Nice neighborhoods don’t translate into tax dollars.
Look at the city budget documents. Low revenues. Dash Cams and computers are usually paid for by the local PD (see the budget docs and see where the PD is requesting funds for upgrading/buying computers for their department and vehicles). Test and validation programs are usually funded by the fed gov.
Zillow shows low cost homes, heck, even the most expensive home is below $200k: http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Ferguson-MO/45261_rid/zest_sort/38.7757,-90.254402,38.722149,-90.323582_rect/12_zm/1_fr/
It is not the cost of the home that matters, this is a low cost state. Heck, the homes in Bellingham, WA sell for the same amount and a lot of the areas look very much the same as Ferguson. The average family wage in Bellingham, I am told, is $52,000. The government is the largest employer in the county. There are a lot of areas in WA, where the average wage is lower than that, and many of those areas are Republican, rural areas.
You just can’t blame the racial strife on income inequality.
(jeezus)
The Ferguson PD had purchased dashcams, but they had not been installed yet.