How Ferguson Highlights the Dangers of For-Profit Policing

shortformblog:

Slate highlights the financial dynamics that led to the insane police situation in Ferguson:

When you split a metro area into dozens of tiny local governments (St. Louis County, to be clear, doesn’t include the actual city of St. Louis, which spun off from it in the 19th century), they tend to duplicate each others’ services, which is of course extremely expensive. But raising taxes so that each tiny borough can afford its own police and fire department is a nonstarter, since wealthy residents can always just move one town over. End result: You have police departments that self-fund by handing out tickets. And thanks to the delightful racial dynamics of U.S. law enforcement, black residents are disproportionately stopped and accosted, even though police in Ferguson are less likely to find contraband when they search black drivers than when they search whites.

In other words, Ferguson’s police department financially buoys itself by treating its residents like crap.

(Source: shortformblog)