<p>More from St. Louis County municipalities. According to <a href="http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/municipal-courts-are-…; target="”_blank”">an article in Sunday's St. Louis <em>Post-Dispatch</em></a>, several of these municipalities — with the connivance of municipal court judges, local prosecutors, police officers, and lawyers — use the state's point system for traffic tickets to get more money for themselves. The result is a system of ticket fixing that takes institutional corruption to a new level. Most ticket fixing involves police officers doing secret favors for people, for a variety of reasons, often due to connections with high-level officials. A lot of people know about the ticket fixing, but they are not directly involved. Here the system is more open and more people are directly involved. It is a sign of a seriously unhealthy ethics environment in these municipalities.<br />
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Here's how it works. You are given a ticket for speeding or running a light, which means both a fine and an increase in your car insurance due to increased "points" (the point system is state law). If you hire a lawyer to represent you, she will get the charge changed to illegal parking, which carries no increase in car insurance, but has a fine twice that of the speeding ticket (and you have to pay the lawyer).<br />
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It's a win-win-win if you can afford the increased fine and lawyer's fee, as long as you don't care about fairness or the state's public safety process. If you can't afford the increased fine or don't read or get your mail, you may find yourself in trouble, because some municipal judges support the system by adding on "additional fees, such as charging defendants $50 when an arrest warrant was cleared and a fine that increased each time an individual failed to appear in court."<br />
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What I mean by reading and getting your mail points to another serious problem with this system. "At least one direct-marketing firm gets bulk ticket data [from municipal courts] and generates letters to defendants on behalf of lawyers seeking clients." In the letters, people are guaranteed deals. If you don't live at the address they have for you, as happens with many poor people, that's tough.<br />
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But the problem is less that this system is kept secret, than that the people who run it are so brazen that one law firm has a billboard that reads, “No points, no court, no hassle.” One limit on the brazenness is the fact that some municipal courts will not show their dockets to reporters.<br />
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Another sign of the brazenness of the system is how many roles the same law firms play in it. One law firm that represents those who get traffic tickets has among its lawyers judges, prosecutors, and city attorneys in more than 20 municipalities in St. Louis County. Such conflicts of interest are apparently the norm.<br />
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One could argue that there is no conflict of interest, because everyone plays a role in the system, which the municipalities have determined is best for them and their residents, even if it undermines the state's system and is unfair to those who cannot afford the extra money, who don't get the letter or understand the billboards, or who have the silly idea that the point system has a role in public safety and that lawyers should not use public office to run an illegal system of which they are the principal beneficiaries.<br />
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A former St. Louis police officer took advantage of the system, but recognized it isn't fair. He told the reporter, “If they’re not in that for the money, then explain that to me like I’m a 3-year-old.” And that's what every lawyer and official who was involved in or knew about this system should be required to do. They should be required to go before a public, televised meeting, state exactly how much they or their firm has made from the system, and explain in lay language why it was wrong to undermine the state program and to play so many roles in the municipal system. They should offer to pay a sizeable percentage of what they made from the system to the local United Way or other umbrella charity, to help their communities without helping the governments that set up this system.<br />
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The state bar association should also set up an investigation, hold a group disciplinary hearing, and change its rules to prevent this sort of conduct.<br />
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Robert Wechsler<br />
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br />
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