Brickbat: Pay Up
El Paso County, Colorado, officials have agreed to pay $190,000 to 184 people held in jail even though judges ordered them released without bond. The people were held because they could not pay a $55 fee charged by the county to fund pretrial services. A federal judge has ordered an end to that practice.
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How much did the pretrial confinement cost? I realize it is about power not finances, but the irony is too obvious.
Man, they’re going to have to confine pretrial so many people to make up the cost of this settlement.
They can recoup the settlement through increased civil asset forfeiture.
Now you’re asking the officers to foot the bill from their take? What are you, some kind of monster???
In El Paso County, Colorado if you want to apply for food stamps you have to pony up a $50 Outback gift certificate.
Officials ignore a judge’s orders, and their penalty is to spend other peoples’ money.
That’ll teach ’em!
Maybe those people should stop being poor instead.
They bought their tickets. They knew what they were doing. I say, let ’em crash.
Surely you can’t be serious.
I don’t speak jive.
This must be fake news.
Colorado is known to be a progressive influenced state. Nothing evil can occur there.
Wouldn’t the jail actually save money by getting rid of the people they were holding, instead of holding out to get $55 from inmates that didn’t have the money?
Maybe the idea was if increase the budget and jailer overtime by keeping the jail as full as possible.
That it cost much more than $55 to jail them is one problem. The bigger problem is that THIS IS A FINE LEVIED BEFORE TRIAL. It’s a reversal of one of the fundamental principles of our legal system. Any lawyer who has to be told by a court that such things are wrong should be disbarred – whether for corruption or for gross incompetence does not matter. Any judge who allowed it should be fired. Any layman who supported it should never be given power over American citizens again