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It’s Still ‘Show Me’ the Money [themarshallproject.org]

 

Nearly four years have passed since a 28-year-old white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown on the streets of Ferguson, the working-class suburb near St. Louis. Civil unrest, a militarized police presence, and unrelenting national publicity have brought energy and organized introspection to long-festering policing and justice issues.

Ferguson may have been ground zero, but evidence of a wide range of police and judicial abuses extended broadly to suburban municipalities surrounding the city of St. Louis. Following the unrest, the Justice Department in 2015 issued a scathing report charging that the municipal court in Ferguson operated “not with the primary goal of administering justice or protecting the rights of the accused, but of maximizing revenue.” After leaving office, former United States Attorney General Eric Holder repeated that theme in a 2016 legal memorandum decrying a “Wealth-Based Pretrial Detention Scheme.” The report focused on imposition of bail in Maryland but applied to court practices around the country.

Now comes St. Louis’ high profile activism to end the imposition of so-called cash bail. Part of a national movement, the St. Louis initiative is a logical extension of local municipal court reform: both attack unjust practices that result in jailings of thousands of people, mostly poor and black.

[For more on this story by EDDIE ROTH, go to https://www.themarshallproject...ll-show-me-the-money]

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