and I\u2019m posting it here just in case I\u2019m actually second-to-last.<\/p>\n
\u2026The officer found that Bolden had four arrest warrants in three separate jurisdictions: the towns of Florissant and Hazelwood in St. Louis County and the town of Foristell in St. Charles County. All of the warrants were for failure to appear in court for traffic violations. Bolden hadn\u2019t appeared in court because she didn\u2019t have the money. A couple of those fines were for speeding, one was for failure to wear her seatbelt and most of the rest were for what defense attorneys in the St. Louis area have come to call \u201cpoverty violations\u201d \u2014\u00a0driving with a suspended license, expired plates, expired registration and a failure to provide proof of insurance.<\/p>\n
The Florissant officer first took Bolden to the jail in that town, where Bolden posted a couple hundred dollars bond and was released at around midnight. She was next taken to Hazelwood and held at the jail there until she could post a second bond. That was another couple hundred dollars. She wasn\u2019t released from her cell there until around 5 p.m. the next day. Exhausted, stressed, and still worried about what her kids had seen, she was finally taken to the St. Charles County jail for the outstanding warrant in Foristell. Why the county jail? Because the tiny town of 500 isn\u2019t large enough to have its own holding cell, even though it does have a mayor, a board of aldermen, a municipal court and a seven-member police department. It\u2019s probably best known locally for the speed trap its police set along I-70.<\/p>\n
By the time Bolden got to St. Charles County, it had been well over 36 hours since the accident. \u201cI hadn\u2019t slept,\u201d she says. \u201cI was still in my same clothes. I was starting to lose my mind.\u201d That\u2019s when she says a police officer told her that if she couldn\u2019t post bond, they\u2019d keep her in jail until May. \u201cI just freaked out,\u201d she says. \u201cI said, \u2018What about my babies? Who is going to take care of my babies?\u2019\u201d She says the officer just shrugged.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s different inside those walls,\u201d Bolden says. \u201cThey treat you like you don\u2019t have any emotions. I know I have a heavy foot. I have kids. I have to work to support them. I\u2019ve also been taking classes. So I\u2019m late a lot. And when I\u2019m late, I speed. But I\u2019m still a human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was Bolden\u2019s second arrest. In 2009 she was arrested in the town of Bel-Ridge for a warrant on a speeding ticket. On that occasion she remained in jail for three days before Michael-John Voss, co-founder of the legal aid group ArchCity Defenders, helped get her out. This time, Voss couldn\u2019t help right away. Foristell holds municipal court only once every two weeks. She would have to stay in jail.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was crying as I explained the situation to her,\u201d Voss says. \u201cSo then I <\/i>started to cry as I explained it her. One of the really frustrating things about what\u2019s happening here is that this system is breaking good people. These are people just trying to get by, just trying to take care of their families.\u201d Voss\u2019s eyes well up as he talks about Bolden. This isn\u2019t just an attorney defending his client. It\u2019s a guy who is concerned about what\u2019s happening to another human being. Bolden is a single black woman with four kids. She has several tattoos. It\u2019s easy to see how cops might target her, or court officials might dismiss her. But Voss points out that she had already earned an associate\u2019s degree in medical assistance. And while dealing with all of the arrests and the harassment, she earned another in paralegal studies.<\/p>\n
The Foristell warrant stemmed from a speeding ticket in 2011. As mentioned before, Bolden didn\u2019t show up in court because she didn\u2019t have the money to pay it and feared they\u2019d put her jail. It\u2019s a common and unfortunate misconception among St. Louis County residents, especially those who don\u2019t have an attorney to tell them otherwise. A town can\u2019t put you in jail for lacking the money to pay a fine. But you can be jailed not appearing in court to tell the judge you can\u2019t pay \u2014 and fined again for not showing up. After twice failing to appear for the Foristell ticket, Bolden showed up, was able to get the warrant removed and set up a payment plan with the court. But she says that a few months later, she was a couple days late with her payment. She says she called to notify the clerk, who told her not to worry. Instead, the town hit her with another warrant \u2014 the same warrant for which she was jailed in March.<\/p>\n
Bolden\u2019s bond was set at $1,700. No one she knew had that kind of money. Bolden broke down; she cried, she screamed, and she swore. She was given a psychological evaluation, and then put on suicide watch. She finds that memory particularly humiliating. Bolden would remain in jail for two weeks, until Foristell\u2019s next municipal court session. She wouldn\u2019t let her children come visit her. \u201cI didn\u2019t want them to see me like that,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t want them to think it was normal, that it was okay for one of us to be in jail. I missed them so much. But I wasn\u2019t going to let them see me like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While in jail, she missed a job interview. She fell behind in her paralegal studies. When she finally got her day in court, she was told to change out of her jail jumpsuit into the same clothes she had worn for three days straight, and that had been sitting in a bag for the previous two weeks. She was brought into the courtroom to face the judge, handcuffed, in dirty clothes that had been marinated in her own filth. \u201cI was funky, I was sad, and I was mad,\u201d she says. \u201cI smelled bad. I was handcuffed. I missed my kids. I didn\u2019t feel like a person anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Voss was able to get Bolden\u2019s bond reduced to $700, but that was still too much for Bolden or her family to pay. The judge also told Voss that he wouldn\u2019t consider an indigency motion until the next session, which meant another two weeks in jail. Bolden was taken back to her cell. The next day, her mother borrowed against a life insurance policy to post her daughter\u2019s bond. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t just affect you,\u201d Bolden says. \u201cIt affects your family. Your kids. Your friends. My mother is disabled. And she had to help me out. My sister had to put her life on hold to watch my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stories like Bolden\u2019s abound across the St. Louis area. And despite the efforts of the ArchCity Defenders and legal aid clinics like those at Saint Louis University and Washington University, the vast majority of the people swept up into the St. Louis County municipal court system don\u2019t have attorneys to inform them of their rights or to negotiate with judges and prosecutors. \u2026<\/p>\n
Some of the towns in St. Louis County can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts. A majority of these fines are for traffic offenses, but they can also include fines for fare-hopping on MetroLink (St. Louis\u2019s light rail system), loud music and other noise ordinance violations, zoning violations for uncut grass or unkempt property, violations of occupancy permit restrictions, trespassing, wearing \u201csaggy pants,\u201d business license violations and vague infractions such as \u201cdisturbing the peace\u201d or \u201caffray\u201d that give police officers a great deal of discretion to look for other violations. In a white paper released last month<\/a>\u00a0(PDF), the ArchCity Defenders found a large group of people outside the courthouse in Bel-Ridge who had been fined for not subscribing to the town\u2019s only approved garbage collection service. They hadn\u2019t been fined for having trash on their property, only for not paying for the only legal method the town had designated for disposing of trash.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese aren\u2019t violent criminals,\u201d says Thomas Harvey, another of the three co-founders of ArchCity Defenders<\/a>. \u201cThese are people who make the same mistakes you or I do \u2014 speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don\u2019t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don\u2019t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can\u2019t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can\u2019t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arrest warrants are also public information. They can be accessed by potential landlords or employers. So they can prevent someone from getting a job, housing, job training, loans or financial aid. \u201cSo they just get sucked into this vortex of debt and despair,\u201d Harvey says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n