Ferguson clerk fired over racist emails also accused of fixing traffic tickets

A senior court official in Ferguson, Missouri, who was fired by the city over racist emails, is also accused of fixing traffic tickets for colleagues.

Mary Ann Twitty, Ferguson’s influential court clerk, has been identified as the first city official to lose her job as a result of the Department of Justice’s scathing report on the St Louis suburb’s criminal justice system that was published this week.

Twitty, 60, was fired in connection with racist emails that were detailed in the report, according to the New York Times. “This type of behaviour will not be tolerated in the Ferguson police department or in any department in the city of Ferguson,” Mayor James Knowles III told a press conference on Wednesday.

Two other city officials were suspended over the racist emails, one of which likened Barack Obama to a chimpanzee. A spokesperson for the city said on Friday that the two suspended officials had resigned. The spokesperson declined to give their names.

The Justice Department’s report also identified Ferguson’s court clerk as the most prolific of a group of white officials who were caught fixing citations and fines incurred by colleagues and associates. City spokespeople did not respond to requests to confirm the clerk was Twitty. Calls to a number listed for Twitty were not answered on Friday.

The federal investigators found that in March 2014, a friend of a relative of the clerk emailed her with a scanned copy of a ticket and asked “if there was anything she could do to help”. The clerk responded: “Your ticket of $200 has magically disappeared!”, the report said. The clerk had at least one more ticket dismissed for the same person three months later.

In August – when the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white Ferguson officer led to intense protests – the clerk succeeded in having the municipal judge “take care” of another ticket on behalf of a supervisor at the Ferguson police department.

Investigators also found Ferguson court staff colluding with officials in nearby jurisdictions. “There is evidence that the Court Clerk and a City of Hazelwood clerk ‘fixed’ at least 12 tickets at each other’s request,” the report said.

Until Friday, the background photograph to Twitty’s Facebook page pictured her with Darren Wilson, the officer whose shooting of Michael Brown on 9 August prompted protests. The photograph, taken in a bar in Ferguson popular with police, showed Wilson with an arm around Twitty at a retirement party. Mayor Knowles was pictured in the same group.

Twitty has since changed her name on the social network and replaced the photograph, which was posted in June, with a beach scene.