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    Inside St. Louis County’s Predatory Night Courts

    'It’s Racist As Hell': Inside St. Louis County’s Predatory Night Courts

    ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MISSOURI — In 2004, Sean Bailey recalls, he was driving through the streets of St. Louis County en route to a party, when he saw a familiar black-and-white car out of the corner of his eye. He reached for his phone to warn the friend he was following to slow down, but it was too late; the cop blared his siren and pulled up behind him. Bailey, who had a warrant stemming from a failure to appear in court for unpaid traffic tickets, felt a familiar pang of anxiety. He knew exactly what was going to happen next.

    “I was like, I’m going to get into this little orange jumpsuit and sit in this cold cell for a couple of days here,” the bespectacled St. Louis, Missouri native recalls, lighting a cigarette and blowing out a thin ribbon of smoke.

    The officer ran Bailey’s name and discovered he had a warrant. Bailey was arrested and sent to jail in Florissant, a municipality in northern St. Louis County bordering Ferguson. When Bailey stepped inside his cell, he was greeted with a gust of cold air. It was chilly outside — maybe 20 degrees, he speculates — “and they had the AC blasting.” The interior was grimy, and “there were a lot of guys in there, beating on the cells and calling for [help] and nobody was coming.”

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    After standing in line for a few minutes we shuffle into a building that doesn’t look like a traditional courthouse. In Florissant, court is located in a massive gym; it used to be in an actual courtroom, but the room was small enough that anyone who wasn’t on the docket was barred from entering. Until June, when the presiding judge of the St. Louis County Circuit Court demanded that municipal courts open their doors to the public, this was common practice, the Dispatch reported. Some courts told defendants who showed up with their kids that children weren’t allowed in the building.

    After the judge’s order, Florissant moved its court to a gym, which accomplished the goal of allowing everyone inside the courtroom, but makes it impossible to hear the court’s proceedings: the room is huge and the judge has a penchant for muttering. The court now seems to be straddling the line between “open” and “closed.” You can go inside, but you can’t hear anything that’s going on. [More/source]
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    Last edited by allodial; 09-06-15 at 04:20 AM.
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