FERGUSON, Mo

Aug 3: I nailed it: "What is going on in public housing in Ferguson?"

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/another-shadow-in-ferguson-as-outside-firms-buy-and-rent-out-distressed-homes/?ref=us

Another Shadow in Ferguson as Outside Firms Buy and Rent Out Distressed Homes

Ethel Walker and her daughter Tasha pay $650 a month to rent a home in Ferguson, Mo., from an investment firm 1,800 miles away in Los Angeles. A few miles from the Walkers, Corey Bryant and his mother are renting a two-bedroom home in Ferguson from the same California firm.

Certainly the whole clip tells a different story than the short CNN clip. The guy never got aggressive until the police show up.

Everyone knows you got size up the mental status…if he has indications of a mental condition then you got to speak softly at him. Maybe by retreating he would have calmed down. Certainly they could have waited a minute or two until all the rest of those cops swarmed onto the scene.  The outcome would have been different.

 Aug 18:  

Ok, so this is a white insider game. Usually in white flight the rental properties remain in control of the whites. They become house mongrels and tyrants…very powerful and rich. So with the blacks, who owns their own thei r homes and the rentals? What does the property owners of the blacks housing look like?

Usually the property mongrel or lords coalesces into a political force… they go to tax boards or the arbiters of the housing property tax boards or politicians gaining tremendous reduction in property tax rates…

How much corruption and fraud is involved in property values and tax rates?

In the 2009 economic, mortgage and housing collapse/corruptions, how did this shake out in Ferguson and St Louis???         

What is going on in public housing in Ferguson?

I bet you inadiquate police and court funding set this up?

I’ll bet you the kids knew some small crime was unenforced becuase the system including the jails was overwealmed.

Police $4,366,007 4,477,640 4,627,200 4,651,300 4,907,300
 Total4,737,743$ 4,834,244$ 4,999,700$ 5,025,700$ 5,282,900$ Fiscal

Year Ending or Ended June 30,2013 CITY OF FERGUSON, MISSOURIANNUAL OPERATING BUDGETFUNCTION: Public SafetyDIVISION: Police (40

$545,00 increase since 2011.

Divided by 3 equals 184,000 per year.

3.5% incease per year?

Crime rate shot up in 2008?

"Through the 90's Ferguson's population has grown by about 1%. It is estimated that in the first 5 years of the past decade the population of Ferguson has declined by about 4%. Since 2005 Ferguson's population has declined by about 2%."

The municipalities to the south and north of Ferguson are in much worst shape?   

Heroin is a terrible problem in the northeast…has the increase use of heroin acerbated the tension in Ferguson. It is a "white" problem in my area!

St. Louis has a heroin problem. And the problem is growing, especially among suburban youth.

As previously reported by St. Louis Public Radio, the number of deaths in Missouri caused by heroin has doubled in recent years, with 90 percent of those deaths occurring in St. Louis.

Here is my opinion of this. The Ferguson blacks get what they deserve because of their pitiful voting record and poor participation in government.

Aug 18: Well, this answered my question. It is worst than I thought. NH uses a proportion of their court fines to fund police training?

Isn't Obama pitifull!

In Ferguson, Black Town, White Power

By JEFF SMITHAUG. 17, 2014

POLITICS, wrote the political scientist Harold Lasswell in 1936, is about “who gets what, when, and how.” If you want to understand the racial power disparities we’ve seen in Ferguson, Mo., understand that it’s not only about black and white. It’s about green.

Back in 1876, the city of St. Louis made a fateful decision. Tired of providing services to the outlying areas, the city cordoned itself off, separating from St. Louis County. It’s a decision the city came to regret. Most Rust Belt cities have bled population since the 1960s, but few have been as badly damaged as St. Louis City, which since 1970 has lost almost as much of its population as Detroit.

This exodus has left a ring of mostly middle-class suburbs around an urban core plagued by entrenched poverty. White flight from the city mostly ended in the 1980s; since then, blacks have left the inner city for suburbs such as Ferguson in the area of St. Louis County known as North County.

Ferguson’s demographics have shifted rapidly: in 1990, it was 74 percent white and 25 percent black; in 2000, 52 percent black and 45 percent white; by 2010, 67 percent black and 29 percent white.

The region’s fragmentation isn’t limited to the odd case of a city shedding its county. St. Louis County contains 90 municipalities, most with their own city hall and police force. Many rely on revenue generated from traffic tickets and related fines. According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent.

Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate.

With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were of black people — despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites.

By contrast, consider the city: After decades of methodically building political power, blacks in St. Louis City elected a black mayor in 1993 and black aldermen or alderwomen in nearly half the city’s wards, and hold two of three seats on the powerful Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which must approve all city contracts. Well-established churches, Democratic ward organizations and other civic institutions mobilize voters in black wards. But because blacks have reached the suburbs in significant numbers only over the past 15 years or so, fewer suburban black communities have deeply ingrained civic organizations.

That helps explain why majority-black Ferguson has a virtually all-white power structure: a white mayor; a school board with six white members and one Hispanic, which recently suspended a highly regarded young black superintendent who then resigned; a City Council with just one black member; and a 6 percent black police force.

Many North County towns — and inner-ring suburbs nationally — resemble Ferguson. Longtime white residents have consolidated power, continuing to dominate the City Councils and school boards despite sweeping demographic change. They have retained control of patronage jobs and municipal contracts awarded to allies.

The North County Labor Club, whose overwhelmingly white constituent unions (plumbers, pipe fitters, electrical workers, sprinkler fitters) have benefited from these arrangements, operates a potent voter-turnout operation that backs white candidates over black upstarts. The more municipal contracts an organization receives, the more generously it can fund re-election campaigns. Construction, waste and other long-term contracts with private firms have traditionally excluded blacks from the ownership side and, usually, the work force as well.

But there’s a potential solution that could help Ferguson reinvest in itself and also help African-Americans compete for a bigger share of the pie: consolidation with surrounding municipalities, many of which face similar challenges. The St. Louis region has seen some preliminary support for the idea, with resistance concentrated in smaller political units whose leaders are loath to surrender control.

Consolidation would help strapped North County communities avoid using such a high percentage of their resources for expensive public safety overhead, such as fire trucks. It could also empower the black citizens of Ferguson. Blacks incrementally gained power in St. Louis City in part because its size facilitates broader coalitions and alliances. Another benefit of consolidation is the increased political talent pool. Many leaders just aren’t interested in running a tiny municipality.

In shrinking cities, politics is often a nasty, zero-sum game. But consolidation could create economies of scale, increase borrowing capacity to expand economic opportunity, reduce economic pressures that inflame racial tension, and smash up the old boys’ network that has long ruled much of North County.

When the state patrol and the national television cameras leave Ferguson, its residents will still be talking about how they can move forward. And they may be ready to expand the conversation so that it’s not just about black and white, but green.

Jeff Smith is an assistant professor of urban policy at the New School and a former Missouri state senator from St. Louis.