.com\/blog\/?p=7443"},"modified":"2026-02-11T01:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:56:09","slug":"ferguson-traffic-citations-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/ferguson-traffic-citations-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferguson, traffic citations, and racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s official: Ferguson, Missouri is making money off of racially biased traffic citations. The U.S. Department of Justice this week finished its civil rights investigation<\/a> into the city’s police department and municipal court system, discovering the city’s police department used traffic enforcement to “systematically discriminate against minorities,” as AutoBlog<\/a> reports. Police officer prejudice and crippling traffic court fees are two major factors in the city\u2019s ongoing bias struggles.<\/p>\n

\"Ferguson<\/a>

The disparate impact of uneven traffic citation procedures in America’s most controversial police department is at the heart of the Department of Justice’s case. Image from World Can’t Wait<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

The DOJ found \u201ca community that was deeply polarized, and where deep distrust and hostility often characterized interactions between police and area residents,\u201d wrote Attorney General Eric Holder. It also found that police officers in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis where teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot last summer, exhibited a persistent pattern of racial bias, disproportionately stopping minority drivers–and fining them.<\/p>\n

“Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violated the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them,” said Holder. The constant fines and fees associated with these traffic stops also add up: when impoverished drivers can\u2019t afford to pay them, or afford to miss work in order to show up in court, their criminal records, jobs, and economic situations are all affected.<\/p>\n

Black residents account for 63% of Ferguson’s 21,000-citizen population, yet account for 85% of those stopped by the police. \u201cIt can be difficult to derive much meaning from that particular comparison, simply because driving is transitory in nature; drivers stopped in Ferguson don’t necessarily live there,\u201d reports AutoBlog. \u201cBut once drivers were stopped, black drivers faced disproportionately harsh treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, black drivers were given 90% of Ferguson’s police-issued traffic citations, and black pedestrians received 95% of jaywalking citations.Black drivers were more likely to receive more than one citation during a single traffic stop, with black drivers receiving four-plus citations 73 times during the three-year timeframe studied, while non-black drivers received four or more citations only twice over that time period. And, from 2012 to 2014, black drivers were more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during traffic stops, although black drivers were 26% less likely to be found possessing \u201ccontraband.”<\/p>\n

Ferguson has made a profit off of these traffic violations. The city brought in $1.3 million in traffic offense fines in 2010, which accounted for over 12% of the city’s revenue. This year, the city’s budget projects over $3 million, or around 23% of the total revenue, from that same source. Poor and black residents are largely covering the costs. “Despite their poverty, defendants are ordered to pay fines that are frequently triple their monthly income,” a white paper<\/a> from legal nonprofit ArchCity Defenders<\/a> explains, referencing three municipal courts, including Ferguson’s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese aren\u2019t violent criminals,\u201d Thomas Harvey, a co-founder of ArchCity Defenders, tells the Washington Post<\/a> of the drivers being targeted. \u201cThese are people who make the same mistakes you or I do\u2014speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don\u2019t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don\u2019t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can\u2019t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can\u2019t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

As David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies police behavior told AutoBlog, \u201cWhat Ferguson and other towns and cities have done is allow these practices to become alternative sources of funding as other funding is cut,” Harris said. “All you’re doing is shifting the cost of the system onto the people who can least afford to pay it. You’re making people miserable, and crimping their opportunities to make something of themselves, all in service of funding a system that should be funded by people as a whole.”<\/p>\n

Check out the Washington Post\u2019s extensive coverage<\/a> to learn more about how Ferguson and other municipalities in Missouri are raking in revenue with biased traffic stop tactics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s official: Ferguson, Missouri is making money off of racially biased traffic citations. The U.S. Department of Justice this week finished its civil rights investigation into the city’s police department and municipal court system, discovering the city’s police department used traffic enforcement to “systematically discriminate against minorities,” as AutoBlog reports. Police officer prejudice and crippling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,9],"tags":[859,989,990,861,991,988],"class_list":["post-7443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-municipal","category-regulations","tag-civil-and-political-rights","tag-community-oriented-policing-services","tag-eric-holder","tag-ferguson","tag-traffic-citations","tag-united-states-department-of-justice"],"yoast_head":"\nFerguson, traffic citations, and racism - MyParkingSign Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ferguson, Missouri has been under fire for racist policing, and traffic citations are no exception.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/ferguson-traffic-citations-racism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ferguson, traffic citations, and racism - MyParkingSign Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ferguson, Missouri has been under fire for racist policing, and traffic citations are no exception.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/ferguson-traffic-citations-racism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"MyParkingSign Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parkingsigns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-03-06T17:50:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-02-11T06:56:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.myparkingsign.com/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ferguson-Missouri.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"334\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Katy B. 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