19%
The percentage of Ferguson's general budget that was paid for by revenue from fines and court fees in the 2012 fiscal year. It was forecast to account for an even larger share of revenues (21 percent) in the 2013 fiscal year, which ended June 30 --
making it that year's second-largest source of revenue.
Slate's Jordan Weissman writes that the importance of these dollars has led to a system that has encouraged “for-profit policing,” which itself has fed racial tensions in the region:
When you split a metro area into dozens of tiny local governments (St. Louis County, to be clear, doesn’t include the actual city of St. Louis, which spun off from it in the 19th century), they tend to duplicate each others’ services, which is of course extremely expensive. But raising taxes so that each tiny borough can afford its own police and fire department is a nonstarter, since wealthy residents can always just move one town over. End result: You have police departments that self-fund by handing out tickets. And thanks to the delightful racial dynamics of U.S. law enforcement, black residents are disproportionately stopped and accosted, even though police in Ferguson are less likely to find contraband when they search black drivers than when they search whites.
$99 million
The budget of the St. Louis County Police Department for 2014.
This number doesn't include the value of the Pentagon's 1033 grants, which since 1997 have flooded local police departments with $4.3 billion in gear, including surplus military-grade equipment at wholesale prices. In 2013, the program sent $449 million of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. St. Louis County received 12 assault rifles, 6 pistols, 3 helicopters and 2 night vision pieces, according to data obtained by the New York Times. (You can find out what exactly your local authorities got from the Pentagon here).