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BERKELEY, Mo. — “How much will you be able to pay tonight?”
It’s Thursday night in Berkeley, Missouri, and about 75 people are seated on brown metal folding chairs in a wood-paneled room in a strip mall, near a daycare, a Hispanic community center and a tutoring center. The municipal court is in session, and an attorney filling in for the city’s part-time judge is in charge of helping the city collect money. “Pay as much as you can,” she tells one defendant, and asks another if the payment will be in full.
Media attention Thursday night was focused on the municipal court in Ferguson, where a state appeals court judge appointed by the Missouri Supreme Court effectively took over the city’s judicial system on an indefinite basis following ablistering report from the Justice Department that found the judge was in league with city officials to raise revenues. In Ferguson, newly appointed Judge Roy Richter lowered outstanding fines for defendants, as many of the city’s fines were much higher than those in other St. Louis County municipalities, and signaled he was looking to expand the city’s community service program to give defendants an alternative.
But here in Berkeley, a city of just over 9,000 residents that directly neighbors the larger city of Ferguson, municipal court continued without the hullabaloo. The term “community service” never came up.
