The US Department of Justice investigation of the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department used similar data to show that citizen complaints were indeed based on real, tangible, measurable disparities in treatment of citizens of different race. A particularly egregious finding of the Ferguson report was the degree to which the city had come to use court fees as a source of municipal revenue. The city relied on its poorest residents for traffic fines, court fees, and arrests because all of these were income-generating activities for the city.
