Stopped, Ticketed, Fined: The Pitfalls of Driving While Black in Ferguson, Missouri

FERGUSON, Mo. — They avoid main roads. They maintain good posture. Sometimes they choose not to drive at all.

For years, some black drivers in the St. Louis area have taken those precautions to avoid getting pulled over by the police. And yet it has not seemed to prevent them from getting stopped, ticketed and fined at higher rates than people of other races.

After a police officer killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown five years ago this month in Ferguson, protests there rocked the nation, leading to a public outcry over race and policing. People were outraged to learn that municipalities throughout St. Louis County had been issuing traffic tickets to finance city services — and jailing drivers who could not afford to pay — with black residents bearing the brunt of those policies.

Five years later, black drivers continue to be stopped at much higher rates than white drivers, a disparity that has actually grown in Ferguson despite changes — including a new state law — that have greatly reduced the number of traffic tickets, fines and arrest warrants issued.

Statewide, black motorists were nearly twice as likely as other motorists to be stopped, based on their share of the driving-age population, according to the Missouri attorney general’s annual report on traffic stops. White drivers were stopped 6% less than would be expected. In Ferguson, the disparity in traffic stops of black drivers has increased by 5 percentage points since 2013, while it has dropped by 11 percentage points for white drivers.

“I can’t say things have gotten better,” said Blake Strode, executive director of ArchCity Defenders, a legal advocacy organization that has fought ticketing practices. “I understand the status quo to be one of structural racism, poverty, over investment in the carceral system, and policing and prosecution. That is as real today in 2019 as it was five years ago in 2014.”

Jason Armstrong, who became Ferguson’s police chief last month after serving at a department in suburban Atlanta, said the data might not tell the entire story, noting that the disparities grew in Ferguson even as the department has transformed from being largely white to more than half black. Since Brown’s death, the number of black officers in the Ferguson department has skyrocketed to 21 from 4.

“At the end of the day, how are people being treated,” Armstrong said. “Does the officer treat you like you are a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a husband, a wife? Do they treat you professionally? That’s the biggest part of it to me.”

While traffic courts in the region may be less crowded than they were several years ago, the makeup of drivers looks largely the same.

During a traffic court session in Ferguson in mid-July, the line stretched out the door. Although the city is two-thirds black, almost everyone appearing before the judge that day was black. African Americans also accounted for the overwhelming majority of drivers appearing in traffic courts recently in the nearby towns of Florissant and St. Ann — both of which have predominantly white populations. In Ferguson, the dreary routine of traffic court played out over 2 1/2 hours — 90 minutes longer than was scheduled. People filed through a metal detector and had to store their cellphones in manila envelopes to take them into the courtroom.

As a black man driving a 2000 Lexus LS 400 with tinted windows, De’Shaun Bunch said he was a prime target. He said he had been pulled over about eight times in different municipalities in St. Louis County over the course of two years and was in court in Ferguson recently for tickets he had received for speeding and driving without insurance.

“I’m a black man and I’m driving a nice car,” he said. “It’s the same. They were doing it before, they’re still doing it now. It ain’t changed since Mike Brown died.”

Bunch, who works in a shipping and receiving warehouse, said he had skipped previous court dates. He finally decided to show up after getting stopped about a month earlier. There had been a warrant for his arrest because of the delinquent tickets. In the past, he very likely would have been thrown in jail. But Bunch said the officer simply took him to a nearby police station, booked and released him, and told him to go to court.

While that was a better outcome than having to spend time behind bars, Bunch said the underlying racial dynamics of driving while black in St. Louis remained the same as they have for years. When he is pulled over, officers sometimes do not cite a violation for stopping him, he said.

Law enforcement officials in Missouri have argued that black drivers were pulled over at higher rates because they accounted for most of the drivers passing through particular communities. But this was the first year that the state’s report also analyzed instances in which officers pulled people over in the communities in which they resided. Black drivers were still pulled over at higher rates in many places, including Ferguson.

“The overwhelming majority of the pull-overs that I’ve made in my career, I didn’t know who the person was that was driving the car,” Armstrong said. “Do I believe that there are some officers in this country that may see somebody that they don’t like and pull them over for that? Absolutely. But I think that’s more of the anomaly.”

In an effort to curb excessive ticketing, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 5 with broad bipartisan support in 2015., The law capped the percentage of revenue that municipalities were allowed to earn from their courts at 20%, among other things.

The results have been stark. Municipal courts statewide collected a total of $60.5 million in fines last year, a 45% decrease from 2013. The number of warrants issued statewide fell by 18% to 545,484 over the same period.

One of the champions of the bill in the senate was Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is now the state’s attorney general. In his new role, Schmitt has attempted to go after municipalities in court. Last month, he reached a settlement with the city of Diamond, in southwestern Missouri, to end its traffic ticket quota. Yet these changes were not enough to prevent Kylie Malveaux from choosing to give up driving altogether out of fear that she might amass more tickets and fines on top of what she already owed.

She left traffic court in Florissant last month with $230 worth of unpaid fines. On top of that, she was in danger of getting her license suspended because of several other tickets and had hopes of hiring a lawyer to help her avoid that outcome.

Malveaux, 24, now leaves most of the driving to her partner, Akil Poynter, 25, who was also in Florissant traffic court last month for driving with a suspended license and a broken taillight. Both of them needed to return on a later date to settle their tickets. They seemed to take the hassle in stride.

“It’s something you get used to,” Poynter said.

“It’s terrible that you’re used to it,” Malveaux added. “At the end of the day, you can’t tell a cop who to pull over and who not to pull over. They have the freedom to do whatever.”