PINE LAWN, Mo. — Dozens of demonstrators briefly blocked access to a municipal court in this tiny, troubled St. Louis suburb on Thursday night, protesting a local government that relies heavily on revenue from traffic tickets and municipal code violations to survive.
The city of Pine Lawn, which sits on just over half a square mile of land about 10 minutes from Ferguson, has around 3,000 mostly black residents, nearly a third of whom live below the poverty line. Pine Lawn does not have enough of a tax base to survive without extracting hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from residents and drivers passing through the city. The number of warrants generated in 2013 alone surpasses the entire population of the city, and police that year issued seven tickets for every resident, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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“Everyone knows it’s a trap,” she said. “Even if all of your stuff is right, they’ll still pull you over, hoping you don’t have insurance. Right here in Pine Lawn, Country Club, Velda City — this how they make their money, and when you come to court you see nothing but us [African-Americans] coming out of court. That’s terrible.”
Protesters in Pine Lawn believe the city’s aggressive ticketing has a devastating impact on poor St. Louis County residents.
