I'm not sure, but was there a leap here from the number of arrest warrants issued, to the number of Ferguson residents that have arrest warrants against them? Perhaps most of those warrants are for people not living in Ferguson? (Might be living in nearby areas, or that were passing through?) Not that this detracts from the shock. Even if it's mostly warrants of people passing through the town, that is horrifying.
It takes a dim view of the warrants though:
The large number of warrants issued by the court, by any count, is due exclusively to the fact that the court uses arrest warrants and the threat of arrest as its primary tool for collecting outstanding fines for municipal code violations. With extremely limited exceptions, every warrant issued by the Ferguson municipal court was issued because: 1) a person missed consecutive court appearances, or 2) a person missed a single required fine payment as part of a payment plan. Under current court policy, the court issues a warrant in every case where either of those circumstances arises — regardless of the severity of the code violation that the case involves. Indeed, the court rarely issues a warrant for any other purpose. FPD does not request arrest or any other kind of warrants from the Ferguson municipal court ; in fact, FPD officers told us that they have been instructed not to file warrant applications with the municipal court because the court does not have the capacity to consider them.