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Ferguson to Withdraw Thousands of Arrest Warrants

This is a good first step. The number of outstanding warrants for chickenshit violations was an outrage.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/201...rrest-warrants

Quote:

A municipal court judge in Ferguson, Missouri, on Monday announced sweeping changes to the city's court system, including an order to withdraw all arrest warrants issued in the city before December 31, 2014.

The announcement came ahead of a major new municipal reform law taking effect this week—Senate Bill 5, which will put a cap on court revenues from fines and fees, among other things. Stephanie Karr, municipal prosecutor for Ferguson, said close to 10,000 warrants would be affected by the change.

That's fine for "victimless" crimes, but I'm sure if any of those warrants are for violent offences the victims will feel the system let them down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catswiththum (Post 282486)

That's fine for "victimless" crimes, but I'm sure if any of those warrants are for violent offences the victims will feel the system let them down.

Kicking sand?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...rrest-warrants

Quote:

Ferguson an apartheid police state: 21,000 residents have a staggering 16,000 open arrest warrants

Quote:

ometimes in reporting a story, it's easy to use an exaggerated adjective to compare injustice today to an injustice experienced at some other difficult period of human history. Now that the full DOJ report on Ferguson has been released, though, it's increasingly clear that the sick conflation of racism, the American profit-motive, and an abusive use of the criminal justice system were used to create a police state of historic proportions in this small Missouri town.

With just 21,000 residents, Ferguson issued a staggering 32,975 arrest warrants for at least 16,000 different people. Not just parking tickets, Ferguson averaged 567 non-traffic related court cases per 1,000 residents—far and away the highest of any town in the state and more than twice as much as the town with the second highest average. To put that into perspective, the city of St. Louis had 80 non-traffic court cases per 1,000 residents and that's actually above the state average for Missouri.

Quote:

Originally Posted by catswiththum (Post 282486)

That's fine for "victimless" crimes, but I'm sure if any of those warrants are for violent offences the victims will feel the system let them down.

After years of intimidation and persecution, what's wrong with an amnesty and a clean slate. This may serve as goodwill for the future. Let's consider the abuse of the law by the law enforcement for a change.

Aren't violent offenders usually behind bars awaiting their cases to be tried or out on bail?

Quote:

Originally Posted by BeamOn (Post 282510)

After years of intimidation and persecution, what's wrong with an amnesty and a clean slate

Where's the fun in that?

Don't worry.

There'll be freshly earned warrants soon enough: those things weren't generated in a vacuum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeke (Post 282835)

Don't worry.

There'll be freshly earned warrants soon enough: those things weren't generated in a vacuum.

Correct. They were issued to generate a vacuum, and suck up the all the folk's monies....