"how St. Louis Police robbed my family"
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/08/how-st-louis-police-robbed-my-family/On a late spring evening eight years ago, police pulled over my mother’s 1997 Oldsmobile Aurora, in the suburb of St. Ann, Missouri, as she raced to pick up a relative from St. Louis’s Lambert International Airport. “Do you know why I stopped you?” the officer asked. “No I don’t,” my mother answered. The police charged her with speeding, but she did not receive a mere ticket. Instead, an officer ran my mother’s name and told her that since she had failed to appear in court for driving without a license, there was a six-year-old warrant out for her arrest. “I just started crying. I couldn’t believe it.” The police arrested my mother and hauled her off to St. Louis County Jail, where authorities eventually allowed her one phone call, which she placed to my stepfather. He said, shaking his head, “I was surprised because I knew she didn’t have no warrants.”
St. Ann is one of the more notorious cities in the county when it comes to traffic violations and, in my mother’s case, the city’s finest, quite simply, fucked up. As it was, my mother had no warrant; the police confused her with another woman who shared her name — sans the middle initial.
She would go on to spend two nights in jail, pay $1,000 in fines that she did not owe, and plead guilty to the crimes of the other woman. She paid a devastating price, financially and emotionally, for the racist and classist policing described in last month’s Justice Department report on the tumult in Missouri. The 102-page document details the physical and economic terror inflicted upon the poor and black residents of Ferguson, Missouri. The report echoed the torrent of criticism that residents have long lodged at the city’s overseers. But, as my mother’s experience helps illustrate, the injustices cataloged by the investigation are not confined to one tiny Midwestern suburb. Ferguson is emblematic of how municipalities in the St. Louis region, and across the country, operate as carceral, mob-like states that view and treat poor black people as cash cows.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Grew up in Velda Village. The barber shop eventually became city hall and the court house. The police force (1 car and I think 2 guys) were really just a radar trap on Lucas & Hunt. 
Howdy Neighbor!
the expansion of Old Town Donuts! A true Florissant tradition and the best donuts 
on the planet.
but, i don't get to Maplewood much. Drive past it commuting, but then I drive past Old Town every day doing that as well.
Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2015, 04:36 PM - Edit history (1)
Nice try at hijacking a thread, but what you desperately want people to believe and what that post is implying has nothing to do with each other.
And of course you know that.
EDIT - nice sneaky edit there PB! Yes anyone can go to that link and see you are lying about what my post in this thread says and what you want people to believe you are guessing what my brain is thinking at the time!
Seriously, how desperate are you to try and pretend you can read my mind in this thread? Shameful, but hey it is YOU so SOP.
We're just a hop, skip and jump away from one another!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]
