Small town invents new source of funds: overwhelm black homeowners with fines, avg 2 per household

A public interest law firm is suing in federal court in St. Louis to stop Pagedale from incessantly ticketing residents for things such as high grass, mismatched curtains and sagging pants — a lawsuit spurred by a Post-Dispatch article that highlighted the city’s practices.

The civil rights suit, filed on Wednesday by the Institute for Justice’s office in Washington state, is seeking class action status. The lead plaintiffs are Valarie Whitner and Vincent Blount, who were featured in the newspaper article after facing an onslaught of violation notices from the city for minor housing code offenses at their home on St. Charles Rock Road.

When Whitner and Blount couldn’t keep up with the repairs and fines, Pagedale officials threatened to demolish their home of nearly 20 years, while acknowledging it presented no public safety threat and was merely a nuisance.

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Thotably, Pagedale has focused its enforcement efforts on the types of code violations that are not regulated by the municipal court reform measure passed to rein in abusive ticketing. The newspaper found that the city had issued 2,255 citations for these types of nontraffic offenses last year — or nearly two per household. That’s a nearly 500 percent increase from five years ago, according to an analysis of state court data.

Residents can be ticketed for a long list of “violations” that anywhere else are considered life’s small pleasures — barbecuing in the front yard, for example, or having a beer within 150 feet of the grill.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/lawsuit-filed-against-pagedale-for-ticketing-high-grass-and-other/article_35fd1f5b-5a9b-5b21-97d3-dbaa927294d7.html

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http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/lawsuit-filed-against-pagedale-for-ticketing-high-grass-and-other/article_35fd1f5b-5a9b-5b21-97d3-dbaa927294d7.html

last year, the lawsuit said, 2,255 non-traffic tickets were doled out under the municipal code that authorizes citations for such things as having mismatched curtains, walking on the left side of a crosswalk, wearing saggy pants, having holes in window screens and having a barbecue in front of a house, according to the lawsuit.

"This case demonstrates that property rights are fundamentally civil rights," said William Mauer, the law firm's senior attorney and the plantiffs' lead counsel. "Pagedale treats its residents like walking, talking ATMs, making withdrawals by issuing tickets for ridiculous things that no city has a right to dictate."
An Associated Press message seeking comment from Pagedale Mayor Mary Louise Carter was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit comes four months after Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed into law a measure that limits cities' ability to profit from traffic tickets and court fines. That marked the first significant step taken by state lawmakers to address concerns raised after the August 2014 police shooting in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was black, was unarmed when he was shot to death by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson during a confrontation in a street.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Federal-lawsuit-questions-St-Louis-suburb-s-fines-6610885.php