In the city of Ferguson, nearly everyone is a wanted criminal.
That may seem like hyperbole, but it is a literal fact. In Ferguson -- a city with a population of 21,000 -- 16,000 people have outstanding arrest warrants, meaning that they are currently actively wanted by the police. In other words, if you were to take four people at random, the Ferguson police would consider three of them fugitives.
That statistic should be truly shocking. Yet in the wake of the Department of Justice's withering report on the city's policing practices, it has gone almost entirely unmentioned. News reports and analysis have focused on the racism discovered in departmental emails, and the gangsterish financial "shakedown" methods deployed against African Americans. In doing so, they have missed the full picture of Ferguson's operation, which reveals a totalizing police regime beyond any of Kafka's ghastliest nightmares.
The Department of Justice's 102-page report is a rich source of damning facts about the Ferguson criminal justice system. But tucked halfway in and passed over quickly is a truly revelatory set of figures: the arrest warrant data for the Ferguson Municipal Court. Full story...
Related posts:
That may seem like hyperbole, but it is a literal fact. In Ferguson -- a city with a population of 21,000 -- 16,000 people have outstanding arrest warrants, meaning that they are currently actively wanted by the police. In other words, if you were to take four people at random, the Ferguson police would consider three of them fugitives.
That statistic should be truly shocking. Yet in the wake of the Department of Justice's withering report on the city's policing practices, it has gone almost entirely unmentioned. News reports and analysis have focused on the racism discovered in departmental emails, and the gangsterish financial "shakedown" methods deployed against African Americans. In doing so, they have missed the full picture of Ferguson's operation, which reveals a totalizing police regime beyond any of Kafka's ghastliest nightmares.
The Department of Justice's 102-page report is a rich source of damning facts about the Ferguson criminal justice system. But tucked halfway in and passed over quickly is a truly revelatory set of figures: the arrest warrant data for the Ferguson Municipal Court. Full story...
Related posts:
- The Ferguson Report shows exactly what living in a police state is like...
- Ferguson Spillover: Public anger spreads across US following...
- How reality TV is teaching us to accept the American police state...
- Ferguson shows how the police can kill and get away with it...
- John Oliver: Ferguson, MO and police militarization...
- Democracy in the United States is a ‘hollow myth’
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