Name: Valley Brook and its officials sued, accused in unconstitutional debt collection scheme from poor residents
Brand: kfor.com
SKU: kfor-com-175
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Valley Brook and its officials sued, accused in unconstitutional debt collection scheme from poor residents

preview

Posted: Jan 15, 2021 / 10:35 PM CSTUpdated: Jan 15, 2021 / 10:35 PM CSTThis is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.VALLEY BROOK, Okla. () – A lawsuit against the Town of Valley Brook and three of its officials was filed in the Oklahoma County District Court last week, alleging they and others are complicit in an unconstitutional debt collection scheme that preys on people who are poor.The suit was brought forward by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of three people who said they were victims of the policy.“A cycle of debt and prison,” said senior counsel Tianna Mays.The complaint argues that people accused of minor offenses are fined at amounts they cannot afford.If they can’t pay them, the defendants are jailed, and that allegedly violates their rights under the Constitution and Oklahoma Law.“It is illegal to jail people because they cannot pay a fine or a fee,” Mays said. “It’s under something that is called Rule 8, and under the rule it gives the court a lot of liberty to either waive fines or fees, reduce fines or fees or give people community service; and what we’ve seen in Valley Brook is that they do neither. They just instead assess the fines and fees, and when people can’t pay that same night, they put them in jail.”The legal group looked at census data from 2017 and found that on average, the 385 municipalities with reported budget information in Oklahoma receive 5.7 percent of revenue from fines and forfeitures. In Valley Brook, fines and forfeitures constituted 65 percent of the town’s total revenue. It ranked number one in the state for revenue collected from fines and forfeitures.The complaint accuses Municipal Judge Stephen Haynes, Mayor Lewis Nieman and Police Chief Michael Stamp of perpetuating the so-called “debtors’ prison.”“They are consciously doing this,” Mays said.Stamp and Haynes declined to comment on the suit. Haynes said they did not yet know about it.Mays said this is part of an effort to address a system that criminalizes poverty and raises revenue from Oklahoma’s poorest residents.“What we’re looking to do is make sure that people who are low income and people who are on disability, that these people, when they appear before the court, that they have the constitutional protections that were put in place for them,” she said.Similar lawsuits were filed in Washington County, Okla., and White County, Ark.The full complaint can be found below:by on ScribdSuggest a CorrectionThanks for signing up!Watch for us in your inbox.Subscribe NowThanks for signing up!Watch for us in your inbox.Subscribe Now✕× Close Ad

Posted: Jan 15, 2021 / 10:35 PM CSTUpdated: Jan 15, 2021 / 10:35 PM CSTThis is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.VALLEY BROOK, Okla. () – A lawsuit against the Town of Valley Brook and three of its officials was filed in the Oklahoma County District Court last week, alleging they and others are complicit in an unconstitutional debt collection scheme that preys on people who are poor.The suit was brought forward by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of...

public

Cassandra Sweetman

kfor.com

Credible

Speculation

Anecdotal Evidence

Generalization

Stacking the Deck

Appeal to Authority

Straw Man

Slippery Slope

Emotional Appeal

Red Herring

False Dilemma

Illogical

Moral Equivalency

Ad Hominem

Correlation w/o Causation

Semantics

Begging the Question

Faulty Analogy

Non Sequitur

Bandwagon

Dogmatism

Failing Occam's Razor

Biased

Pure Opinion

Hit Piece

Racial Bias

National Bias

Religious Bias

Financial Incentive

Political Agenda

Gender Bias

Misused Image/Video

Study Misinterpreted

Mistake

Misused Term

Science Misrepresented

Factual Error

Satire

Surface Level

Lack of Reliable Sources

Sensational

Not Credible

Investigative

Balanced

Well Sourced

Great Context

sports

entertainment

U.S.

international

business

technology

science

culture

politics

media

health

Valley Brook and its officials sued, accused in unconstitutional debt collection scheme from poor residents

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS