After a few years of watching Brockmeyer’s abusive courtroom behavior, one unnamed Ferguson City Council member raised concerns with City Manager John Shaw about the judge’s performance. The judge didn’t listen to testimony, the council member told Shaw. He didn’t review reports or examine the defendants’ criminal history before ruling, she added. He didn’t even allow witnesses to testify before rendering a verdict, she said. Perhaps, the council member suggested, it was time to get rid of the judge. Shaw listened, and then explained that, even though all those things might be true, there were more pressing matters.
“It goes without saying the city cannot afford to lose any efficiency in our courts, nor experience any decrease in our fines and forfeitures,” Shaw explained. Ironically, while bludgeoning Ferguson residents with fines and jailing them when they couldn’t pay, Brockmeyer was fixing traffic tickets for himself, a Ferguson police officer, and others in other courts. Helping him was Mary Ann Twitty, who would email other clerks on his behalf to have tickets quashed. Additionally, even as Brockmeyer piled debt upon debt on the poorest and financially most vulnerable, he was dodging $170,000 in unpaid taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service.
At the beginning of the judicial pipeline to extract more money from residents were the police. They were headed by Thomas Jackson, a beefy, white-haired career cop Shaw hired in 2010 as Ferguson’s police chief. Jackson had retired from the St. Louis County police after 31 years, where he had been a helicopter pilot and member of the county police department’s tactical team. In 1991, he and a fellow St. Louis County police officer won a Medal of Valor for disarming a suicidal man. If Jackson didn’t already know what his law enforcement priorities were before taking his new job, they were made crystal clear to him immediately after he was hired. Within days on the job, Jackson was informed by the city’s finance director that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year. Given that we are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall, it’s not an insignificant issue.”
The chief responded that fines would increase once the city hired more officers and that he believed he could reach the city’s projected budget of $1.5 million in fines. He considered incorporating a different shift schedule that would put more officers on the street to increase traffic enforcement. The following year, Jackson reported to Shaw that ticketing revenue for February 2011 was more than $179,000, the highest monthly total in four years. Shaw sent back his approval. “Wonderful!” he wrote. Later, Shaw and the city’s finance director recommended that Jackson implement an “I-270 traffic enforcement initiative” in order to “begin to fill the revenue pipeline.” The finance director’s email came with an attached document showing how much additional money the initiative would generate. The plan would require paying five officers overtime for highway traffic enforcement for a four-hour shift. “There is nothing to keep us from running this initiative 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or even 7 days a week,” he wrote. “Admittedly at 7 days per week, we would see diminishing returns.” Jackson’s patrol captain, Rick Henke, agreed and explained to his supervising police officers when the department initiated the program, “The plan behind this [initiative] is to produce traffic tickets, not provide easy [overtime].”
With the mission clearly defined, Ferguson’s police began implementing the city’s revenue plans. The number of tickets being issued skyrocketed from 24,000 traffic cases and 28,000 nontraffic cases in 2009 to 52,000 traffic cases and 50,000 nontraffic cases in 2014.
As captain of the Patrol Division, Henke constantly reminded his division commanders of the need to increase traffic “productivity.” In response to his prodding, the Patrol Division supervisors closely monitored their officers’ ticket writing and chastised them when they hadn’t written enough. One month after Jackson became chief, for example, a patrol supervisor criticized a sergeant because his squad only issued 25 tickets one month. He particularly derided one officer who issued “a grand total” of 11 tickets to six people over three days “devoted to traffic stops.” At one point, the same patrol supervisor wrote to his patrol lieutenants and sergeants that “monthly self-initiated activity totals [alluding to ticket writing] just came out,” and they “may want to advise [their] officers who may be interested in the open detective position, that one of the categories to be considered when deciding on the eligibility list will be self-initiated activity.”
A key factor in generating more revenue was to give out more tickets per stop. The Ferguson prosecuting attorney, Stephanie Karr, a lawyer for a private firm who also served as the city attorney, met with police officers during one session to give them a primer. For instance, she told them, “If a person is stopped for driving while intoxicated, police should make sure they also tacked on speeding, failure to maintain a single lane, no insurance, no seat belt, and a broken taillight.” Karr, who would later be cited for helping fix a traffic ticket for Brockmeyer, told the officers they needed to add more cases per stop whenever possible to make sure “that the court is maintaining the correct volume for offenses occurring within the city.” Police officers began diligently following her instructions. Officers sometimes wrote 6, 8, or, in at least one instance, 14 citations for a single stop. Some officers competed to see who could write the greatest number of tickets during one stop. To further make sure officers were “maintaining the correct volume of offenses,” municipal court clerk Mary Ann Twitty each month gave Ferguson police supervisors a list of the number of tickets issued by each officer and each squad. Police supervisors put officers on notice by posting the list inside the police station. As part of an officer’s performance evaluation, it was noted whether each of them had consistently shown “the ability to maintain an average of 28 tickets per month.”
Under pressure, police officers issued more tickets, ticketing men, women, the young, the old, and whites. They particularly targeted African-Americans, the most vulnerable of Ferguson’s residents. According to the Ferguson Police Department’s statistics, African-Americans accounted for 85 percent of all vehicle stops, 90 percent of all traffic citations, and 93 percent of arrests during those stops in a city where they comprised 67 percent of the population.
Cops were sure to hand out multiple citations per traffic stop, as per Ferguson City Attorney Stephanie Karr’s instructions. Black residents were more likely to receive them. Ferguson’s police records show that, from 2012 to 2014, African-Americans received four or more traffic citations on 73 occasions. Only twice did police issue four or more citations to anyone else.
Not all Ferguson police officers agreed with the abusive ticketing practice and the use of the municipal court as a debtors’ prison. Several officers pointed out that what the department and the courts were doing was wrong. Their arguments were drowned out by their supervisors and their fellow officers. When one commander admonished an officer for writing too many tickets, the officer asked the commander if he was telling him not to do his job. When another commander tried to discipline a different officer for overticketing, Chief Jackson halted the supervisor and told him, “No discipline for doing your job.”
As the number of charges initiated by FPD has increased in recent years, the size of the court’s docket has also grown concomitantly. In fiscal year 2009, for instance, 16,178 new cases were filed, and 8,727 were resolved. In 2014, by contrast, 24,256 new offenses were filed, and 10,975 offenses were resolved. During its weekly court sessions, on average 500 people would overfill the courtroom and spill outside the building into the courtroom parking lot. Because of the tactic of imposing numerous charges with each traffic stop, the court heard, on average, 1,200–1,500 offenses in a single four-hour evening session.
With the stops and the ticketing came the harassment. African-Americans were more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops. Blacks were more likely to be cited and arrested following a stop, regardless of why the stop was initiated. Nearly 90 percent of
the times Ferguson officers used force, it was used against African-Americans. In every dog bite incident by the police K-9 unit for which racial information was available, the person bitten was black. To drum up more money, officers began resorting to lodging even more charges. One was failure to comply, which they apparently also used for African-Americans who asked questions during a stop, whether they were walking or driving. Ninety-four percent of those “failure to comply” charges were issued to African-Americans. Fred Watson was one of them.
6.
WE CAN’T BE MADE WHOLE
Fred Watson was on top of the world in 2012. He was a young black man with a top-secret security clearance, earning six figures working in cybersecurity for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA. He was a Navy veteran. He owned his home. He had neither personal nor police blemishes on his record. Like so many African-Americans in the region, Ferguson, in its greed and callousness, snatched it all away from him. On August 1, 2012, Watson went to Ferguson’s Forestwood Park to play basketball. Growing up, Watson had often come to Ferguson to visit and hang out with relatives. So, he was as familiar with their neighborhood as he was his own in St. Louis. After five or six games, he sat in his car and cooled off. He changed into dry clothes, folded the others neatly and placed them on the back seat, and sat in his car to watch kids playing baseball.
As Watson explained in in a federal lawsuit and in interviews, from that day forward for the next five years, Ferguson police and its judicial system would strip him of the life he had built for himself and his family with a viciousness he could not imagine.
As Watson was relaxing that day, Ferguson police officer Eddie Boyd pulled into the park and nosed his cruiser in front of Watson’s car. It was the first of the month, and Boyd needed to begin writing his monthly quota of traffic citations.
Boyd was bad news, and many people in and outside the department knew it. He had been a cop in St. Louis city, where he had faced multiple internal affairs investigations for roughing up arrestees. In 2006, he pistol-whipped a 12-year-old girl. A year later, he struck another child with a gun or handcuffs and then denied it in a report. The deputy director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety sent Boyd a letter on December 20, 2007, to tell him the department had concluded a 12-month investigation of claims and was preparing to discipline him. Fearing he could be fired or lose his state certification to be a police officer, Boyd resigned and signed onto Ferguson’s department, where he fit right in.
Boyd parked his police cruiser in front of Watson’s car and then walked over to the vehicle. Watson rolled down the window to see what the officer wanted. Before Watson could say a word, Boyd suddenly shouted, “Put your hand on the steering wheel!”
A stunned Watson complied. Boyd began again.
“Do you know why I’m stopping you? Do you know why I pulled you over?”
Now Watson was really perplexed. No one had pulled him over. He had been parked there for at least 10 minutes minding his own business. The officer then demanded Watson’s driver’s license, insurance, and social security number. For a police officer to ask for his driver’s license and insurance was understandable, but why, Watson asked the officer, did he need his social security number? The officer responded that Watson might be a pedophile, for all he knew, because he was watching kids play baseball.
Watson told the officer his full name and gave him his address. He offered to provide his driver’s license, which was in the back of his car, but he refused to provide his social security number. His response set Boyd off.
“Get out of the car,” he demanded.
Watson placed his hands back on the wheel to avoid any sudden movement and asked the officer for his name and badge number.
“No, you don’t need that,” Boyd answered. “It’ll be on your ticket.”
“What ticket?” Watson asked. “I have not broken any law.”
“Well, I think your [car window] tint is too dark, and I can give you a ticket for that,” the cop shot back.
“Okay, sir, that’s fine, Watson replied. Watson felt the officer was becoming unhinged and erratic, and he began to fear for his safety. So he picked up his cell phone from the center console of the car and told Boyd he was calling 911.
“Put your fucking phone down and put your hands on the steering wheel!” Boyd shouted.
Boyd then pulled his gun from the holster and pointed it at Watson. He radioed for backup. Tensions were mounting. A few minutes earlier Watson had been relaxing in his car, watching kids play baseball. Now he was trying to sit erect with a police officer’s gun pointed at him and waiting for more police to arrive.
Watson put his hands back on the steering wheel. Boyd told him to cut the ignition and throw the keys out the window. Fearful a wrong move with his hands could get him shot, Watson refused and sat motionless, waiting for the other police officers.
After a few minutes, three more Ferguson police cars responded. They included a K-9 unit with a police dog. Boyd walked over to the K-9 officer and said, “We could let the K-9 out to sniff around his shit and tear it up.” The K-9 officer responded, “It’s your call. Whatever you want to do.” One of the officers approached Watson’s car.
“What’s the problem?” he asked Watson. “Why don’t you just do what he asked, so we don’t have to take the dogs out, search your car, and take you to jail? If you don’t, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
Watson gave the officer his name and told him what had transpired. He told the officer he would get out of the car but that the police did not have his permission to search his car.
“Okay,” the cop said.
Watson raised the car window and exited his vehicle. As he was getting out, Boyd hollered, “Get out slowly and put your hands behind your back!” While Boyd was squeezing the handcuffs on his wrist, Watson said, he pushed the door closed with his leg. He was placed in the back of Boyd’s car and then watched as the officers searched his car without his permission.
Boyd opened the car door, and the other cops stuck their heads in and looked around. Then Boyd went into the car and started rummaging through Watson’s possessions. He went through the glove box, the center console, Watson’s backpack, and the pants he had left folded on the back seat. Boyd threw Watson’s possessions around the vehicle as Watson sat helpless in the back of Boyd’s police car. Before they left the scene and before the tow truck came, Boyd went through the car again.
Nothing illegal was found. Watson wasn’t worried about police finding contraband in his car. He had led a squeaky-clean life to maintain his high-level security clearance. He was, however, concerned about the $2,000 in the center console. That was money to pay for his children’s private school.
The other officer, the one who had spoken to Watson, retrieved Watson’s cell phone from his car.
“Just be cool and do whatever the officer tells you to do and things will be okay,” he told Watson. Things definitely would not be okay.
Watson was taken to the Ferguson Police station. All he had done was sit in his car and watch a baseball game and now he was going to jail. This certainly couldn’t be how America was rewarding him for his military service. At the police station, another officer processed Watson into the jail. Watson asked the officer his name.
“Officer Hayden,” he replied immediately. Watson asked Officer Hayden for the name of the officer who was arresting him. Boyd was standing nearby.
“Don’t tell him that!” Boyd interrupted. “It will be on his tickets.”
Watson asked Officer Hayden if the badge number of the officer would also be on the ticket.
“You are not privy to that information,” Boyd interrupted again.
They took mug shots and put Watson in a cell. To get out of jail, he was ordered to pay a $700 bond. Boyd issued Watson seven tickets, as per Ferguson’s policy of writing as many tickets as possible.
1. Driving without Operator’s License in Possession, which he had on him;
2. No Insurance Card, which he also had;
3. Vision Reducing Materials Applied to Windshield or Windows, which was for a tint to the car’s windows that was legal in Florida, where the car was registered;
4. Failure to Register Vehicle, even though the car’s registration sticker was in clear view;
5. Safety and Emissions Testing—Inspection Sticker Required, which, because the car was registered in Florida, would not have been applicable in Missouri;
6. Seat Belts Required (but not for someone sitting in a parked vehicle);
7. Driving While License or Driving Privilege Revoked, though Watson wasn’t actually driving, and he was in possession of a valid license.
As a police officer, I was always discouraged from issuing summonses for charges that would not stick in court. This procedure, called “stacking,” is used most often to humiliate people when officers don’t have a good case.
Watson looked for the name and badge number of the arresting officer on the tickets. Boyd’s name was completely illegible on all of them. On five of the seven tickets, the space for his badge number was left blank, and on the other two tickets, his badge number had been written and then scratched out. So, at this point, Watson still didn’t know the name of the man who had arrested him.
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