text: Ebony Conner, a single mother of five in Cahokia, Illinois, near St. Louis, arrested and briefly jailed for failing to mow her lawn and clean up her yard. She was not even issued a ticket prior to the arrest, and the only explanation she was offered was a complaint from the Village of Cahokia. 
   
   “I understand I violated a code. But take the channels, give me a ticket first, make me appear in court. I know there’s gotta be channels other than if you don’t cut your grass, I’m arresting you,” Conner told a local CBS-affiliate. 
   
   Conner is not alone in being arrested for failing to mow her lawn. Earlier this year, a 70-year-old woman in Prichard, Alabama was also arrested for not mowing lawn, except the citation she received was for a property she no longer owned. A 75-year-old woman in Riesel, Texas was issued a warrant for her arrest after she was accused of not responding to a letter to appear in court for her failing to mow her lawn. 
   
   In Pagedale, Missouri, where IJ has filed a class action lawsuit, there has been a similar abuse of municipal code enforcement. In Pagedale residents can be fined for things like chipped paint, mismatched curtains, and walking on the left side of a crosswalk. In 2013, nearly 20 percent of the city’s revenue came from fines and fees, producing a profit-incentive for law enforcement. From 2010 to 2014, the number of non-traffic tickets issued to residents increased by 495 percent. ||||| Clients 
   
   The harm to Pagedale residents is significant, perpetual, and often completely overwhelming. 
   
   Many find themselves in a never-ending cycle of being fined because they have not kept their homes up to the city’s standards and then are unable to fix their homes to fit the city’s instructions because they are spending so much money paying off their fines. This leads to more fines, which prevents residents from making the changes the city demands, resulting in more fines, and so on. While a resident cannot be arrested for not having the ability to pay a fine, those who cannot pay often do not come to court. They, like those who choose their jobs or child care over attending municipal court, then become the subject of arrest warrants and fines for failure to appear. 
   
   The perpetual governmental harassment of innocent Americans for absurd violations has to stop. IJ has therefore teamed up with some Pagedale residents in order to challenge Pagedale’s outrageous ticketing practices. 
   
   Plaintiff Vincent Blount has accumulated $2,800 in fines, a significant portion of which comes from tickets regarding the home in which he lives. Paying off his long-term payment plan prevented him from making the improvements the city sought, leading to more fines and ultimately a threat from the city to demolish his home (even though it is not dangerous in any way). Vincent has also spent time in Pagedale jail as a result of his fines and fees and his failure to appear at one of Pagedale’s court sessions. Vincent doesn’t even own the home that is the subject of some of his tickets and fines; it belongs to his long-time partner, Valarie Whitner, who is also a plaintiff in this case. 
   
   Valarie has also been the subject of the city’s ticketing practices. She has received a set of warnings from the city, threatening her with fines and fees for alleged violations such as chipped paint on her home or lacking a screen door on the rear entrance to her home. It is unclear what part of the Pagedale Code even regulates chipped paint. Valarie has received generic tickets for “house not up to code” without further explanation. When Vincent lost his job, he and Valarie fell into arrears and were forced to help pay off the fines by taking out a pay-day loan with a 99% APR. Valarie was even arrested in front of her home and taken to Pagedale city hall because of an unspecified ticket. 
   
   Mildred Bryant is 84 years old and living out her golden years in the home she’s owned for 46 years. Mildred is an active woman, exercising three times a week at the local YWCA. Yet despite her active lifestyle, keeping up with Pagedale’s demands is proving to be an impossible task. Mildred received a notice from the city threatening legal action if she did not comply. The notice accused Mildred of at least 12 different code violations. Many of the modifications demanded by the notice are beyond Mildred’s physical and financial abilities. The notice demanded that she touch up or repaint her entire two-story home, including the foundation. Other demands are simply ridiculous, such as demanding that Mildred’s home have matching curtains, slats, or other such window treatment. Her son, whom she raised in Pagedale, occasionally helps her out with complying with the city’s demands. But the grace periods given by the city have elapsed and she faces a real threat of tickets, fines, and imprisonment. 
   
   These experiences are far too common in Pagedale. For that reason, these plaintiffs represent a class of Pagedale residents who have been, and will be, ticketed or threatened with tickets by the city since January 1, 2010. These class-action allegations seek to put an end to Pagedale’s unconstitutional treatment of all its residents, as well as the named plaintiffs. ||||| Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal Russia investigation lawyer, is surprisingly frank that his media tour to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is "all just a big PR campaign," Samantha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. "Rudy is like a James Bond villain who explains his evil plot to 007 before he actually catches him — although no Bond villain has ever had teeth quite as grotesque as Rudy Giuliani, chaos demon." 
   
   In "his best moments," Giuliani "forgets he's there to lie and whoopsies out some true things," Bee said, showing examples. "But Trump's not keeping Rudy around for his brilliant legal mind, he's keeping him around to spread brilliant propaganda," specifically his "spygate" conspiracy. "No matter how many times Trump says it, there is no 'spygate,'" she explained. The FBI informant "was never implanted in the campaign, and none of this remotely sabotaged Trump who, if the trail of Happy Meal toys to the Resolute Desk is any indication, is our president."
target: – An Illinois woman with five kids was arrested July 7 and briefly thrown in jail for an offense that the town of Cahokia obviously feels strongly about: not mowing her lawn, the Week reports. Single mom Ebony Conner tells KMOV she was verbally warned by a municipal code-enforcement officer back in June and also told to get rid of garbage and broken-down cars from her driveway—but she thought she had more time to fix things, and she definitely didn't think she'd be hauled off to jail. "I understand I violated a code, but … give me a ticket first, make me appear in court," she says. "I know there's gotta be channels other than, 'If you don't cut your grass, we're arresting you right now.'" Conner says she hails from Wisconsin and has spent time in St. Louis, Mo., and she'd never heard of such a thing in either place. While she was detained (cops say she was held for about a half-hour in jail), her five children remained at home, with just a code enforcement officer patrolling the outside of her house, Conner says, adding, "I said 'I don't trust him. I don't know him at all.' … And they still hauled me off." She says she would've cut her grass by hand if she had known her long grass was an arrestable offense. The Institute for Justice lists similar cases that some consider to be an abuse of municipal code enforcement, including those in the town of Pagedale, Mo., where residents can be slammed with fines and tickets for such offenses as barbecuing in front of one's house, having mismatched curtains, and walking on the left-hand side of a crosswalk. (Postal workers mow residents' lawns in Finland.)