Ferguson-area cities “terrorizing” poor through modern-day debtors’ prisons: Federal lawsuit
We can't "hold people in jail because they're too poor to pay a debt," says lawyer
By Andrea Germanos -
August 11, 2016
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A new federal class-action lawsuit accuses 13 St. Louis-area municipalities of “terrorizing” poor, primarily African-American people through a “deliberate and coordinated conspiracy” by “creating a modern-day police state and debtors’ prison scheme that has no place in American society.”
The non-profit ArchCity Defenders and the law firm Arnold & Porter filed the suit Tuesday, the same day as demonstrators were marking the two-year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by a Ferguson, Mo. police officer.
The U.S. Department of Justice released a report last year into Ferguson’s police practices, concluding that the department engaged in systematic targeting of African-American citizens, and “consistently set maximizing revenue as the priority for Ferguson’s law enforcement activity.”
https://www.intellihub.com/ferguson-area-cities-terrorizing-poor-through-modern-day-debtors-prisons-federal-lawsuit/
