The Ticket-Warrant Racket

Item

Sarah Hermes Griesbach. 2026. “The Ticket-Warrant Racket.”, Documenting Ferguson, accessed August 1, 2026, https://digitalexhibits.library.washu.edu/s/ferguson/item/54996

Title: The Ticket-Warrant Racket
Description: This is my god daughter. Because of my connection to her I am acutely aware of the unjust racial profiling by St. Louis County police forces. I continue to try to free my sweet god daughter's father from a litany of ridiculous warrants attached to fines no white person would ever accrue. Her father has his record checked regularly as he steps off a bus, in random police checks. He is regularly jailed because his 10 yr old ticket for being in a park after "curfew" is now valued at $4000. He loses his minimum wage jobs when Jennings ships him to St. Ann, who then deliver him to Ferguson because he owes money to each of these. The money is all owed for nothing non-crimes. He is in a completely impossible situation, a situation that stresses their whole young family. No member of their extended family has access to a car. This has taught me what it means to have a lousy transportation system that only reaches the affluent and on which black men are checked for tickets over any other passengers.

All of this is organized into the system. Only the wealthy nearly-all-white districts of St. Louis have the tax revenue to cover police, schools... The small, impoverished neighborhoods pay out the nose to be targeted, hunted down and stuffed into debtors' prisons
Date: September 22, 2014
Creator: Sarah Hermes Griesbach
Location: St. Louis, MO
Posted Date: 2014-09-22 12:05:11
Rights: See rights page
Identifier: df_8560

Sarah Hermes Griesbach. 2026. “The Ticket-Warrant Racket.”, Documenting Ferguson, accessed August 1, 2026, https://digitalexhibits.library.washu.edu/s/ferguson/item/54996