In the St. Louis area, the municipal courts would order the suspension of drivers' licenses as a way to coerce people to pay fines. Even when the courts had no legal authority to do so. The courts would sent out letters to people, threatening them with license suspensions, even when the court clerks knew that the courts didn't have the power to order a suspension.
If there is one thing that the Ferguson riots have exposed, it is how rotten the municipal court system is in Missouri, especially in St. Louis County.* Pissant little municipalities abound in the county, surviving on ticket revenue. The state legislature is cracking down on it, finally.
The defenders of the system have been screeching that all they are doing is enforcing the law. Which is no defense, for if that's all they cared out, then it shouldn't matter to them who gets to keep the money from the fines. Their cops are free to write tickets, but the pisspot little cities shouldn't be reaping a harvest as a result.
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* I have little doubt that the system is equally rotten, if not more so, in most other states.
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