Reason: The Forfeiture Racket

[Winehole23]

The Forfeiture Racket (http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket)

Police and prosecutors won't give up their license to steal.

Radley Balko (http://reason.com/people/radley-balko) from the February 2010 (http://reason.com/issues/february-2010) issue
Around 3 in the morning on January 7, 2009, a 22-year-old college student named Anthony Smelley was pulled over on Interstate 70 in Putnam County, Indiana. He and two friends were en route from Detroit to visit Smelley’s aunt in St. Louis. Smelley, who had recently received a $50,000 settlement from a car accident, was carrying around $17,500 in cash, according to later court documents. He claims he was bringing the money to buy a new car for his aunt.



The officer who pulled him over, Lt. Dwight Simmons of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, said that Smelley had made an unsafe lane change and was driving with an obscured license plate. When Simmons asked for a driver’s license, Smelley told him he had lost it after the accident. Simmons called in Smelley’s name and discovered that his license had actually expired. The policeman asked Smelley to come out of the car, patted him down, and discovered a large roll of cash in his front pocket, in direct contradiction to Smelley’s alleged statement in initial questioning that he wasn’t, in fact, carrying much money.


A record check indicated that Smelley had previously been arrested (though not charged) for drug possession as a teenager, so the officer called in a K-9 unit to sniff the car for drugs. According to the police report, the dog gave two indications that narcotics might be present. So Smelley and his passengers were detained and the police seized Smelley’s $17,500 cash under Indiana’s asset forfeiture law.


But a subsequent hand search of the car turned up nothing except an empty glass pipe containing no drug residue in the purse of Smelley’s girlfriend. Lacking any other evidence, police never charged anybody in the car with a drug-related crime. Yet not only did Putnam County continue to hold onto Smelley’s money, but the authorities initiated legal proceedings to confiscate it permanently.


Smelley’s case was no isolated incident. Over the past three decades, it has become routine in the United States for state, local, and federal governments to seize the property of people who were never even charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. Nearly every year, according to Justice Department statistics, the federal government sets new records for asset forfeiture. And under many state laws, the situation is even worse: State officials can seize property without a warrant and need only show “probable cause” that the booty was connected to a drug crime in order to keep it, as opposed to the criminal standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, owners of seized property all too often have a heavier burden of proof than the government officials who stole their stuff.


Municipalities have come to rely on confiscated property for revenue. Police and prosecutors use forfeiture proceeds to fund not only general operations but junkets, parties, and swank office equipment. A cottage industry has sprung up to offer law enforcement agencies instruction on how to take and keep property more efficiently. And in Indiana, where Anthony Smelley is still fighting to get his money back, forfeiture proceeds are enriching attorneys who don’t even hold public office, a practice that violates the U.S. Constitution.


Guilty Property, Innocent Owners

Technically, civil asset forfeiture proceedings are brought against the property itself, not the owner. Hence they often have odd case titles, such as U.S. v. Eight Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Dollars or U.S. v. One 1987 Jeep Wrangler. The government need only demonstrate that the seized property is somehow related to a crime, generally either by showing that it was used in the commission of the act (as with a car driven to and from a drug transaction, or a house from which drugs are sold) or that it was purchased with the proceeds.


Because the property itself is on trial, the owner has the status of a third-party claimant. Once the government has shown probable cause of a property’s “guilt,” the onus is on the owner to prove his innocence. The parents of a drug-dealing teenager, for instance, would have to show they had no knowledge the kid was using the family car to facilitate drug transactions. Homeowners have to show they were unaware that a resident was keeping drugs on the premises. Anyone holding cash in close proximity to illicit drugs may have to document that he earned the money legitimately.


When owners of seized property put up a legal fight (and the majority do not), the cases are almost always heard by judges, not juries. In some states forfeiture claimants don’t even have the right to a jury trial. But even in states where they do, owners tend to waive that right, because jury proceedings are longer and more expensive. Federal forfeiture claimants are technically guaranteed a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, but can lose the right if they fail to reply in a timely manner to sometimes complicated government notices of seizure.


Federal asset forfeiture law dates back to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970, a law aimed at seizing profits earned by organized crime. In 1978 Congress broadened RICO to include drug violations. But it was the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 that made forfeiture the lucrative, widely used law enforcement tool it is today.


“The Crime Control Act did a few things,” says the Virginia-based defense attorney David Smith, author of the legal treatise Prosecution and Defense of Forfeiture Cases. “First, it corrected some poor drafting in the earlier laws. Second, it created two federal forfeiture funds, one in the Justice Department and one in the Treasury. And most important, it included an earmarking provision that gave forfeiture proceeds back to local law enforcement agencies that helped in a federal forfeiture.”


This last bit was key. “The thinking was that this would motivate police agencies to use the forfeiture provisions,” Smith says. “They were right. It also basically made law enforcement an interest group. They directly benefited from the law. Since it was passed, they’ve fought hard to keep it and strengthen it.”


The 1984 law lowered the bar for civil forfeiture. To seize property, the government had only to show probable cause to believe that it was connected to drug activity, or the same standard cops use to obtain search warrants. The state was allowed to use hearsay evidence—meaning a federal agent could testify that a drug informant told him a car or home was used in a drug transaction—but property owners were barred from using hearsay, and couldn’t even cross-examine some of the government’s witnesses. Informants, while being protected from scrutiny, were incentivized monetarily: According to the law, snitches could receive as much as one-quarter of the bounty, up to $50,000 per case.


According to a 1992 Cato Institute study examining the early results of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, total federal forfeiture revenues increased by 1,500 percent between 1985 and 1991. The Justice Department’s forfeiture fund (which doesn’t include forfeitures from customs agents) jumped from $27 million in 1985 to $644 million in 1991; by 1996 it crossed the $1 billion line, and as of 2008 assets had increased to $3.1 billion. According to the government’s own data, less than 20 percent of federal seizures involved property whose owners were ever prosecuted.


read more... (http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket/1)

[Winehole23]

Police gradually came to view asset forfeiture as not just a way to minimize drug profits, or even to fill their own coffers, but as a tool to enforce maximum compliance on non-criminals. In one highly publicized example from the 1990s, Jason Brice nearly lost the motel he had bought and renovated in a high-crime area of Houston. At the request of local authorities, Brice hired private security, allowed police to patrol his property (at some cost to his business), and spent tens of thousands of dollars in other measures to prevent drug activity on the premises. But when local police asked Brice to raise his rates to deter criminals, he refused, saying it would put him out of business. Stepped up police harassment of his customers caused Brice to eventually terminate the agreement that had allowed them latitude on his property. In less than a month, local and federal officials tried to seize Brice’s motel on the grounds that he was aware of drug dealing taking place there. Brice eventually won, but only after an expensive, drawn-out legal battle.

[Winehole23]

On February 4, 2009, Anthony Smelley got his first hearing before an Indiana judge. Smelley’s attorney, David Kenninger, filed a motion asking for summary judgment against the county, citing a letter from a Detroit law firm stating that the seized money indeed came from an accident settlement, not a drug transaction. Kenninger also argued that because there were no drugs in Smelley’s car, the state had failed to show the required “nexus” between the cash and illegal activity. Putnam County Circuit Court Judge Matthew Headley seemed to agree, hitting Christopher Gambill, who represented Putnam County, with some tough questions. That’s when Gambill made an argument that was remarkable even for a forfeiture case.


“You have not alleged that this person was dealing in drugs, right?” Judge Headley said.


“No,” Gambill responded. “We alleged this money was being transported for the purpose of being used to be involved in a drug transaction.”


Incredibly, Gambill was arguing that the county could seize Smelley’s money for a crime that hadn’t yet been committed. Asked in a phone interview to clarify, Gambill stands by the general principle. “I can’t respond specifically to that case,” he says, “but yes, under the state forfeiture statute, we can seize money if we can show that it was intended for use in a drug transaction at a later date.” (Smelley himself refused to be interviewed for this article.)

[Winehole23]

Adjusted for inflation, the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture fund, which includes proceeds from forfeitures carried out by all federal agencies except Immigration and Customs Enforcement, grew from $1.3 billion in 2001 to $3.1 billion in 2008. (The total includes some money left over from previous years, but according to Smith, almost all of the money is doled out to local and federal agencies on an annual basis.) National Public Radio has reported that between 2003 and 2007, the amount of money seized by local law enforcement agencies enrolled in the federal forfeiture program tripled from $567 million to $1.6 billion. That doesn’t include property seized by local law enforcement agencies without involving federal authorities.

[Winehole23]

In 2008 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives asked for bids from private contractors on 2,000 Leatherman pocket knives for its agents, to be inscribed with the phrase “Always Think Forfeiture,” a play on the agency’s traditional “ATF” initials. The agency rescinded the order after it was reported in the Idaho Statesman, but critics said it betrayed the ethic of an organization more interested in taking people’s property than in fighting crime.

Some police agencies come to view forfeiture not just as an occasional windfall for buying guns, police cars, or better equipment, but as a source of funding for basic operations. This is especially true with multijurisdictional drug task forces, some of which have become financially independent of the states, counties, and cities in which they operate, thanks to forfeiture and federal anti-drug grants.


In a 2001 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice, the University of Texas at Dallas criminologist John Worral surveyed 1,400 police departments around the country on their use of forfeiture and the way they incorporated seized assets into their budgets. Worral, who describes himself as agnostic on the issue, concluded that “a substantial proportion of law enforcement agencies are dependent on civil asset forfeiture” and that “forfeiture is coming to be viewed not only as a budgetary supplement, but as a necessary source of income.” Almost half of surveyed police departments with more than 100 law enforcement personnel said forfeiture proceeds were “necessary as a budget supplement” for department operations.

[Winehole23]

Forfeiture may also undermine actual enforcement of the law. In a 1994 study reported in Justice Quarterly, criminologists J. Mitchell Miller and Lance H. Selva observed several police agencies that identified drug supplies but delayed making busts to maximize the cash they could seize, since seized cash is more lucrative for police departments than seized drugs. This strategy allowed untold amounts of illicit drugs to be sold and moved into the streets, contrary to the official aims of drug enforcement.

[Winehole23]

In other states, the problem isn’t so much the strict provisions on the books, but rather the relevant law’s ambiguity, which can give police and prosecutors too much leeway. Tiny Tenaha, Texas, population 1,046, made national news in 2008 after a series of reports alleged that the town’s police force was targeting black and Latino motorists along Highway 84, a busy regional artery that connects Houston to Louisiana’s casinos, ensuring a reliable harvest of cash-heavy motorists. The Chicago Tribune reported that in just the three years between 2006 and 2008, Tenaha police stopped 140 drivers and asked them to sign waivers agreeing to hand over their cash, cars, jewelry, and other property to avoid arrest and prosecution on drug charges. If the drivers agreed, police took their property and waved them down the highway. If they refused, even innocent motorists faced months of legal hassles and thousands of dollars in attorney fees, usually amounting to far more than the value of the amount seized. One local attorney found court records of 200 cases in which Tenaha police had seized assets from drivers; only 50 were ever criminally charged.

[Winehole23]

While police departments have been benefiting from forfeiture policies for years, funneling the money to prosecutors raises even more problems. “Police merely seize the property,” David Smith says. “They don’t determine which cases go forward. It’s a violation of due process if the prosecutor, the person actually deciding whether or not to bring a forfeiture case, benefits somehow from the decision. You can’t have the same person deciding which cases to take also directly benefiting from those cases.”

[Winehole23]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/20/asset-forfeiture-wisconsin-bail-confiscated_n_1522328.html

[Capt Bringdown]

Corruption and abuse of power that rivals or exceeds what you'd find in the 3rd world.

[boutons_deux]

more out-of-control, no-oversight orgs where the politicians won't touch them, rather even plump them up with $100Ms of military hardware. unstoppable.

other police news:

Police 'Set Up' NATO Firebomb Trio

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/440-occupy/11517-police-set-up-nato-firebomb-trio

NY Daily News Defends NYPD's 'Stop-And-Frisk' Policy, Warns 'The Body Count Will Start Rising'

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201205180018?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MediaMattersForAmerica-CountyFair+%28Media+Matters+for+America+-+County+Fair%29&utm_content=Google+Reader


"The Whole System Relies on These Arrests": The NYPD's Racist Marijuana Arrest Crusade And Its National Implications

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155439



The PIC is unstoppably metastasizing.

[Winehole23]

the militarization of LE is troubling on many levels

[TDMVPDPOY]

welcome to communism, whats urs is mine, whats mine is mine...that is if u belong in the party

[boutons_deux]

More PIC misconduct:

Registry tallies over 2,000 wrongful convictions since 1989

More than 2,000 people have been freed from prison since 1989 after they were found to have been wrongly convicted of serious crimes,

the criminal justice system sometimes misfires, prosecuting and convicting the innocent

"Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data,"

"It's clear that the exonerations we found are the tip of the iceberg,"

"Obviously there are false convictions in those [other] counties. We just don't know about them"




http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?m=b&a=rp&id=2150946&postId=2150946&postUserId=7&sessionToken=&catId=5219&curAbsIndex=2&resultsUrl=DID%3D6%26DFCL%3D1000%26DSB%3Drank%2523 desc%26DBFQ%3DuserId%253A7%26DL.w%3D%26DL.d%3D10%2 6DQ%3DsectionId%253A5219%26DPS%3D0%26DPL%3D3

========

"misfires"?

GMAFB

It's corrupt fucking police, prosecutors, judges pumping up the profits of for-profit prisons.

[Wild Cobra]

welcome to communism, whats urs is mine, whats mine is mine...that is if u belong in the party
But the cart is already too full, and we don't have enough people pulling it.

[boutons_deux]

great analogy, a nation full of cart pullers, indebted rent payers, and wage slaves. America the Beautiful (for the 1%)

[RandomGuy]

Why can't the libertarians and Ron Paul nuts get on this?

If ever there was somethign to be genuinely pissed about, it would be this issue, It percolates like a rancid pool of vomit in the alley of our national consciousness. We try and pretend it isn't there, and that only the "bad people" get caught up in it.

[boutons_deux]

tea baggers and libertarians are really, in effect, shilling for the 1% and Repugs.

[vy65]

tried looking but couldn't find any challenges to the '84 act based on the due process clause. seems that somebody should have tried by now to argue that the lower standard of proof along with the changed evidentiary rules and court costs were unconstitutional deprivations of property under the 5th/14th amendments.

[DarkReign]

tried looking but couldn't find any challenges to the '84 act based on the due process clause. seems that somebody should have tried by now to argue that the lower standard of proof along with the changed evidentiary rules and court costs were unconstitutional deprivations of property under the 5th/14th amendments.

Sounds like you got a case. Do a barrel roll!

[Winehole23]

Federal Asset Forfeiture Continues to Skyrocket Under Obama (http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/31/federal-asset-forfeiture-skyrockets-unde)

Mike Riggs (http://reason.com/people/mike-riggs/all)|Jul. 31, 2012 1:34 pm


The Justice Department's asset forfeiture fund under President Obama is the largest it's ever been, having grown from $500 million in 2003, to $1.8 billion in 2011, according to a new report from the GAO.



In addition to the fund's size, payments from the fund to local law enforcement agencies totalled $445 million in 2011, another all-time high. These payouts are part of the DOJ's "equitable sharing agreement," which incentivizes local cops to conduct federal raids. They then get a portion of the assets seized during the raid (more money if they contribute more resources). That money is then used to finance SWAT and paramilitary training, as well as the acquisition of military grade weapons and equipment.



http://media.reason.com/mc/mriggs/2012_07/AFFSizeChart.png?h=287&w=400
While the report (http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592349.pdf) doesn't specify the payout from particular investigations, it's likely that in California, which received $80 million in 2011--or 18 percent of all shared asset forfeiture funds given to local and state law enforcement last year--much of the money came from assets seized during raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. (For more on equitable sharing, and the abuses it leads to, read the Insitute for Justice report "Policing for Profit (http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-the-abuse-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-4).")



More noteworthy even than the payout numbers to local and state cops is that the cost of maintaining the asset forfeiture fund has skyrocketed.


In 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, the cost of operating the asset forfeiture fund totalled $409 million. In 2009, the first year of the Obama administration, that number jumped to $512 million. The next year, operating the fund cost $569 million. In 2011, operating the fund cost $491 million.


http://media.reason.com/mc/mriggs/2012_07/CostofOperatingFund.png?h=126&w=500
Where does that money go? According to the GAO report, "Cost drivers include salaries for government employees, information systems costs, asset management and disposal contracts, and contracts for administrative support staff, among other things."


Federal law allows for two different types of asset forfeiture. The GAO describes them as such:

Judicial forfeiture, both civil and criminal, is the process by which property may be forfeited to the United States by filing a forfeiture action in federal court. In civil forfeiture, the action is against the property and thus does not require that the owner of the property be charged with a federal offense. The government must only prove a connection between the property and the crime. By contrast, criminal forfeiture requires a conviction of the defendant before property is subject to forfeiture.
In many states there are limitations to what local law enforcement agencies can seize without seeking a conviction, which is why they often invite the feds to "adopt" their investigations, particularly drug investigations, in order to seize assets without actually charging anyone, or winning a case. (The IJ report linked above explores this loophole in horrifying detail.)



Here's a list of the largest asset recipient states in 2011:

California cops received $79 million
New York cops received $48 million
Florida cops received $38 million
Texas cops received $31 million
Georgia cops received $30 million
Illinois cops received $16.9 million
Michigan cops received $12.8 million
North Carolina cops received $10 million
Ohio cops received $9.9 million
The report also says that more state legislatures are adopting broader asset forfeiture laws, reducing the need for joint operations with federal law enforcement.


"In 2003, adoptions made up about 23 percent of all equitable sharing payments, while in 2010, adoptions made up about 17 percent of all equitable sharing payments," the report reads."According to DOJ, as more states have established their own forfeiture laws, they may rely less on DOJ to adopt forfeiture cases and may instead pursue forfeitures under state law when appropriate."
If Obama's crackdown on state-legal medical marijuana in California, or the DOJ-led raids of head shops across the Midwest, or the attacks on pharmacies in the Southeast, are any indicator, 2012 will be another banner year for the federal asset forfeiture fund.

http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/31/federal-asset-forfeiture-skyrockets-unde

[Clipper Nation]

Why can't the libertarians and Ron Paul nuts get on this?

If ever there was somethign to be genuinely pissed about, it would be this issue, It percolates like a rancid pool of vomit in the alley of our national consciousness. We try and pretend it isn't there, and that only the "bad people" get caught up in it.
This is exactly the type of shit we're talking about when we mention the police state, tbh..... when the people voluntarily give up their liberty for temporary safety out of fear, this is what happens.....


tea baggers and libertarians are really, in effect, shilling for the 1% and Repugs.
You are truly delusional if you actually think libertarians shill for a neocon party that they have nothing in common with, who tries to marginalize us...

[Winehole23]

the boutons method is to run everyone who disagrees with him into the same ditch and piss on them

[Winehole23]

it's not peculiar to boutons, but it is the only trick in his book.

[boutons_deux]

no, tea baggers and libertarians definitely want less regulation, less govt, which is EXACTLY what the financial and the UCA wants, so the tea baggers and libertarians are perfectly aligned with the UCA in those matters.

[Winehole23]

An Illinois appellate court rejected Ivy Jackson’s challenge to Chicago Municipal Code § 7-24-225, which provides that the owner of a vehicle found to contain controlled substances or cannabis is liable for an administrative penalty and permits the taking of their vehicle. Because Chicago Municipal Code still lacks an innocent owner defense, a vehicle owner can lose their car [...]



An Illinois appellate court rejected Ivy Jackson’s challenge (http://www.state.il.us/court/Opinions/AppellateCourt/2012/1stDistrict/1111044.pdf) to Chicago Municipal Code § 7-24-225 (http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/Illinois/chicago_il/municipalcodeofchicago?f=templates$fn=default.htm$ 3.0$vid=amlegal:chicago_il), which provides that the owner of a vehicle found to contain controlled substances or cannabis is liable for an administrative penalty and permits the taking of their vehicle. Because Chicago Municipal Code still lacks an innocent owner defense (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/983), a vehicle owner can lose their car despite a lack of knowledge of the presence of controlled substances or cannabis and despite a lack of participation in the alleged controlled substances or cannabis presence.
http://forfeiturereform.com/2012/07/27/chicagoans-should-think-twice-before-permitting-passengers/

[Winehole23]

no, tea baggers and libertarians definitely want less regulation, less govt, which is EXACTLY what the financial and the UCA wants, so the tea baggers and libertarians are perfectly aligned with the UCA in those matters.thanks for underscoring my point. :tu

[boutons_deux]

my qualification nullified your point

[Winehole23]

of course you would think so

[boutons_deux]

The Libertarian Con: Favorite 'Rebel' Ideology of the Ruling Class

But libertarianism isn’t some alien political philosophy that somehow transcends the traditional “left to right” spectrum. It’s a radical, hard-right economic doctrine promoted by wealthy people who always end up backing Republican candidates [7], no matter how often they talk about civil liberties, ending the wars and legalizing pot. Funny how that works. (By the way: "neither left nor right?" That's how Mussolini characterized fascism.)

It’s the “third way” for a society in which turning against capitalism or even taking your foot off the pedal is not an option. Thanks to our shitty Constitution [8] and the most violent labor history in the West, we never even got a labor party like the rest of the developed world. So what do we get? The libertarian line: “No, no: the problem isn’t that we’re too capitalist. It’s that we’re not capitalist enough!”

Ask them what their beef really is with the welfare state. First, they’ll talk about the deficit and say we just can’t afford entitlement programs. Well, that’s obviously a joke [32], so move on. Then they’ll say that it gives the government tyrannical power. Okay. Let me know when the welfare-lovin’ Danes build a Guantanamo Bay in Greenland.

Here’s the real reason libertarians hate the idea. The welfare state is a check against servility toward the rich. A strong welfare state would give us the power to say fuck you to our bosses—this is the power to say “I’m gonna work odd jobs for 20 hours a week while I work on my driftwood sculptures and play keyboards in my chillwave band

http://www.alternet.org/print/news-amp-politics/libertarian-con-favorite-rebel-ideology-ruling-class

[Winehole23]

aping someone else doing the same thing only highlights the point again . . .

[Winehole23]

Town Plans to Raise Revenue By Combining Drug-Sniffing Dogs With Asset Forfeiture (http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/22/town-plans-to-raise-revenue-by-combining-drug-sniffing-dogs-with-asset-forfeiture/)

Orin Kerr (http://www.volokh.com/author/orin/) • August 22, 2012 11:33 pm


They say a dog is man’s best friend, and the town of Henry, Tennessee is hoping that dogs can help the town raise revenue (http://www.wmufradio.com/Archive08-19-12.html) in tough times:

At the Henry Mayor and Board of Alderman meeting on Tuesday, board members decided to allow police chief David Andrews to institute a K9 program for the Henry Police Department.
Andrews told board members that the city is missing out on possible revenues that a K9 would bring. He said when you make traffic stops and the driver refuses to allow a search, their hands are tied. If a drug dog alerts on a vehicle, its gives officers probable cause to search a vehicle for drugs or illegal proceeds from drugs. More drug arrests and drug, cash, and vehicle seizures lead to more revenues coming in for the police department and city.
Andrews said the military has a drug dog program and he could get a dog for the city at no upfront cost. The dogs are usually labs and are very gentle, and come trained as drug dogs. Andrews said four hours per week of training is required but the officers will work that into their regular hours. The dog would stay at the officers residence at night and any monies for food, water, and vet care would come from the drug fund.



http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/22/town-plans-to-raise-revenue-by-combining-drug-sniffing-dogs-with-asset-forfeiture/

Hat tip: FourthAmendment.com

[Winehole23]

For more on the same theme, see here (http://m.amarillo.com/news/local-news/2010-11-22/cahing).


"As far as county law enforcement, I'm more interested in making sure the community is safe than trying to use I-40 as a revenue stream," he said. "I don't (know if) that's what the Constitution, our original Founding Fathers, meant for us to do when it came to law enforcement."

[coyotes_geek]

Kinda surprised this thing wasn't happening already.

[boutons_deux]

Just more proof that the War on Drugs, like the War on Disease esp Cancer, War on Terrorists, is above all a $10Bs business.

[Winehole23]

A state comptroller’s special investigation of West Tennessee’s 24th Judicial Drug Task Force turned up instances of theft by the agency’s administrative assistant and jail trustees smoking seized crack cocaine.

It also reveals that District Attorney General Hansel McCadams and Henry County Sheriff Monte Belew had a penchant for using a confiscated BMW Z-3 car for their personal use.


The examination of drug task force operations was conducted by the Comptroller’s Division of County Audit with aid from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.


Auditors said items from drug seizures were stolen or misused with a task force administrative assistant and her ex-husband admitting to taking drugs and other seized items, including utility trailers and a flat-screen television, from the task force.


The report from the Comptroller’s Division of County Audit said McCadams and other directors of the task force were lax in reviewing the agency’s operations. The task force itself didn’t have adequate record-keeping or inventory management practices.



Auditors said they found a group of jail trustees on a work detail had access to seized items without sufficient supervision. Because of that, the report says, some trustees gained access to drug case files, smoked crack cocaine and marijuana while at the Drug Task Force headquarters and stole cash, old coins and other equipment.


According to auditors, McCadams sometimes used a variety of confiscated equipment including a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a golf cart, a go cart, a four-wheeler and a trailer for his personal use. He flew on Drug Task Force airplanes and a helicopter on non-official business, according to the report.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/aug/17/theft-drug-use-24th-judicial-task-force-report-say/

[Winehole23]

Kinda surprised this thing wasn't happening already.has been since the 1980s. (Byrne grants started happening in the early 80s, I think) it just took awhile for journalists to start paying attention.

[coyotes_geek]

Well, as long as they're only stealing from bad people I guess it's okay.

[Winehole23]

interested posters should google Tenaha, TX wrt to the italicized.

[Winehole23]

BATF: The Next Front on the Federal Forfeiture War on Cash (http://www.theagitator.com/2012/08/29/batf-the-next-front-on-the-federal-forfeiture-war-on-cash/)

Over at the Americans for Forfeiture Reform blog, AFR policy analyst Scott Meiner reports (http://forfeiturereform.com/2012/08/28/yet-another-agency-gets-authority-to-seize-cash-that-might-have-something-to-do-with-drugs/):

Attorney General Eric Holder has granted (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/08/27/2012-20923/authorization-to-seize-property-involved-in-drug-offenses-for-administrative-forfeiture-2012r-9p) the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) authority, for a one-year trial period, to seize and administratively forfeit property allegedly involved in controlled substance offenses pursuant to United States Code Title 21 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/usc_sup_01_21) › Chapter 13 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/usc_sup_01_21_10_13) › Subchapter I (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/usc_sup_01_21_10_13_20_I) › Part E (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/usc_sup_01_21_10_13_20_I_30_E) › § 881 (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/881).


21 U.S.C. § 881 is, among other things, often invoked to seize and forfeit bulk currency, where no drugs are found, on theories that the currency was furnished, or intended to be furnished, in exchange for a controlled substance.


AG Holder’s rulemaking announcement declared that such changes are exempt from the general notice and comment requirements because the department determined that the change does not affect individual rights and obligations.


AG Holder also declared that this rule change lacks sufficient federalism implications to warrant the preparation of a federalism summary impact statement.
The rule takes effect February 23, 2013, and is final (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/08/27/2012-20923/authorization-to-seize-property-involved-in-drug-offenses-for-administrative-forfeiture-2012r-9p#p-14):

Notice and comment rulemaking is not required for this final rule. Under the APA, “rules of agency organization, procedure or practice,”5 U.S.C. 553 (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+5USC553)(b)(A), that do not “affect[] individual rights and obligations,”Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U.S. 199, 232 (1974), are exempt from the general notice and comment requirements of section 553 of title 5 of the United States Code.
http://www.theagitator.com/2012/08/29/batf-the-next-front-on-the-federal-forfeiture-war-on-cash/

[Winehole23]

Over at the Americans for Forfeiture Reform website, policy analyst Scott Meiner reports on the federal civil asset forfeiture complaint in the matter of United States of America v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton (http://forfeiturereform.com/2012/08/27/in-the-matter-of-the-united-states-of-america-v-one-tyrannosaurus-bataar-skeleton/). This is an unusual case as the government’s case nakedly asserts, with no supporting evidence, that Eric Prokopi, owner of this particular dinosaur skeleton illegally imported the skeleton from Mongolia (Prokopi has manifests indicating he imported the skeleton from Great Britain). Additionally, the US government’s legal argument is premised on the impossibility of anyone in Mongolia owning fossils as private property, a claim that stems from the Communist-era First Mongolian Constitution, which prohibits the ownership of private property. Prokopi’s motion to dismiss notes:http://www.theagitator.com/2012/08/27/in-the-matter-of-the-united-states-of-america-v-one-tyrannosaurus-bataar-skeleton/

[Winehole23]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/6/atfs-latest-gun-grab/

[boutons_deux]

"Justice destroyed or kept 11,355 guns last year, returning just 396 to innocent owners."

"just" maybe the other 11K guns (which makes a huge hole in 300M guns in USA :lol ) really were tied to crimes?

Of all the stuff civil forfeiture could grab, this guy dog-whistles loudly to the bubbas: "the n!gg@'s after all y'alls guns, just like the NRA has been saying all along."

[Winehole23]

due process and property rights receive the explicit emphasis in the OP; which is where it belongs.

[boutons_deux]

due process and property rights receive the explicit emphasis in the OP; which is where it belongs.

agreed, but this is the extreme right-wing MoonieBatTimes, so rabble-rousingly singling out bubbas' sacred guns is not surprising.

[Winehole23]

via Radley Balko (http://www.theagitator.com/).

[admiralsnackbar]

I met a journalist named Janet Phelan in the Yucatan during a 2010 sales trip who felt she had to leave the US because of her coverage of this sort of scheme (specifically how local governments in SoCal were using mandatory and -- she convincingly alleged -- biased psychological reviews to snatch private property and boost municipal revenue) had led to escalating harassment from law enforcement.

She was definitely a bit of a kook and on the more left-wing paranoiac side of investigative journalism, but on this particular topic, I found her research compelling/thorough and her interpretation of the facts lucid. It's pretty fucking creepy when medicine and law are bent into instruments for what amounts to private inurement. E.g. imagine conveniently being found unfit to possess your property by a state psych board because you had been treated for ADD or depression at some point in your life. The worst part? This sort of shake-down appears to happen routinely, but because it's couched in legal/clinical euphemism, it seems to slip under the radar.

[Winehole23]

Inspector General's New Asset Forfeiture Report Reveals DOJ Is Now Just Robbing Americans (http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/28/inspector-generals-new-asset-forfeiture)

Mike Riggs (http://reason.com/people/mike-riggs/all)|September 28, 2012 12:26 pm


The Office of Inspector General for the Justice Department released an audit (http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2012/a1240.pdf) yesterday reviewing the DEA's use of asset forfeiture, which is the policy that allows federal law enforcement agencies to confiscate the savings and property of Americans suspected of a crime. The report highlights no illegal or improper behavior on the DEA's part, but it does reveal a massive shift away from due process toward blatant thuggery.


According to a chart provided by the OIG, 86 percent of asset forfeitures that occurred between 2001 and 2011 were either administrative or civil, and only 14 percent were criminal. That means roughly 86 percent of the instances in which the government took cash, computers, cars, homes, life savings, investments, property or other assets, it did so without approval from a judge, a verdict from a jury, or any meaningful form of due process.



This is not just bad policy, it is theft. The OIG's chart is below:



http://media.reason.com/mc/mriggs/2012_09/AssetForfeitureChart.jpg?h=310&w=500
Here's some clarification on the three types of asset forfeiture, courtesy of the Justice Department (http://www.justice.gov/usao/ri/projects/esguidelines.pdf):

Administrative forfeiture is the process by which property may be forfeited to the United States without judicial involvement. Federal seizing agencies perform administrative forfeitures. Seizures must be based on probable cause. The authority for a seizing agency to start an administrative forfeiture action is found in 19 U.S.C. § 1607.


"Administrative forfeiture can be used to seize and forfeit the following:

• any amount of currency;

• personal property valued at $500,000 or less, including cars, guns, and boats;

• hauling conveyances of unlimited value.
"Real property cannot be forfeited administratively.


Criminal forfeiture is an action brought as part of the criminal prosecution of a defendant that includes the forfeiture of property used or derived from the crime. If the defendant is convicted, the judge or the jury may find that the property is forfeitable. Forfeiture is limited to the property interests of the defendant and only to property involved in the particular counts on which the defendant is convicted. Only the defendant’s interest can be forfeited in a criminal case because criminal forfeiture is part of the sentence in the criminal case.


Civil forfeiture is a proceeding brought against the property rather than against the person who committed the offense. Civil forfeiture does not require either criminal charges against the owner of the property or a criminal conviction.

http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/28/inspector-generals-new-asset-forfeiture

[boutons_deux]

An asset seizure that raises some troubling issues

Texas and the Bexar County District Attorney's Office, relying on an affidavit from a Drug Enforcement Agency (http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Fnews_columnists%2Fo_ricardo_pimente l&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Drug+Enforcement+Agency%22) agent, seized these in September from his accounts and from his San Antonio area home.
The affidavit alleges an illegal money service business, a failure to declare to Mexico the departure of the money and that by using two passports — Mexican and U.S. — Villarreal was attempting fraud.

But Villarreal says he was deemed suspicious because he's Mexican and has money.

Villarreal notes it would be a pretty stupid money launderer who declares the money he is bringing across, as he has done. He physically transported all but $2.6 million, which he wired into an investment management account, seized before the account's maturation.

Nowhere in the affidavit, says attorney Rolando Rios (http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Fnews_columnists%2Fo_ricardo_pimente l&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Rolando+Rios%22), does agent Jennifer Sanchez (http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Fnews_columnists%2Fo_ricardo_pimente l&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Jennifer+Sanchez%22) show concrete connections between the seized assets and any criminal enterprise.

But the conundrum of our forfeiture laws for me is that there can be a seizure and no proven crime. And if he has evaded Mexican taxes, why is that a Texas issue? This affidavit reads like a litany of suppositions.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/news_columnists/o_ricardo_pimentel/article/An-asset-seizure-that-raises-some-troubling-issues-3946681.php

[boutons_deux]

Some Good Ol' Boys' Creative Municipal Financing

Texas county returning alleged shakedown cash

http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/16/01/43/3676401/3/628x471.jpg

Authorities in a Texas county where a drug enforcement program was allegedly used to shake down black and Latino highway travelers are returning more than $100,000 taken during the traffic stops.

The stops in Tenaha, which often resulted in people being forced to hand over cash without any charges being filed, have led to multiple lawsuits and two federal criminal investigations.

District Attorney Kenneth Florence (http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Ftexas&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Kenneth+Florence%22) said Shelby County has dismissed all of its pending forfeiture cases, even those without a connection to Tenaha, in what he described as an effort to turn the page after an agreement was reached in August to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from the stops.

"I just don't think you could get anything done with any of those cases," said Florence, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry (http://www.mysanantonio.com/?controllerName=search&action=search&channel=news%2Ftexas&search=1&inlineLink=1&query=%22Rick+Perry%22) in August and is running for the post in next week's election. "They are all tainted, so to speak."

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/texas/article/Texas-county-returning-alleged-shakedown-cash-4000379.php#ixzz2B0BtOhvR

[Winehole23]

http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/21/drug-dealing-and-legal-stealing

[Winehole23]

Here in Nashville, the state legislature held hearings this week (http://www.newschannel5.com/story/24027295/task-force-head-claims-terrorism-behind-160000-seizure) on "policing for profit," (http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-the-abuse-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-4) the catchy name the libertarian public interest law firm the Institute for Justice has given to the practice of civil asset forfeiture. (http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket)



The hearings were inspired by some terrific reporting (http://www.newschannel5.com/category/211433/nc5-investigates-policing-for-profit) done by local television journalist Phil Williams over the last couple of years about how the practice is used and abused in central Tennessee. Basically, if you're carrying a large amount of cash, and someone from one of these task forces pulls you over, they feel they have the authority to take your money from you. It's then up to you to prove you earned it legitimately. The stops can quickly devolve into shakedown operations (http://www.newschannel5.com/story/14849726/policing-for-profit-takes-cash-from-innocent-victims), in which a motorist is told he can face arrest, or he can give the police all of his money and go free.



Some of the exchanges between Tennessee lawmakers and personnel from the local drug task forces were downright surreal. A few excerpts from the testimony, via Newschannel 5 (http://www.newschannel5.com/story/24027295/task-force-head-claims-terrorism-behind-160000-seizure):



Senators especially wanted to know about a traffic stop exposed by NewsChannel 5 Investigates where an agent from the 23rd took $160,000 from a New York businessman, using federal seizure laws, even though the officer admitted on the video there was no evidence tying it to drug trafficking.

"I don't know honestly if we can, if we can't link it to drugs, it's still a currency violation," he told a fellow officer.


There's no such thing as "a currency violation." It isn't illegal to carry cash, even in large amounts. But of course, they took the money anyway. The head of the task force then offered a bizarre, implausible explanation for the seizure.



"I can tell you that money had terrorist ties overseas -- I will tell you that," he told the subcommittee.

"Then why was it returned to him?" asked Sen. Brian Kelsey, a Germantown Republican who chairs the full Senate Judiciary Committee.
"The DEA returned it to them, we didn't," Hicks said.


In fact, our investigation discovered that the U.S. Attorney's Office returned the man's cash more than a year later after investigators could not make any kind of a case.


"When they were pressed on it when there was a case pending in federal court, when it was put-up-or-shut-up time, they couldn't produce a single shred of evidence to support these allegations," said the businessman's attorney, Olin J. Baker of Charlotte, N.C.


"At this point, they are making things up that's absolutely not true."


Not just "not true," but a preposterous, feeble attempt to justify an unjust practice by appealing to fear.



Task force director David Hicks then conceded that because the agents are funded by the money and property they seize from motorists and drug suspects, his cops "know that if the money dries up, then they don't have job."



It's great that Tennessee lawmakers are finally up in arms about this. But it's been going on for years. Even if you support the drug war, consider the incentives here: There's actually a greater incentive for police to target drivers leaving a large metropolitan area than the drivers entering one. Why? Because any member of a drug distribution networking entering a city is likely to be flush with drugs. Those leaving a city are likely to be flush with cash. It's better for police to wait until the drugs are sold and out on the street. And, indeed, Williams' investigations have found exactly that: A driver is much more likely to be pulled over by the task force while driving in the lanes leading out of the city than the lanes leading into it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/tn-hearings-demonstrates-_n_4323673.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

http://www.newschannel5.com/category/211433/nc5-investigates-policing-for-profit

[Winehole23]

Supreme Court widens forfeiture:


At issue in Monday’s ruling in Kaley v. United States (http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Kaley_v_United_States_No_12464_2014_BL_49837_US_Fe b_25_2014_Court/1) is an area of the law known as asset forfeiture. In essence, asset forfeiture is designed to help law enforcement officials seize the ill-gotten fruits of criminal activity, such as cash, cars, or homes. To that end, prosecutors are permitted to freeze the assets of criminal suspects during trial if there is probable cause to believe those assets constitute “proceeds” of the alleged criminal activity. Notice that this freezing occurs before the suspect has been duly convicted.


That timing matters a great deal to the plaintiffs in this case, a married couple by the name of Kaley who have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of selling stolen medical supplies. That may sound like a finding of guilt, but in fact grand jury proceedings are a non-adversarial process where the prosecution alone is permitted to call witnesses and present evidence. The suspects have no opportunity at that point to rebut anything the government alleges against them.
In the wake of the grand jury indictments, the federal government moved to freeze the Kaleys’ assets, including their home and a $500,000 certificate of deposit the couple had recently purchased in order to cover the anticipated legal expenses arising from their trial. Put differently, the government has eliminated their ability to pay their lawyer.


Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Elena Kagan sided with the government. “The question here presented,” Kagan wrote, is whether the Kaleys have a constitutional right “to contest a grand jury’s prior determination of probable cause to believe they committed the crimes charged. We hold that they have no right to relitigate that finding.”


Writing in dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts zeroed in on the dangers lurking in Kagan’s ruling. “The hearing the Kaleys seek would not be mere relitigation of the grand jury proceedings,” Roberts countered, it would be a hearing before a federal judge aimed at determining if the prosecution had indeed proved probable cause for the asset forfeitures. “And of course, the Kaleys would have the opportunity to tell their side of the story—something the grand jury never hears,” he added.
Furthermore, “the Court’s opinion pays insufficient respect to the importance of an independent [criminal defense] bar as a check on prosecutorial abuse and government overreaching,” Roberts declared. “Granting the Government the power to take away a defendant’s chosen advocate strikes at the heart of that significant role.”

http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/27/supreme-court-expands-police-power-to-se

[boutons_deux]

Supreme Court widens forfeiture:

http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/27/supreme-court-expands-police-power-to-se

crazy split for vs against

crazy dangerous

grand jury indictment often means you're convicted, at least totally screwed, before your day in court

[boutons_deux]

How A Grand Jury's Indictment Is Indistinguishable From Being Found Guiltyfrom the there's-a-reason-no-other-countries-use-this-system dept
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140214/07514426227/how-grand-jurys-indictment-is-indistinguishable-being-found-guilty.shtml

[spursncowboys]

Scary. All in the name of protection.

Kind of similar situation: My first apartment, my roommate had a ak-47. When police came in from a noise complaint, they took it and gave us a claim number.

[Winehole23]

DHS enforcing EPA regs?

H8yg-4IoRPo#t=98

[ElNono]

CBC Warns Canadians of "US Law Enforcement Money Extortion Program"

The CBC is warning Canadians about a U.S. program where America law enforcement officers — from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters — are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public's cash as they can (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/american-shakedown-police-won-t-charge-you-but-they-ll-grab-your-money-1.2760736) through seizure laws. "So, for any law-abiding Canadian thinking about an American road trip, here’s some non-official advice: Avoid long chats if you’re pulled over. Answer questions politely and concisely, then persistently ask if you are free to go. Don’t leave litter on the vehicle floor, especially energy drink cans. Don’t use air or breath fresheners; they could be interpreted as an attempt to mask the smell of drugs. Don’t be too talkative. Don’t be too quiet. Try not to wear expensive designer clothes. Don’t have tinted windows. And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.

[Winehole23]

The fact that police have a direct financial interest in forfeitures creates an incentive for pretextual traffic stops aimed at finding money or other property to seize. The Post found that “298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/09/11/how-cops-got-a-license-to-steal-your-money/

[boutons_deux]

John Oliver: Cops Legally Stealing All Your Cash And Cars Because ‘Civil Forfeiture’ (Video)

http://wonkette.com/562513/john-oliver-cops-legally-stealing-all-your-cash-and-cars-because-civil-forfeiture-video

Johnny O. would enjoy Spurstalk. It takes an Englishman to really trash the corruption and insanity of USA. Thanks, HBO!

[boutons_deux]

NYPD cop takes $1,300 from man, pepper-sprays him in the face when he complains

A Brief cell phone video shows a New York City police officer use pepper spray on a man and his sister after they complained the cop had taken more than $1,000 during a stop-and-frisk search.

Lamard Joye was stopped by police Sept. 16 in Coney Island after confronting officers who roughed up a young man nearby, said the man’s attorney.

“Is that necessary?” Joye and some friends asked police, according to the attorney.

One of Joye’s friends begins recording video, posted online by the New York Daily News (http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-allegedly-1-300-cash-man-pocket-article-1.1967792), that shows an officer standing face-to-face with Joye, who oustretches his arms and says, “You see this?”

The officer then reaches into Joye’s pocket and pulls out a handful of cash, and smacks his face and calls him an “asshole” when Joye asks him to return the money.

The video shows the officer squirt pepper spray at Joye, who retreats as onlookers accuse the cop of stealing his money.

Joye’s sister confronts the officer as bystanders accuse him of robbery, and the cop blasts her with pepper spray when she identified two numbers on his badge.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/nypd-cop-takes-1300-from-man-pepper-sprays-him-in-the-face-when-he-complains/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

[Winehole23]

^^^off topic. that's theft, boutons.

[Winehole23]

Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.



The documents offer a sweeping look at how police departments and drug task forces across the country are benefiting from laws that allow them to take cash and property without proving a crime has occurred. The law was meant to decimate drug organizations, but The Post found that it has been used as a routine source of funding for law enforcement at every level.


“In tight budget periods, and even in times of budget surpluses, using asset forfeiture dollars to purchase equipment and training to stay current with the ever-changing trends in crime fighting helps serve and protect the citizens,” said Prince George’s County, Md., police spokeswoman Julie Parker.


Brad Cates, a former director of asset forfeiture programs at the Justice Department, said the spending identified by The Post suggests police are using Equitable Sharing as “a free floating slush fund.” Cates, who oversaw the program while at Justice from 1985 to 1989, said it has enabled police to sidestep the traditional budget process, in which elected leaders create law enforcement spending priorities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/10/11/cash-seizures-fuel-police-spending/

[boutons_deux]

^^^off topic. that's theft, boutons.

forfeiture is often theft, according to your own sacred thread

[Winehole23]

the distinction between forcible theft and theft under the color of legal procedure -- civil forfeiture -- is a meaningful one, not least because the latter leaves the victim with less chance to be made whole. the law casts a veil over corruption.

[Winehole23]

the law needs to be changed.

[boutons_deux]

the law needs to be changed.

Repugs will block any law changing

[Winehole23]

the equities are screwed up ridiculously in favor of LE. they can just take your money and your car and never give them back.

[Winehole23]

all they have to say is, "drug related"

[FromWayDowntown]

all they have to say is, "drug related"

The point, too, is the fact that they just have to say that, with scant obligation to prove that assertion.

[Winehole23]

Do Federal prosecutors and the IRS still use super seals to take money from suspects secretly?



Calling their conduct “constitutionally abhorrent,” a federal judge recently chided government prosecutors for working in secret to keep millions of dollars in cash and assets seized from a Las Vegas gambler and his family in a decadelong bookmaking investigation. (http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/las-vegas-sports-bettor-family-indicted-bookmaking-operation)


In his 31-page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach cast light on the little-known court process that allowed the government to file civil forfeiture actions against Glen Cobb, his 82-year-old parents and his stepdaughter under “super seal” with no notice to anyone — not even the family it targeted.


Government documents filed under super seal, a procedure overseen by the federal clerk’s office, are stored in the court’s vault and not loaded into the electronic case management system. The documents remain secret from the public and opposing parties.


Ferenbach said prosecutors sought a level of secrecy normally reserved for cases that threaten public safety or national security.


“This is unacceptable,” Ferenbach wrote in court papers only recently made public. “Relying on various sealed and super-sealed filings, the government asks the court to rule against private citizens, allow the deprivation of their property and deny them a process to redress possible violations of their constitutional rights through a secret government action that provides no notice or opportunity to be heard.


“Saying that this would offend the Constitution is an understatement. It is constitutionally abhorrent.”
Between them, the IRS and Secret Service attempted to secretly seize more than $13 million from the family under the civil asset forfeiture law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/21/federal-judge-prosecutors-attempt-to-secretly-seize-13-million-was-constitutionally-abhorrent/

[boutons_deux]

they can just take your money and your car and never give them back.

they can take your life and never give it back.

all they have to say is, "I thought I was in danger"

[boutons_deux]

Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize

The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals. Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars.

In one seminar, captured on video in September, Harry S. Connelly Jr., the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., called them “little goodies.” And then Mr. Connelly described how officers in his jurisdiction could not wait to seize one man’s “exotic vehicle” outside a local bar.

“A guy drives up in a 2008 Mercedes, brand new,” he explained. “Just so beautiful, I mean, the cops were undercover and they were just like ‘Ahhhh.’ And he gets out and he’s just reeking of alcohol. And it’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, we can hardly wait.’ ”

Mr. Connelly was talking about a practice known as civil asset forfeiture (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html), which allows the government, without ever securing a conviction or even filing a criminal charge, to seize property suspected of having ties to crime.

The practice, expanded during the war on drugs in the 1980s, has become a staple of law enforcement agencies because it helps finance their work. It is difficult to tell how much has been seized by state and local law enforcement, but under a Justice Department program, the value of assets seized has ballooned to $4.3 billion in the 2012 fiscal year from $407 million in 2001. Much of that money is shared with local police forces.

The practice of civil forfeiture has come under fire in recent months, amid a spate (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken) of negative (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/)press reports (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks) and growing outrage among civil rights advocates, libertarians and members of Congress (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/tim-walberg-an-end-to-the-abuse-of-civil-forfeiture/2014/09/04/e7b9d07a-3395-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html) who have raised serious questions about the fairness of the practice, which critics say runs roughshod over due process rights. In one oft-cited case (http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/us/philadelphia-drug-bust-house-seizure/), a Philadelphia couple’s home was seized after their son made $40 worth of drug sales on the porch.

Despite that opposition, many cities and states are moving to expand civil seizures of cars and other assets. The seminars, some of which were captured on video, raise a curtain on how law enforcement officials view the practice.

From Orange County, N.Y., to Rio Rancho, N.M., forfeiture operations are being established or expanded. In September, Albuquerque, which has long seized the cars of suspected drunken drivers, began taking them from men suspected of trying to pick up prostitutes, landing seven cars during a one-night sting. Arkansas has expanded its seizure law to allow the police to take cash and assets with suspected connections to terrorism, and Illinois moved to make boats fair game under its D.W.I. laws, in addition to cars. In Mercer County, N.J., a prosecutor preaches the “gospel” that forfeiture is not just for drug arrests — cars can be seized in shoplifting and statutory rape cases as well.

“At the grass-roots level — cities, counties — they continue to be interested, perhaps increasingly so, in supplementing their budgets by engaging in the type of seizures that we’ve seen in Philadelphia and elsewhere,” said Lee McGrath, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that has mounted a legal and public relations assault on civil forfeiture (http://www.ij.org/images/pdf_folder/other_pubs/assetforfeituretoemail.pdf).

Much of the nuts-and-bolts how-to of civil forfeiture is passed on in continuing education seminars for local prosecutors and law enforcement officials, some of which have been captured on video. The Institute for Justice, which brought the videos to the attention of The Times, says they show how cynical the practice has become and how profit motives can outweigh public safety.

In the sessions, officials share tips on maximizing profits, defeating the objections of so-called “innocent owners” who were not present when the suspected offense occurred, and keeping the proceeds in the hands of law enforcement and out of general fund budgets. The Times reviewed three sessions, one in Santa Fe (http://www.santafenm.gov/video_on_demand), N.M., that took place in September, one in New Jersey (http://gardenstatecle.com/civil-asset-forfeiture/) that was undated, and one in Georgia in September that was not videotaped.

Officials offered advice on dealing with skeptical judges, mocked Hispanics whose cars were seized, and made comments that, the Institute for Justice said, gave weight to the argument that civil forfeiture encourages decisions based on the value of the assets to be seized rather than public safety. In the Georgia session, the prosecutor leading the talk boasted that he had helped roll back a Republican-led effort to reform civil forfeiture in Georgia (http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2014/mar/03/americans-prosperity-georgia-chapter/georgias-forfeiture-laws-viewed-harshly/), where seized money has been used by the authorities, according to news reports, to pay for sports tickets, office parties, a home security system and a $90,000 sports car.

In defense of the practice, Gary Bergman, a prosecutor with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said civil forfeiture had been distorted in news reports. “All they hear is the woman was left on the side of the road and the police drove off with her car and her money, no connection to drugs,” he told other prosecutors at the session.

“I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen — it does. It should not. But they never hear about all the people that get stopped with the drugs in their cars, in their houses, the manufacturing operations we see, all the useful things we do with the money, the equipment, vehicles. They don’t hear about that.”

( TGB: civil forfeiture for drug possession is one huge reason the War on Drugs is above all business and unstoppable )

In an interview, Mr. Connelly said that the Las Cruces ordinance does only what the State Supreme Court has said is permissible.

Sean D. McMurtry, the chief of the forfeiture unit in the Mercer County, N.J., prosecutor’s office, said forfeiture contributes to only a small percentage of local budgets but it is a good deterrent and works especially well against repeat offenders, such as domestic violence perpetrators who repeatedly violate a restraining order. “We’re very proud of our forfeiture operation,” he said in an interview.

But in the video, Mr. McMurtry made it clear that forfeitures were highly contingent on the needs of law enforcement.

In New Jersey, the police and prosecutors are allowed to use cars, cash and other seized goods; the rest must be sold at auction. Cellphones and jewelry, Mr. McMurtry said, are not worth the bother. Flat screen televisions, however, “are very popular with the police departments,” he said.

Prosecutors boasted in the sessions that seizure cases were rarely contested or appealed. But civil forfeiture places the burden on owners, who must pay court fees and legal costs to get their property back. Many seizures go uncontested because the property is not worth the expense.

And often the first hearing is presided over not by a judge but by the prosecutor whose office benefits from the proceeds, and who has wide discretion in deciding whether to forfeit the property or return it, sometimes in exchange for a steep fine.

Mr. McMurtry said his handling of a case is sometimes determined by department wish lists.

“If you want the car, and you really want to put it in your fleet, let me know — I’ll fight for it,” Mr. McMurtry said, addressing law enforcement officials on the video. “If you don’t let me know that, I’ll try and resolve it real quick through a settlement and get cash for the car, get the tow fee paid off, get some money for it.”

One criticism of civil forfeiture is that it results in widely varied penalties — one drunken driver could lose a $100,000 luxury car, while another forfeits a $2,000 clunker.

In an interview, Mr. McMurtry acknowledged that he exercises a great deal of discretion. “The first offense, if it’s not anything too serious, we’ll come up with a dollar amount, depending on the value of the car and the seriousness of the offense,” he said. “I try to come up with a dollar amount that’s not so high that they can’t afford it, but not so low that it doesn’t have an impact. If it’s a second offense, they don’t get it back.”

Prosecutors estimated that between 50 to 80 percent of the cars seized were driven by someone other than the owner, which sometimes means a parent or grandparent loses their car. In the Santa Fe video, a police officer acknowledged that the law can affect families, but expressed skepticism of owners who say they did not know their relative was running afoul of the law.

“I can’t tell you how many people have come in and said, ‘Oh, my hijito would never do that,’ ” he said, mimicking a female voice with a Spanish accent.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/us/police-use-department-wish-list-when-deciding-which-assets-to-seize.html?_r=0

America is so fucked and so unfuckable.

[pgardn]

Really good stuff Winehole.

Thanks.

[Winehole23]

sex stings motivated by asset forfeiture in Polk Co., Florida?

http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/investigations/2014/12/29/10-investigates-problems-sex-predator-stings/20802715/

[Winehole23]

Holy shit, this is huge:


Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without evidence that a crime occurred.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/afmls/equitable-sharing/).

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.

Holder’s decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

[Winehole23]

Holder’s action comes as members of both parties in Congress are working together to craft legislation to overhaul civil asset forfeiture. Last Friday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/lawmakers-urge-end-to-program-sharing-forfeited-assets-with-state-and-local-police/2015/01/09/8843a43c-982f-11e4-8005-1924ede3e54a_story.html).


Grassley praised Holder’s decision on Friday.


“We’re going to have a fairer justice system because of it,” Grassley said. “The rule of law ought to protect innocent people and civil asset forfeiture hurt a lot of people.”

same

[boutons_deux]

Holy shit, this is huge:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html

yep, enormous. and many, many years too late. All credit, even late, to the Dem Exec.

how many 1000s of lives have police bankrupted, destroyed by civil forfeiture?

[ElNono]

great news, tbh

[Winehole23]

Repugs will block any law changing Republicans support the forthcoming legislative reform, but Holder got out in front of it in a big way.

[Winehole23]

Looks like you're wrong on this one, boutons.

[boutons_deux]

Republicans support the forthcoming legislative reform, but Holder got out in front of it in a big way.

what reform?

[Winehole23]

forthcoming. can't you read?

[boutons_deux]

How Seized Gadgets Fund Electronic Surveillance (http://gizmodo.com/asset-forfeiture-and-the-cycle-of-electronic-surveillan-1680364908)

Last year, the Washington Post's investigative team (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/collection/stop-and-seize-2/) used the Freedom of Information Act to liberate hundreds of thousands of documents associated with federal asset forfeiture, including the entire collection of annual spending disclosures ("Equitable Sharing Agreements") filed with the U.S. Department of Justice by each individual law enforcement agency and task force across the country that receives these funds.

The documents reveal a wide variety of spending, from using seized assets to pay for new vehicles and helicopters, drug "buy" money, payments to confidential informants, travel expenses, law enforcement equipment, and rewards for police, such as "challenge coins.

An examination of these documents reveal the connection between seized assets and electronic surveillance across the country. It many ways, it has been a circular, self-sustaining system: asset forfeiture helps law enforcement agencies pay for electronic surveillance, which allows cops to seize more money to pay for electronic surveillance.

http://gizmodo.com/asset-forfeiture-and-the-cycle-of-electronic-surveillan-1680364908?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

[TeyshaBlue]

forthcoming. can't you read?

No.

[pgardn]

Just lay it bare.

Im glad this stuff gets out and publicized.

[boutons_deux]

Why Eric Holder's civil forfeiture reforms can't keep police from taking your stuff

What the Department of Justice actually announced on Friday was a set of new restrictions (http://www.vox.com/2015/1/16/7558329/eric-holder-asset-forfeiture)on the federal Equitable Sharing Program, which transfers proceeds from seized property to the local and state police departments who made the seizure. The change may affect less than 15 percent of the revenue local and state police departments get from the federal program. While that could have a major impact on some of the worst abuses by police, it falls far short of ending the program altogether — and many of the exploits it enables.

"The exceptions swallow the change," Eapen Thampy, executive director of Americans for Forfeiture Reform, said.

The federal program allows local and state police to seize property without evidence of wrongdoing

Cops can still seize assets in joint investigations with federal authorities

Holder's order only curtails "adoptions" that are requested through the federal program by a local or state police department working on its own. It still allows local and state police to seize and keep assets when working with federal authorities on an investigation, and when the property is linked to public safety concerns — such as illegal firearms, ammunition, and explosives.

The exemption for joint investigations with the feds could leave more than 80 percent of the money captured by local and state police through the federal program untouched. Only about 13 percent of the equitable sharing revenue local and state police got in 2014 came from "adoptions," according to data from the Department of Justice.

Police will be able to work with federal authorities or deputize officers into federal agents to continue most or all of their asset forfeiture activity, Thampy of Americans for Forfeiture Reform argued. And police could use the public safety exemptions, particularly for firearms, to target a wide swath of Americans for asset forfeitures.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/20/7860363/equitable-sharing-police

[boutons_deux]

one down, 1000s to go

IRS Shuts Down Another High-Profile Asset Forfeiture Case, Gives $447,000 Back To Its Rightful Owners

The same seems to have happened here. Many of the reports on asset forfeiture (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html) also detailed the plight of the Hirsch family, whose convenience store distribution company's account attracted IRS attention for the same reason. Asset forfeiture went into play and the IRS walked off with nearly a half-million of Bi-County Distribution's money. Over two years later, the case is suddenly being dropped and the money returned to its rightful owners (http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/legal-watch/prosecutors-return-447000-in-irs-civil-asset-forfeiture-case-73379-1.html).

The government acknowledged in its agreement to return the money that the Hirsch brothers, who operate Bi-County, were never charged with any crime. In fact, all of the money deposited by the Hirsches was lawfully earned from their small business, according to the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm in Arlington, Va., that represented the Hirsches.

The Hirsch case was helped by the family's retention of a forensic accountant, who prepared a report analyzing the company's deposits and financial transactions and handed it over to federal prosecutors. However, it was not helped by the IRS' refusal to make the next move after it seized the family's money back in 2012.

During the two-and-a-half years that the government held the money, federal prosecutors filed no formal action in court to complete the forfeiture, which deprived the Hirsch brothers of an opportunity to contest the seizure in court.

So, media heat or not, it took a lawsuit filed by the Hirsch family to finally regain the $447,000 from the IRS. The settlement doesn't do much for the family who spent more than two years fighting this, as the agreement stipulates each party is responsible for its own legal fees. This will hit the Hirsches harder than it hits the US government since only the former party will be paying out of its own pocket.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150124/13012429805/irs-shuts-down-another-high-profile-asset-forfeiture-case-gives-447000-back-to-its-rightful-owners.shtml

What do you think Hirsch's lawyers, accountants took out the $447K? 20%? I guess Hirsch can claim the lawyer fees as tax deductible.

[Winehole23]

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/02/22/civil-asset-forfeiture-michigan-seizures-aclu-heritage-foundation-institute-justice/23737663/

[RandomGuy]

Do Federal prosecutors and the IRS still use super seals to take money from suspects secretly?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/21/federal-judge-prosecutors-attempt-to-secretly-seize-13-million-was-constitutionally-abhorrent/

wow... I kind of wish the hysterics pointed at Obamacare was pointed at stuff like this.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/02/22/civil-asset-forfeiture-michigan-seizures-aclu-heritage-foundation-institute-justice/23737663/


"He is disabled and lives alone. They took the man's cell phone and his car, and left him out there alone. He doesn't have a landline. He was stranded out there for three days until somebody stopped by."

Icky.

[RandomGuy]

The American Civil Liberties Union has intervened in Michigan cases as well. In 2008, a Detroit Police Department SWAT team, dressed in black and with guns drawn, raided the city's Museum of Contemporary Art, where 130 patrons were celebrating Funk Night, a well-attended monthly party of dancing, drinking and art gazing. The patrons were forced to the ground and, in some cases, purses were searched. All of the patrons were issued tickets for "loitering in a place of illegal occupation," because the museum had failed to get a permit to serve alcohol.

Then police began confiscating their cars, having them towed away under the city's "nuisance abatement" program and insisting that patrons pay $900 apiece to get them back. The ACLU filed suit and the city agreed to drop the criminal charges but refused to return the cars.

The ACLU filed a second suit in 2010, demanding that the cars be returned, and U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts agreed in 2012, noting that illegal search and seizures were a "widespread practice" and a "custom" of the Detroit Police Department.

Remind me to renew my donation to the ACLU.

[boutons_deux]

Driver who had $50,000 in casino winnings seized by Nevada Deputy getting money back (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/13/1370701/-Driver-who-had-50-000-in-casino-winnings-seized-by-Nevada-Deputy-getting-money-back)



http://images.dailykos.com/images/133828/large/Nevada_civilForfeiture.jpg?1426270249


Deputy Dove found $50,000 in Nguyen's briefcase and confiscated it. Deputy Dove did not charge Nguyen with any crime. Nguyen asked Deputy Dove not to take his money, which he said was casino winnings. According to Nguyen's lawsuit, Deputy Dove "threatened to seize and tow his car unless he 'got in his car and drove off and forgot this ever happened.'"

But in a settlement reached last week with Humboldt County, Nevada, Nguyen was fully reimbursed for all of the cash that was taken from him. He also received $10,000 to cover attorney’s fees.

In addition, the settlement fully reimbursed $2,400 to Matt Lee, who, like Nguyen, was pulled over and had his cash confiscated by Dove on I-80. Lee slammed that seizure as “highway robbery.”

In a statement released last Friday, the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office noted the two cases raised “procedural issues.” The stops were “legally made” and the cash “lawfully seized.”

Nguyen’s attorney disagrees. “If they had a defense, they wouldn’t have paid us,” said John Ohlson, a Reno lawyer who represented Nguyen. These cash seizures are a “hot-button topic in Humboldt County,” Ohlson added. “A lot of people don’t like it.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/13/1370701/-Driver-who-had-50-000-in-casino-winnings-seized-by-Nevada-Deputy-getting-money-back?detail=email

[boutons_deux]

‘Policing for Profit’ Gone Wild!

While civil asset forfeiture was originally conceived as way to drain resources away from powerful criminal organizations, a new Drug Policy Alliance report –

Above the Law: An Investigation of Civil Asset Forfeiture Abuses in California (http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/above-law-investigation-civil-asset-forfeiture-california) –

shows how it has now become a relied-upon source of funding for law enforcement agencies all across the state.

Civil forfeiture isn’t limited to wealthy individuals and seizures of ranches, yachts, and vehicles. In fact, the average value of a state seizure in California in 2013 was only $8,542. The low-income and immigrant families often targeted by police for asset forfeiture don’t have the financial resources needed to navigate state law and the long, complicated process to get their property back.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/policing-profit-gone-wild?akid=13055.187590.jaV_aA&rd=1&src=newsletter1035650&t=15

[boutons_deux]

The IRS seized $107,000 from this business owner for making too many small cash deposits

If you deposit more than $10,000 in cash, your bank is required to file a form with the authorities reporting the transaction. But the law also makes it illegal to "structure" deposits — depositing cash in amounts under $10,000 to avoid triggering the reporting requirement.

But aggressive enforcement of these laws can ensnare small business owners whose only crime is dealing in cash. This video tells the story of Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina who had $107,702 seized by the IRS. The agency hasn't charged McLellan with any crime, but under controversial civil asset forfeiture rules (http://www.vox.com/2014/10/14/6969335/civil-asset-forfeiture-what-is-how-work-equitable-sharing-police-seizure) the burden of proof is on him to prove he didn't violate the "structuring" laws. The video was made by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that is representing McLellan.

The New York Times points out (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/politics/rules-change-on-irs-seizures-too-late-for-some.html?_r=0) that business owners can have legitimate reasons for keeping their cash deposits under $10,000. For example, some store owners have insurance policies that only cover cash losses up to $10,000.

It won't be easy for McLellan to get his money back. Many forfeiture targets don't bother to contest seizures under civil forfeiture laws because legal fees would exceed the value of what was taken. But with IJ's help, he might be able to recover the money the IRS took from him.

The IRS declined to comment on the case, citing taxpayer privacy laws.

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/2/8528845/irs-structuring-civil-forfeiture

But Wall St escapes after STEALING Ms of homes, and hiding $Ts overseas.

[boutons_deux]

Hurray, Montana Says Cops Can’t Steal All Your Sh*t And Sell It For Cash Anymore!

Read more at http://wonkette.com/585420/hurray-montana-says-cops-cant-steal-all-your-sht-and-sell-it-for-cash-anymore#o05dZDkuW1mw0ebk.99

[boutons_deux]

‘Why take my vibrator?': Michigan cops legally rob ‘every belonging’ from medical marijuana patient

Medical marijuana user Ginnifer Hency told a group of Michigan lawmakers last week that a drug task force raided her home and kept ‘every belonging’ she owned — including her vibrator — even after a judge dismissed the charges against her.

Hency explained that her neurologist had recommended medical marijuana to treat pain associated with multiple sclerosis. She is also registered in the state of Michigan as a caregiver for five other patients, giving her the ability to distribute medical marijuana.

Hency said that the six ounces in her locked backpack were in compliance with Michigan medical marijuana laws when a drug task force raided her home with four children present.

“They took everything, even though I was fully compliant with the Michigan medical marijuana laws,” she said. “They charged me with possession with intent to deliver, even though I’m allowed to posses and deliver.”

A St. Clair County judge dropped the charges against Hency, but for 10 months law enforcement officials have refused to give back her belongings.

“They have had my stuff for 10 months, my ladder, my iPad, my children’s iPads, my children’s phones, my medicine for my patients,” Hency noted. “Why a ladder? Why my vibrator, I don’t know either. Why TVs?”

“The prosecutor came out to me and said, ‘Well, I can still beat you in civil court. I can still take your stuff.’”

Hency recalled, adding, “I was at a loss. I literally just sat there dumbfounded.”

“And I was just sitting there, like, thinking I was going to be able to get my stuff back, but not in this country. And that is why civil asset forfeiture in this state needs to change.”

According to Sullum, the Michigan House Judiciary Committee is considering a bill that would require local law enforcement agencies to report forfeitures to the state police, and it would raise the standard of proof required for civil forfeiture in drug cases.

But under the proposed law, local agencies would continue to keep 100 percent of the proceeds from forfeitures, “which gives them a strong incentive to target people based on the assets they own instead of the threat they pose to public safety,” Sullum wrote.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/why-take-my-vibrator-michigan-cops-legally-rob-every-belonging-from-medical-marijuana-patient/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

The forfeiture goons must have a great laugh stealing her vibrator. A ladder, some cop must have needed one.

And obviously they know what do with her electronics.

America is fucked by the War on Drugs, and unfuckable.

Mexico, too:

Leading Mexican Journalist Explains Why Everything You're Hearing About The Drug War Is Wrong


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/30/mexico-drug-war_n_7476278.html

She claims USA made a deal with Sinaloa cartel/El Chapo to leave them alone if Sinaloa cartel would give info on the other cartels.

[RandomGuy]

3kEpZWGgJks

[boutons_deux]

Judge blasts government for seizing $167,000 from man in Nevada who was driving too slow

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/judge-blasts-government-for-seizing-167000-from-man-in-nevada-who-was-driving-too-slow/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

[boutons_deux]

Cops Seize College Kid's Savings for No Reason: 5 Outrageous Cases of Asset Forfeiture

Asset forfeiture is a police procedure whereby local police departments can confiscate the property of Americans if they can make a case that this property is essential to criminal activity. You would think such power would be limited to seizing items such as firearms or other dangerous materials, but police departments often abuse this power to grab all sorts of things -- even from people who . Here’s five crazy cases:

1. Seizing The Life Savings Of A 24-Year-Old:

In 2014, a college student named Charles Clarke was traveling (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/30/drug-cops-took-a-college-kids-life-savings-and-now-13-police-departments-want-a-cut/) [3] through Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport when he was accused of having his bag smell like marijuana. Police then went on to seize the $11,000 found within it, accusing him of having done a drug deal to get the money. 13 different departments are now trying to gain control of the money seized from Clarke, although he was never convicted of a crime (there were no drugs in his bag).

2. Confiscating $75,000 From A Budding Restauranteur:

A 55-year old Chinese American from Georgia was traveling in Alabama when police seized $75,000 (http://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/civil-asset-forfeiture-highway-robbery-by-the-police-26677/) [4] he had raised from his relatives to open a new Chinese restaurant. After ten months of legal battles, he was able to get the money back, but he was set back by his own legal fees.

3. Taking Everything From A Cancer Patient:

Police in Michigan busted (http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/02/22/civil-asset-forfeiture-michigan-seizures-aclu-heritage-foundation-institute-justice/23737663/) [5] into Thomas Williams’s home, accusing him of dealing marijuana -- he wasn’t, but as a cancer patient, he was legally allowed to cultivate his own. Police took $11,000, his car, his shotgun, and other belongings and a year later he was still fighting to get them back.

4. Snatch And Grab From Poker Players:

Two poker players driving in Iowa had $100,000 taken (http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/us/asset-seizures/) [6] from them by Iowa police. The encounter with police led to one indictment for possessing drug paraphernalia. There was no hard and fast evidence that the money seized was at all related to any drug crime.


5. Decimating A Nail Salon Owner’s Life Savings:

Vu Do, a man who owns two nail salons in New York City, had $44,000, his life savings, taken from him (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150620/20213931403/nail-salon-owner-sues-return-life-savings-seized-dea-agents-airport.shtml) [7] by the Drug Enforcement Agency while he was at JFK Airport. He had planned to take the money to California to help his family. He didn’t receive even a citation before having his money taken from him, which makes the government’s case that he may have been drug dealing all the more bizarre.
Abuses have become common enough to where two states have banned (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/14/3646619/new-law-bans-civil-forfeiture-in-nm/) [8] civil asset forfeiture altogether while the federal government has started to limit its own use of the procedure.

http://www.alternet.org/print/cops-seize-college-kids-savings-no-reason-5-outrageous-cases-asset-forfeiture

[LnGrrrR]

See, this is the stuff I wish Republicans would get behind, but they're too dumb re: authoritarian worship + war on drugs/crime to pay attention.

[boutons_deux]

Oklahoma Takes A Hard Look At What Police Seize — And How It's Spent

In Oklahoma, some people in charge of enforcing the law seem to be skirting it. State audits have found people in district attorney offices have used seized money and property (http://oklahomawatch.org/2015/07/15/law-enforcement-seizures-misspent-missing/) to live rent-free and pay off student loans.

When state Sen. Kyle Loveless first heard about the audits, he'd already been thinking about amending the civil asset forfeiture laws — mainly because the state doesn't always follow the law.

"We've seen in Oklahoma — through county commissioner scandals, Supreme Court justice scandals — if we let people go without any checks and balances in place, bad things happen," Loveless says.

The forfeiture laws are loose in Oklahoma. Law enforcement can seize property or money they believe was used in a crime — even if they don't charge anyone.

Forfeited funds that aren't contested stay with the seizing agency or local prosecutors. They're supposed to be used for "law enforcement purposes," but Sen. Loveless says paying off student loans with this money seems like a stretch.

(http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/10/363102433/police-can-seize-and-sell-assets-even-when-the-owner-broke-no-law)"When asked about it, law enforcement said, 'Well, he's a DA and he prosecutes bad guys, so therefore it's law enforcement,' " he says. "Wait a minute. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that that passes the smell test."

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/26/426495865/oklahoma-takes-a-hard-look-at-what-police-seize-and-how-its-spent?sc=17&f=1003&utm_source=iosnewsapp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=app

[boutons_deux]

Stop-and-Seize Turns Police Into Self-Funding Gangs

In his book "Why the West Rules -- for Now (http://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-Patterns/dp/0312611692)," historian Ian Morris draws a distinction between two ways of running a country. He calls these “high-end” and “low-end” strategies.

High-end states have efficient, centralized bureaucracies and a credible legal apparatus, while low-end states rely on local authorities to do things like collecting taxes and providing security. According to Morris, high-end states are more effective at creating rich, powerful, technologically advanced civilizations, but they are also more expensive -- when resources are strained, countries sometimes revert to the cheaper, low-end solutions. Often, transitions from high-end to low-end strategies follow wars, famines and other disasters that reduce the state’s ability to finance its activities directly.

Modern rich nations, with their extensive court systems, bureaucracies, militaries and infrastructure, look distinctly high-end compared with the feudal lands of past centuries. But in the U.S., I see some troubling signs of a shift toward low-end institutions.

Bounty hunting was a recent example (now happily going out of style (http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/the-american-bounty-hunter-becomes-an-endangered-species/60233)).

Another example is the use of private individuals or businesses to collect taxes, a practice known as tax farming (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/tax-farming/comment-page-1/).

A third has been the extensive use of mercenaries (https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/12/14/blackwater-baghdad-it-was-horror-movie) in lieu of U.S. military personnel in Iraq and elsewhere.

Practices such as these can save money for the government, but they encourage abuses by reducing oversight.

I’ve recently been reading about an even more worrying example of low-end statecraft: Stop-and-seize (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/). This term refers to a practice (http://danwang.co/civil-asset-forfeiture/), increasingly common since the turn of the century, of police confiscating people’s property without making an arrest or obtaining a warrant. That may not sound legal, but it is! The police simply pull you over and take your money.

A Washington Post investigative report (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/) from a year ago explains:

[A]n aggressive brand of policing [is spreading] that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes...Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back.

Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms…

A thriving subculture of road officers…now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.

“All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym…Hain’s book calls for “turning our police forces into present-day Robin Hoods.”


This is exactly the process of devolution that Morris describes. With government unable to pay police as much as they need or would like, police are confiscating their revenue directly from the populace.

The threat to individual liberty from stop-and-seize is painfully clear. Without requirements for an arrest or for a warrant, the power to confiscate cash is a clear diminution of property rights.

Effectively, the police have been given official sanction to commit literal highway robbery without the threat of punishment. People whose property was seized must pay a lot of money and spend a long time in court for even the chance of getting it back, and police who seize money with no good reason don't, apparently, suffer any threat of discipline.

But stop-and-seize also presents a danger to public trust. When the cops go around taking money from innocent people to fund their own departments and salaries, it understandably decreases trust in the government and the legal system. That is something we can ill-afford at the present time, with trust in the police already at a low ebb over a series of videos of police killings. If they don’t trust the government, people will be less likely to report criminals, and possibly less likely to follow the law themselves.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-12/stop-and-seize-turns-police-into-self-funding-gangs

[Winehole23]

See, this is the stuff I wish Republicans would get behind, but they're too dumb re: authoritarian worship + war on drugs/crime to pay attention.Woah!

Hey there, LnGrrrR. Where you been?

[boutons_deux]

The Nation's Criminals Can't Keep Up With The Government's Legalized Theft Programs

from the the-only-solution-is-a-more-productive-criminal-element dept


The Institute for Justice has released its latest report (http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/policing-for-profit-2nd-edition.pdf) on asset forfeiture. Despite some recentlegislative attempts (https://www.techdirt.com/search-g.php?q=asset+forfeiture+reform) to add a much-needed conviction requirement to the seizure of property, most of the country still allows law enforcement to proceed under the assumption that money, vehicles and houses are "guilty," even if those they take this property from are, for all intents and purposes, innocent.

The absence of this key factor has resulted in decades of nationwide abuse. The IJ's updated chart ranking states' asset forfeiture policies on an A-F scale shows only one A rating: New Mexico. The state's recent passage (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150410/17083430613/new-mexico-passes-law-saying-law-enforcement-cant-steal-your-property-without-criminal-conviction.shtml) of significant asset forfeiture reform is the only highlight in the report. The rest of the nation continues on its path of underachievement, preferring to defer to law enforcement's best judgment on how to fight the Drug War. (While also occasionally used to target fraud and organized crime, forfeiture programs are now mostly deployed to take money from people/vehicles that smell like marijuana.)

https://i.imgur.com/CrMGG39.png

The largest amount of resistance (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150909/10441532205/doj-helping-law-enforcement-agencies-fight-back-against-asset-forfeiture-reform.shtml) to asset forfeiture reform efforts come from the agencies that benefit most from the liquidation of seized property. :lol duh

https://i.imgur.com/NvlW3j2.png

In 2014 alone, US Attorneys "forfeited" $4.5 billion. This dollar amount now places federal law enforcement at the top of the list of of "People Who Take Stuff That Belongs To Others." (http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/39102)


According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

Of course, there are several legitimate (i.e., tied to convictions) forfeitures included in that amount, whereas no burglary can ever be considered "legitimate." And, as the DOJ points out,some recent sizable seizures have produced gaudy forfeiture numbers (http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/crime-and-justice-news/2015-11-civil-asset-forfeiture-report).

A Justice Department spokesman pointed out that big cases, like the $1.7 billion Bernie Madoff judgment and a $1.2 billion case associated with Toyota, have led to large deposits to forfeiture funds in a single year.



https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151121/08551332878/nations-criminals-cant-keep-up-with-governments-legalized-theft-programs.shtml

Just another way America is fucked and unfuckable. Corrupt, militarized, untouchable, murderous police stealing from innocent citizens

[Capt Bringdown]

Cops Took More Property From Americans Than Burglars Did Last Year (http://gawker.com/cops-took-more-property-from-americans-than-burglars-di-1744205551?sidebar_promotions_icons=testingon&utm_expid=66866090-67.e9PWeE2DSnKObFD7vNEoqg.2&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com% 2F2015%2F11%2F200pm-water-cooler-11242015.html)
Last year, all of America’s burglars extracted a total of just $3.9 billion worth of property from their cumulative marks. Pansies, the nation’s cops spit in the general direction of that paltry figure. That’s all you got?

That’s because over the same period, U.S. law enforcement officials netted $4.5 billion in goods from Americans through a process known as civil asset forfeiture, an astounding figure that economist Martin Armstrong noted on his blog last week in response to an Institute for Justice report.

Consider that for a moment: in 2014, cops took more property from Americans than burglars did. -- more --> (http://gawker.com/cops-took-more-property-from-americans-than-burglars-di-1744205551?sidebar_promotions_icons=testingon&utm_expid=66866090-67.e9PWeE2DSnKObFD7vNEoqg.2&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com% 2F2015%2F11%2F200pm-water-cooler-11242015.html)

[boutons_deux]

New Mexico Legislators Sue City For Refusing To Follow New Asset Forfeiture Law

Earlier this year (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150410/17083430613/new-mexico-passes-law-saying-law-enforcement-cant-steal-your-property-without-criminal-conviction.shtml), the state of New Mexico passed one of the most solid pieces of asset forfeiture reform legislation in the country. All it asked for was what most people would consider to be common sense: if the government is going to seize assets, the least it could do in return is tie the seizure to a conviction.

Now, the state is finding out that bad habits are hard to break. CJ Ciaramella reports that the government is going after another part of the government for its refusal to stop taking stuff without securing a conviction (http://www.buzzfeed.com/cjciaramella/new-mexico-lawmakers-sue-albuquerque-stop-seizing-cars#.jh8m718J4M).

Two New Mexico state senators are suing Albuquerque after the city has refused to stop seizing residents’ cars, despite a law passed earlier this year ending the practice of civil asset forfeiture.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, New Mexico state senators Lisa Torraco and Daniel Ivey-Soto said Albuquerque is defying the new law and “has continued to take property using civil forfeiture without requiring that anyone—much less the property owner—be convicted of a crime.”

These would be the two senators who pushed for the much-needed reform. They managed to get the law passed, but Albuquerque (along with other cities in the state) haven't shown much interest in altering their tactics. The only incentive the new law has on its side is the threat of legal action or legislative pressure. The old incentives -- hundreds of thousands of dollars -- are still motivating local law enforcement.

Albuquerque has a particularly aggressive program to seize vehicles from drivers suspected of DWI. According to the Albuquerque Journal (http://www.abqjournal.com/575256/news/you-dont-have-to-be-driving-to-lose-your-car.html), the city has seized 8,369 vehicles and collected more than $8.3 million in forfeiture revenues since 2010.

The city's attorney argues this newly-illegal activity is still legal, because drunk driving.

“Our ordinance is a narrowly-tailored nuisance abatement law to protect the public from dangerous, repeat DWI offenders and the vehicles they use committing DWI offenses, placing innocent citizens’ lives and property at risk,” city attorney Jessica Hernandez said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The ordinance provides defenses to forfeiture to protect innocent owners and has been upheld by the courts.”

Yes, all asset forfeiture statutes and ordinances theoretically provide "defenses to forfeiture (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151010/21271832499/appeals-court-smacks-lower-court-making-it-even-harder-people-to-challenge-civil-asset-forfeiture.shtml)" and have been "upheld by courts." That doesn't make them right, especially when a law directly governing the city's actions has been passed and forbids the very thing it continues to do.

And as for the DWI excuse, the city itself admits that half the vehicles it seizes do not belong to the person driving them. So, all it's really doing is taking cars because it can, not because it has any interest in preventing drunk drivers from driving. Then it lays the burden of proof -- along with the time and expense of fighting these seizures -- on the people whose vehicles have been taken (often for the actions of someone else) and calls it a reasonable avenue of "defense to forfeiture."

Once vehicles are seized, it generally takes $850 to liberate them. Most are auctioned. This money then becomes part of a cash-heavy feedback loop by going directly to the prosecutors and police departments who run the seizure program.

Stacking the deck further is the fact that the city counts its seizures before they're seized as part of its budgetary plans.

According to Wednesday’s lawsuit, Albuquerque forecasts how many vehicles it will not only seize but sell at auction. The city’s 2016 budget estimates it will have 1,200 vehicle seizure hearings, release 350 vehicles under agreements with the property owners, immobilize 600 vehicles, and to sell 625 vehicles at auction.

When government agencies have predetermined the amount (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141110/16271429098/asset-forfeiture-is-just-cops-going-shopping-stuff-they-want.shtml) of vehicles they will need to seize to hit budget projections, they will do everything in their power -- including, apparently, ignoring new laws forbidding this sort of thing -- to ensure the number of vehicles they seize is the number of vehicles they planned to seize. The incentives could not be more perverted and yet, government officials claim the system will somehow result in only the vehicles of the truly guilty being taken and sold to pay for more vehicles being taken and sold.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151202/08244432967/new-mexico-legislators-sue-city-refusing-to-follow-new-asset-forfeiture-law.shtml

[Th'Pusher]

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/24/10660414/asset-forfeiture-equitable-sharing

[Winehole23]

right direction, wrong reason?


The memo the DOJ sent Monday suspends all equitable sharing — regardless of whether the assets got seized by local or state police and "adopted" by the feds, or seized by a local-federal task force. So it's much broader than the January 2015 changes — and it doesn't provide easy workarounds, like simply deputizing local police officers into federal agents.


However, the DOJ makes it clear that this is happening for budgetary reasons. Under the funding bill Congress passed in December 2015, which funds the government through September 2016, the DOJ feels it isn't getting enough money from Congress to be able to turn forfeited assets back to local police. So it's "suspending" the sharing program until it starts getting more money again.

[boutons_deux]

"isn't getting enough money from Congress"

Thanks, Repugs. Fucking up EVERYTHING they touch.

[boutons_deux]

Court Won't Let Government Screw Forfeiture Victim Out Of Legal Fees

The government has made one last attempt to screw over a victim of an IRS bank account seizure. The screwing began in December of 2014, when the IRS -- despite stating it would not perform forfeitures if there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing -- lifted $107,000 (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150502/11592830861/irs-continuing-to-pursue-asset-forfeiture-case-that-contradicts-own-policy-structuring-prosecutions.shtml) from convenience store owner Lyndon McLellan. This was yet another one of the IRS's "structuring" cases, predicated solely on the fact that multiple deposits under $10,000 were made. ($10,000 triggers automatic reporting to the federal government.)

After the IRS announced it would not be pursuing questionable structuring seizures -- thanks mainly to several rounds of negative press -- it still continued to pursue McLellan's case, despite IRS Commissioner John Koskinen telling a Congressional subcommittee that this was exactly the sort of case the IRS would no longer be pursuing.

The prosecutor in charge of McLellan's case was less than enthused about the public discussion of the McLellan "investigation." He claimed the public discussion only made IRS investigators angrier and more likely to act vindictively (I'm paraphrasing) and claimed the "final offer" would only be 50% of the seized funds.

The "final offer" turned out not to be all that "final." The IRS eventually dropped the case (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150515/10012531018/irs-drops-forfeiture-case-returns-107000-taken-bogus-structuring-prosecution.shtml) and returned all $107,000 to McLellan. However, it did not feel McLellan was entitled to compensation for legal fees because he did not "substantially prevail" in his case against the IRS seizure.

The government's argument against the awarding of fees was basically nothing more than it illustrating how easy it is for it to rig the game. All it takes is a more sympathetic -- or less attentive -- judge.

The government tried to dismiss (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2704483/ECF-No-35-Order-Denying-Motion-to-Dismiss.pdf) the case without prejudice, knowing that caselaw would side with it on the denial of fees.


Under CAFRA (Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act), a claimant can recover his reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs only if he has "substantially prevailed" in a civil forfeiture proceeding. 28 U.S.C. § 2465(b)(1 ). A number of courts have held that a claimant has not substantially prevailed where the forfeiture proceeding was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.


Indeed, this court can find no examples of any court reaching the opposite conclusion. Those courts that have considered the issue primarily rely on the Supreme Court's rationale regarding fee-shifting provisions found in Buckhannon Bd & Care Home,. Inc. v. W Va. Dept of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598 (2001). In Buckhannon, the Court held that prevailing party status requires an "alteration in the legal relationship of the parties." Id at 605. Thus, an enforceable judgment on the merits and a court-ordered consent decree carry the necessary "judicial imprimatur" to convey prevailing party status, while a voluntary change in a party's conduct -- despite being inspired by a lawsuit -- does not.


The government argued in its brief that the case should only be dismissed without prejudice, raising several of its own claims as apparent legal strawmen, but refusing to address the solitary argument raised by McLellan -- that dismissal without prejudice would preclude him from seeking legal fees.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160205/07141233530/court-wont-let-government-screw-forfeiture-victim-out-legal-fees.shtml

So the govt makes you spend $10Ks on legal fees, then gives you all your money back, and walks away.

[boutons_deux]

Texas fails to protect property owners from civil forfeiture

Civil forfeiture is a booming industry in Texas. Every year, police and prosecutors statewide take in more and more cash and property from people without so much as charging them with a crime.

Between 2001 and 2013 (the most recent year for which these numbers are available), Texas law enforcement agencies have taken in over half a billion dollars in forfeiture revenue - an average of $41.5 million per year.

Make no mistake: Reform is sorely needed.

Texas' civil forfeiture laws receive a grade of "D&" in "Policing for Profit," a recently updated nationwide report from the Institute for Justice.

Texas scores so poorly for three reasons.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Miller-Texas-fails-to-protect-property-owners-6676811.php

my guess: slave state TX uses forfeiture most on blacks and browns.

[boutons_deux]

Justice Department restarts program to seize assets from suspected criminals

Advocates of the program frame it as a necessity, as it weakens criminal economy and supplements underfunded local police departments.

The US Department of Justice will restore the "equitable-sharing" program that allows police officers to prosecute civil forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law.

The controversial program authorizes police enforcement to reap considerable amounts of profits from seized assets and property from citizens suspected of committing offenses (http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/29/department-of-justice-brings-back-asset-forfeiture-from-the-dead/), even when they have not been convicted, The Daily Caller reported.

The program was temporarily suspended last December (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/23/the-feds-just-shut-down-a-huge-program-that-lets-cops-take-your-stuff-and-keep-it/?tid=a_inl), as a result of of budget reductions contained in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 and the December 2015 Consolidated Appropriations Act, drawing widespread condemnation from advocates of the program.


Civil asset forfeiture is a contentious practice that has long faced scrutiny from criminal justice reformers contending that the measure allows police officers to seek profits at the cost of justice. The practice allows officers to seize assets without proof of offense.

For instance, police officers sized $11,000 from (http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8792623/civil-forfeiture-charles-clarke)24-year-old (http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8792623/civil-forfeiture-charles-clarke)Charles Clarke, claiming that his luggage smelled like Marijuana (http://www.vox.com/2015/6/17/8792623/civil-forfeiture-charles-clarke), Vox reported.

The officers didn't find any marijuana after conducting a search, though Clarke did admit to having smoked marijuana on the plane. In these cases, the property or asset is considered the defendant, which means that the innocence of the owner is irrelevant (https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/97-139.pdf), according to the Congressional Research Service.


Sara Stillman of The New Yorker notes (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken):

“A piece of property does not share the rights of a person. There’s no right to an attorney and, in most states, no presumption of innocence.Owners who wish to contest often find that the cost of hiring a lawyer far exceeds the value of their seized goods. Washington, DC, charges up to twenty-five hundred dollars simply for the right to challenge a police seizure in court, which can take months or even years to resolve.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0329/Justice-Department-restarts-program-to-seize-assets-from-suspected-criminals

[boutons_deux]

Even with Scalia gone ...

Supreme Court Rules Against Freezing Assets Not Tied to Crimes

The government may not freeze assets needed to pay criminal defense lawyers if the assets are not linked to a crime, the Supreme Court (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org) ruled Wednesday in a 5-to-3 decision (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/15pdf/14-419_nmip.pdf) that scrambled the usual alliances.

The case arose from the prosecution of Sila Luis, a Florida woman, on charges of Medicare (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) fraud that, according to the government, involved $45 million in charges for unneeded or nonexistent services. Almost all of Ms. Luis’s profits from the fraud, prosecutors said, had been spent by the time charges were filed.

Prosecutors instead asked a judge to freeze $2 million of Ms. Luis’s funds that were not connected to the suspected fraud, saying the money would be used to pay fines and provide restitution should she be convicted. Ms. Luis said she needed the money to pay her lawyers.

The judge issued an order freezing her assets. That order, the Supreme Court (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org) ruled, violated her Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/stephen_g_breyer/index.html?inline=nyt-per), in a plurality opinion also signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case was simple.

The government can seize, Justice Breyer wrote, “a robber’s loot, a drug seller’s cocaine, a burglar’s tools, or other property associated with the planning, implementing, or concealing of a crime.”

But it cannot, he said, freeze money or other assets unconnected to the crime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/us/politics/supreme-court-rules-against-freezing-assets-not-tied-to-crimes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

but if there is no crime at all, can the police goons grab your possessions?

[Winehole23]

Last year New Mexico and Montana became the first two states to require a conviction (http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2015/07/02/civil-forfeiture-now-requires-a-criminal-conviction-in-montana-and-new-mexico/#6dd8a2ac6a48) for law enforcement to take possession of cash and property involved in crimes.http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2016/04/on-geography-of-asset-forfeiture-and.html

[boutons_deux]

Law Enforcement Forced To Hand Over $41K It Seized From Businessman At Airport, Plus Another $10K In Legal Fees

An unidentified Techdirt reader sends in the news that Arizona law enforcement is going to be handing over $10,000 to Madji Khaleq as a result of a failed asset forfeiture attempt. This would be in addition to the $41,870 the DEA already handed back to Khaleq -- every cent of the cash federal agents seized from him at the Tucson airport.

Khaleq had a legitimate reason to be carrying $40K in cash on him (http://tucson.com/news/local/cash-seizure-at-tucson-airport-ends-with-k-payout-from/article_0bf15b95-b302-5665-8e6c-b2cedb5bbf5f.html).

Court documents show Khaleq told the Drug Enforcement Administration agent who seized the money that he owned a convenience store and check-cashing business in Denver, as well as a wholesale electronics distributorship in California. He said he came to Tucson to buy a smoke shop on South 12th Avenue, but the deal fell through.

But the DEA firmly believes cash = drugs (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150511/09225630958/dea-takes-16000-train-passenger-because-it-can.shtml) even when there's no evidence pointing towards illicit sources or uses for the funds, so it relieved Khaleq of his burdensome bankroll. Local law enforcement then swooped in to claim its part in the haul… only to return it when Khaleq lawyered up.


Khaleq challenged the seizure in Pima County Superior Court and the Pima County Attorney’s Office withdrew its request for forfeiture of the money in November.

The $10,000 in legal fees due Khaleq will come from the County Attorney's Office and a Tucson-based counter-narcotics task force. Apparently the DEA has washed its hands of the whole affair after giving Khaleq the money it took from him.

The government is unhappy to be paying a drug trafficker an additional $10,000. Oh, yeah. It still believes Khaleq is involved in drug trafficking despite losing this lawsuit and 10 grand in discretionary spending.

In the March 10 stipulation of dismissal, Deputy County Attorney Edward Russo said the $10,000 is not an admission that Khaleq has shown he is “entitled to an award of attorney’s fees, costs or damages in this action.”


Also:

When asked if the County Attorney’s Office still suspected Khaleq of being involved in illicit activity, Johnson said: “Yes, we don’t just take money from people for no reason.” :lol


The (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151108/11295232758/judge-pushes-burden-proof-back-dea-agents-who-seized-11000-traveling-college-student.shtml) hell (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150515/10012531018/irs-drops-forfeiture-case-returns-107000-taken-bogus-structuring-prosecution.shtml) you (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150801/16210331821/government-seizes-vehicles-worth-1-million-brings-no-charges-keeps-cars.shtml) don't (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150629/17292931495/judge-orders-lying-cheating-government-to-return-167000-to-man-they-stole-it.shtml).

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160321/18404933973/law-enforcement-forced-to-hand-over-41k-it-seized-businessman-airport-plus-another-10k-legal-fees.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techdirt%2Ffeed+%28Techdirt%2 9

[boutons_deux]

Nebraska Just Abolished Civil Forfeiture, Now Requires A Criminal Conviction To Take Property


(From Forbes)

The newly signed law provides sweeping reforms. First and foremost, Nebraska now requires a criminal conviction to forfeit property.

The accused must be convicted of an offense involving illegal drugs, child pornography or illegal gambling to lose their cash, vehicles, firearms or real estate.

Nebraska joins just nine other states (http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/grading-state-federal-civil-forfeiture-laws/) that require a criminal conviction as a prerequisite for most or all forfeiture cases.

http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2016/04/nebraska-just-abolished-civil-forfeiture-now-requires-a-criminal-conviction-to-take-property/

http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/grading-state-federal-civil-forfeiture-laws/

[boutons_deux]

How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church

Eh Wah had been on the road for 12 hours when he saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror.

The 40-year-old Texas man, a refugee from Burma who became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago, was heading home to Dallas to check on his family. He was on a break from touring the country for months as a volunteer manager for the Klo & Kweh Music Team (http://www.klokweh.org/), a Christian rock ensemble from Burma, also known as Myanmar. The group was touring the United States to raise funds for a Christian college in Burma and an orphanage in Thailand.

Eh Wah managed the band's finances, holding on to the cash proceeds it raised from ticket and merchandise sales at concerts. By the time he was stopped in Oklahoma, the band had held concerts in 19 cities across the United States, raising money via tickets that sold for $10 to $20 each (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/04/tickets.pdf).

The sheriff's deputies in Muskogee County, Okla., pulled Eh Wah over for a broken tail light (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/04/20160413_091052.jpg)about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27. The deputies started asking questions — a lot of them.

And at some point, they brought out a drug-sniffing dog, which alerted on the car. That's when they found the cash, according to the deputy's affidavit (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/04/affidavit.pdf).

There was the roughly $33,000 from ticket sales and donations, much of it earmarked for the religious college back in Burma, according to Eh Wah and the band members.

There was the $1,000 in cash donations to the orphanage in Thailand, small bills bundled in two or three dozen sealed envelopes with the orphanage's name written on them.

There was $8,000 in cash from the band's CD and souvenir sales.

A $9,000 cash gift to one of the band's members from his family and friends in Buffalo — cash that Eh Wah says he didn't even know was in the blue and white gift bag he had been asked to hold.

And $2,000 in cash for Eh Wah and the band's incidental expenses on the trip: meals and tolls, for example.



All told, the deputies found $53,000 in cash in Eh Wah's car that night. Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson said he couldn't comment on the particulars of Eh Wah's case because of the open investigation, but it is clear from his deputy's affidavit (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/04/affidavit.pdf) that the officers didn't like Eh Wah's explanation for how he got the cash.

"Inconsistent stories," the affidavit notes. Despite the positive alert from the drug-sniffing dog, no drugs, paraphernalia or weapons were found. Just the cash.

They took Eh Wah to the police station for more questioning. They let him drive his own car there, with deputies' vehicles in front of and behind him the whole way. They interrogated him for several hours.

"I just couldn't believe it," Eh Wah saidin an interview. "An officer was telling me that 'you are going to jail tonight.' And I don’t know what to think. What did I do that would make me go to jail? I didn’t do anything. Why is he saying that?"

Eh Wah tried to explain himself, but he had difficulty because English isn't his first language. He says he had a hard time understanding the officers, and they had a hard time understanding him. He told them about the band and his role with it and how he had been entrusted with the cash. He even had the officers call one of the band's leaders, Saw Marvellous Soe, who had decamped to Miami while the band was on a break.

Marvellous saw Eh Wah's number on his phone, but when he answered, he was surprised to hear someone speaking with a thick Southern drawl that he could barely understand — "like in the movies," Marvellous said in an interview.

"The police officer started asking questions," Marvellous recalled. "I explained: 'We are a music team. We came here for a tour.'" Marvellous tried to explain that the band was from Burma.

"He kept telling me, 'You are wrong, you are wrong,'" Marvellous said. "Everything I said, [he said,] 'You are wrong.' I said: 'We are doing a good thing! And now you are accusing us of being like a drug dealer or something like that.'"

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/how-license-plate-readers-have-helped-police-and-lenders-target-the-poor/479436/

[ElNono]

Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Techdirt Over The Identity Of A Hyperbolic Commenter

Techdirt is in hot water with the Department of Homeland Security (http://boingboing.net/2016/05/06/homeland-security-want-to-subp.html) all thanks to a commenter known as Digger. Techdirt's Tim Cushing published a story (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160410/13325434145/lawsuit-cbp-took-240000-man-refused-to-respond-to-his-forfeiture-challenge-until-it-had-already-processed-it.shtml) about the Hancock County, IN Sheriff's Department officers who stole $240,000 under color of asset forfeiture. In response to the story, Digger wrote, "The only 'bonus' these criminals [the Sheriff's Department officers] are likely to see could be a bullet to their apparently empty skulls." The Department of Homeland Security then contacted Techdirt (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160506/10324634363/homeland-security-wants-to-subpoena-us-over-clearly-hyperbolic-techdirt-comment.shtml) to ask whom they should send a subpoena to in order to identify Digger. Masnick is worried the subpoena could come with a gag order. "Normally, we'd wait for the details before publishing, but given a very similar situation involving commenters on the site Reason last year, which included a highly questionable and almost certainly unconstitutional gag order preventing Reason from speaking about it (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150619/17175331395/confirmed-doj-obtained-gag-order-to-keep-reason-informing-affected-commenters-discussing-subpoena.shtml), we figured it would be worth posting about it before we've received any such thing," Masnick writes.

[Warlord23]

Oklahoma police taking this racket to a new low, scanning people's prepaid cards and robbing them of their money. As usual, no recourse since they're charging the asset, not the individual. And the loot is being shared with the firm making the readers: "Each ERAD reader is costing the state about $5,000, plus about $1,500 for training. The state has agreed to pay the manufacturer, ERAD Group, 7.7 percent of all funds forfeited with the readers".

What's next ... taking money off people's debit cards? Pitiful. Good to know that the OK legislature is focusing on more important things like passing a bill criminalizing abortion and passing a motion to impeach Obama over the transgender bathroom issue.

http://m.news9.com/story.aspx?story=32168555&catId=112032

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oklahoma-police-erad_us_57584060e4b0e39a28ac2083

http://reason.com/blog/2016/06/08/oklahoma-police-can-pull-you-over-and-di

[boutons_deux]

So OKie cops can removed your wallet and go into it on what grounds, what probably cause?

The fucking police state is irreversible and unstoppable. Expect other Repug states to follow OKie's example. And FUCK ERAD, too.

[Winehole23]

DOJ resumes Equitable Sharing Program


Last December, civil liberties advocates cheered (http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/civil-asset-forfeiture-takes-another-hit) the Department of Justice’s announcement that it was indefinitely suspending its equitable sharing asset forfeiture program due to fiscal constraints. This week, unfortunately, the Department of Justice lifted the suspension (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndwv/pr/department-justice-resumes-program-share-federally-seized-assets-local-law-enforcement) and resumed payments to local police departments.



Civil asset forfeiture allows the government to seize property and cash from Americans, without charge or trial, on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing. In most jurisdictions, the seizing agency gets to keep some or even all of the proceeds, creating a clear profit motive for the agencies to seize property.



Equitable sharing is a federal program which allows state and local law enforcement to seize property under federal, rather than state, forfeiture law. Law enforcement agencies in states with more restrictive forfeiture laws are thus able to get around those state restrictions by participating in the federal program.



The equitable sharing program also provides an 80% kickback to the seizing local agency, which is a larger share of the proceeds than many states allow. As one might expect, the more a state restricts the use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture, the more state and local police tend to rely (http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/federal-equitable-sharing/) on the federal program instead.

http://www.cato.org/blog/department-justice-restarts-equitable-sharing-program

[boutons_deux]

DOJ resumes Equitable Sharing Program

http://www.cato.org/blog/department-justice-restarts-equitable-sharing-program

this fucking shit is irreversible, unstoppable, because a Repug strict obstructionist Congress would never pass a law stopping forfeitures (if one was ever proposed).

[boutons_deux]

Police Can Use a Legal Grey Area to Rob Anyone of Their Belongings

When officers categorize wallets or cellphones as evidence, getting them back can be nearly impossible—even if the owner isn’t charged with a crime.

Last summer, Kenneth Clavasquin was arrested in front of the Bronx apartment he shared with his mother. While the 23-year-old was being processed, the New York Police Department took his possessions, including his iPhone, and gave him a receipt detailing the items in police custody. That receipt would be his ticket to getting back his stuff after his case ended.

Clavasquin needed to get a release from the district attorney’s office stating that his property would no longer be needed for evidence. Over the following three months, he repeatedly called the assistant district attorney assigned to his case, but he neither got a release nor a written explanation of why he was being denied one.

Then, with the help of an attorney at the Bronx Defenders, a public-defender office that had been representing him since the day after his arrest, Clavasquin sent a formal written request for the district attorney’s release. He got no response.

Clavasquin still hasn’t gotten his phone back—but he had to continue paying for its service contract as it remained locked up in an NYPD facility.

His ordeal is a common one. Earlier this year, the Bronx Defenders filed a class-action lawsuit (http://www.bronxdefenders.org/encarnacion-v-city-of-new-york/) against New York City that named three plaintiffs: Clavasquin and two other men who were also given the runaround when they tried to pick up their property, including their cellphones, after an arrest.

The lawsuit alleges that the city has shown a “policy, pattern, and practice” of unconstitutionally depriving people of their property after an arrest, without due process.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/08/how-police-use-a-legal-grey-area-to-rob-suspects-of-their-belongings/495740/

Any wonder why blacks and browns fucking HATE the cops?

Cops take your wallet? you lose cash, drivers license, IDs, credit/ATM cards.

[boutons_deux]

Albuquerque Police Seize Vehicle From Owner Whose Son Drove It While Drunk; Want $4,000 To Give It Back

the city of Albuquerque was sued (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151202/08244432967/new-mexico-legislators-sue-city-refusing-to-follow-new-asset-forfeiture-law.shtml) by state legislators because its police refused to stop seizing assets -- mainly vehicles -- without obtaining convictions.

The city claimed the new law only applied to state police, and anyway, it was only performing a valuable community service by taking cars away from members of the community.


“Our ordinance is a narrowly-tailored nuisance abatement law to protect the public from dangerous, repeat DWI offenders and the vehicles they use committing DWI offenses, placing innocent citizens’ lives and property at risk,” city attorney Jessica Hernandez said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The ordinance provides defenses to forfeiture to protect innocent owners and has been upheld by the courts.”


lol. "Defenses."

Here's what really happens when the Albuquerque police blow off state law and perform "nuisance abatement." (https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/31/woman-sues-albuquerque-seizing-civil-asset-forfeiture-ban)

After her son was arrested in April for drunk driving while at the wheel of her borrowed Nissan Verso, Arlene Harjo, 56, found herself in court being told that she had to transfer ownership of the car to the city, or else settle the case for $4,000 to get it back.


https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160901/10025835416/albuquerque-police-seize-vehicle-owner-whose-son-drove-it-while-drunk-want-4000-to-give-it-back.shtml

[Winehole23]

Chicago PD steals money from the public to spy on the public:


The Chicago Reader has put together a massive, must-read investigation into the Chicago Police Department's secret budget (http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-department-civil-forfeiture-investigation/Content?oid=23728922). The Chicago PD has -- for years now -- used the spoils of its asset forfeiture program to obtain surveillance equipment like Stingrays. This discretionary spending is done off the city's books, allowing the CPD to avoid anything that might prevent it from acquiring surveillance tech -- like meddling city legislators… or the public itself.



Since 2009, the year CPD began keeping electronic records of its forfeiture accounts, the department has brought in nearly $72 million in cash and assets through civil forfeiture, keeping nearly $47 million for itself and sending on almost $18 million to the Cook County state's attorney's office and almost $7.2 million to the Illinois State Police, according to our analysis of CPD records.



The Chicago Police Department doesn't disclose its forfeiture income or expenditures to the public, and doesn't account for it in its official budget. Instead, CPD's Bureau of Organized Crime, the division tasked with drug- and gang-related investigations, oversees the forfeiture fund in what amounts to a secret budget—an off-the-books stream of income used to supplement the bureau's public budget.



The Reader found that CPD uses civil forfeiture funds to finance many of the day-to-day operations of its narcotics unit and to secretly purchase controversial surveillance equipment without public scrutiny or City Council oversight.



It sounds like a lot of money -- $72 million in civil forfeiture funds -- and it is. But it's not like this money comes from a few large busts that have seriously affected the city's drug trade. That may be the rationale for the PD's convictionless seizing of property and cash (just like "terrorism" is often cited (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140619/09211027625/stingray-documents-show-law-enforcement-using-terrorism-to-obtain-equipment-to-fight-regular-crime.shtml) when acquiring surveillance tech ultimately destined for plain vanilla law enforcement use). But in reality, the forfeiture's rarely do anything more than financially cripple a large number of individuals who have little to anything to do with drug trafficking. The Chicago Reader reports that the median seizure in Illinois is only $530 -- hardly an amount one associates with criminal empires. In fact, the normal cash seizure probably sounds more like the following than a breathtaking dismantling of a local drug-running crew.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161008/12004935747/documents-show-chicago-pd-secretly-using-forfeiture-funds-to-buy-surveillance-equipment.shtml

[boutons_deux]

84% of Americans Oppose Civil Asset Forfeiture—But Only Once They're Told What It Is


What's with the other 15 percent?


a new Cato Institute/YouGov survey indicates (https://www.cato.org/blog/84-americans-oppose-civil-asset-forfeiture) that 84 percent of us are against civil asset forfeiture—the process through which police departments can confiscate property, goods or cash merely suspected to have been involved in a drug crime, without a conviction being obtained—once it’s explained to us.

Because, how would you even think that that’s ok?

It actually gets worse: You don’t even need to be charged with a crime for police to seize your property, and in most US jurisdictions, the police departments that do the seizing get to keep the proceeds, creating an obvious conflict of interests.

“No single policy undermines justice and distorts the mission of law enforcement more egregiously than civil asset forfeiture,”

“One notorious case involved the seizure (http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2015/01/civil-asset-forfeiture-policing-for-profit-1/) in December 2011 of an office building worth $1.5 million by the City of Anaheim and the DEA—over a $37 medical marijuana transaction.”

By 2014, as the Washington Post has noted (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.2b693c8be5ca), more property was taken from Americans via civil asset forfeiture than by burglars.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/84-americans-oppose-civil-asset-forfeiture-once-told-what-it

[boutons_deux]

National Police Union President Says Asset Forfeiture Abuse Is A 'Fake Issue' Generated By The Media

Colloquially known (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141110/16271429098/asset-forfeiture-is-just-cops-going-shopping-stuff-they-want.shtml) as "cops going shopping for things they want," asset forfeiture supposedly is used to take funds and property away from criminal organizations. In reality, it's become an easy way for law enforcement to take the property of others (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160323/07542033990/court-says-government-needs-more-than-permission-couple-underperforming-drug-dogs-to-justify-seizure-276000.shtml) without having to put much effort into justifying the seizures. In most states, convictions are not required, meaning supposed criminal suspects are free to go… but their property isn't.

Canterbury, who previously aired his grievances nationally over director Quentin Tarantino's participation (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151107/08544032746/police-union-boss-quentin-tarantino-needs-to-patch-up-cop-citizen-relationships-not-us.shtml) in an anti-police brutality rally, opens up this piece by trying to equate factual reporting with current hot button topic "fake news."

Amidst the current national furor against “fake news” is another, more pervasive issue of creating “fake issues” like the myth of policing for profit. There’s been widespread discussion about the need to end the Federal equitable sharing program because a journalist or columnist writes a sympathetic piece describing a case in which the system may not have functioned as intended.


Canterbury admits the "system" doesn't always "function as intended" (although many could argue these cases illustrate the system working exactly as intended), but argues that every report about a questionable seizure is the equivalent of fake news. Innocent people being deprived of their property by profit-focused law enforcement agencies is a "fake issue" -- something that apparently wouldn't be covered by a more responsible press.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170107/12162636425/national-police-union-president-says-asset-forfeiture-abuse-is-fake-issue-generated-media.shtml

Canterbury probably is paid in part with union dues that police dept contribute with forfeiture assets and cash.

[boutons_deux]

Can a Bipartisan Effort to Repeal Civil Asset Forfeiture Overcome Police Resistance?

In Texas, an average of $41.5 million per year is funneled into local law enforcement budgets as a result of forfeitures.

A bipartisan coalition is forming in the Texas Legislature to overhaul a Reagan-era police practice (https://www.texasobserver.org/preying-innocent-civil-forfeiture/) that allows law enforcement officers to confiscate personal property without charging the owner with a crime.

During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, states passed asset forfeiture laws to direct funds confiscated from drug operations back into the law enforcement agencies fighting the war on drugs. Civil asset forfeiture became law in Texas (http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/CR/htm/CR.59.htm) in 1989.

According to the OCA report, DAs and law enforcement agencies used the majority of the funds they received through civil asset forfeiture to pay for equipment, training and salaries.

And many law enforcement agencies aren’t going to give up without a fight, according to Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT).

https://www.texasobserver.org/civil-asset-forfeiture-reform-texas-lege/

[boutons_deux]

“We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,”

Sessions said in his prepared remarks (https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-delivers-remarks-national-district-attorneys-association) for a speech to the National District Attorney's Association in Minneapolis.

"With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures.

No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime.

Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/17/1681574/-Beauregard-Sessions-is-a-piece-of-loveliness

[boutons_deux]

New York City Council Passes Bill Making NYPD's Forfeiture Process More Transparent

For months now, the NYPD has been arguing in court (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170528/16131837472/judge-smacks-nypd-gotcha-tactics-forfeiture-public-records-lawsuit.shtml) it can't possibly hand over records related to its forfeitures.

The problem appears to be the NYPD itself.

The department spent millions on new software specifically to track the disposition of seized items. But when faced with a public records suit by the Bronx Defenders, the

NYPD claimed the software (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160920/09362935570/nypd-says-software-built-to-track-seized-property-cant-actually-do-one-thing-supposed-to-do.shtml) can't do the one thing it's supposed to do: track the disposition of seized items.

The NYPD provides limited reporting on forfeitures, but the numbers produced have almost zero relation to reality.

According to the NYPD, it only forfeited $12,000 in cash in 2015.

According to numbers obtained by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD's forfeiture office had nearly $69 million in cash on hand when queried in 2013

-- something that would take 5,750 years to amass at the rate cited by the NYPD.

Not only that, but other documents showed NYPD property clerks were processing thousands of dollars every month, totaling $6 million in forfeiture transactions in 2013 alone. It seems unlikely the NYPD's forfeitures dropped to this impossibly-low level between 2013 and 2015.

This forces the NYPD to provide information proactively. It can no longer hide behind claims of faulty software or a particularly labyrinthine public records process.

It won't force the NYPD to say how the money's being spent,

but will at least provide more transparency and accountability.

The new data should make it slightly easier to identify abuse and could assist those fighting to reclaim their property. All it needs is the governor's signature to make it official.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170722/15001737846/new-york-city-council-passes-bill-making-nypds-forfeiture-process-more-transparent.shtml

summary: NYPD is totally corrupt, an operation totally beyond, totally unamenable to oversight.

[Th'Pusher]

House passes amendment to restrict asset forfeiture

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/12/in-surprise-vote-house-passes-amendment-to-restrict-asset-forfeiture/

[boutons_deux]

House passes amendment to restrict asset forfeiture

https://theintercept.com/2017/09/12/in-surprise-vote-house-passes-amendment-to-restrict-asset-forfeiture/

A cop in Berkeley CA cited a bacon hotdog street vendor for no permit. OK, gotta comply

BUT, the cop confiscated all the cash from the vendor's wallet.

[boutons_deux]

Saying Someone Might Do Something Illegal With Cash Isn't Enough For Gov't To Seize It, Court Rules

The panel reversed the district court's judgment of civil forfeiture of $11,500 under 21 U.S.C. § 881(a)(6) from claimant Charles Guerrero, and remanded for a new trial.

When Guerrero, through a friend, tried to post the $11,500 as bail for his wife, the government seized the cash. At trial, the government alleged two theories: that the money was proceeds from the claimant's drug deals, and that the claimant used or intended to use the money to facilitate drug transactions.

While Charles waited outside, Wood went to the MCDC’s bail window and told an officer he was there to post the cash to free Rosalie.

Jail officials ran Wood’s records and discovered that he had a criminal history.

Coupled with the fact that Wood was attempting to bail out a repeat drug offender with a wad of cash, this prompted jail officials to call Agent Guy Gino of the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Agent Gino went to the MCDC, asked Wood a few questions regarding the origin of the $11,500, and requested permission to have a drug sniffing dog smell the currency. Wood agreed.

The dog (Nikko) alerted to a drug odor on the money. Agent Gino asked Wood if Nikko could sniff his car. Again, Wood agreed.

On the way to the car, the group encountered Charles, who was waiting for Woods to come out of the jail.

Charles objected to law enforcement searching the car but Wood nonetheless permitted Nikko to do so.

Nikko alerted to a black bag in the vehicle—which, the officers later discovered, belonged to Charles—containing 3.6 grams of heroin.

Officers also found an additional $2,971 in cash on Charles. Agent Gino arrested Charles and seized the drugs, the $2,971 found on Charles, and the $11,500 Wood had tried to post as bail.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170906/15202538161/saying-someone-might-do-something-illegal-with-cash-isnt-enough-govt-to-seize-it-court-rules.shtml

[boutons_deux]

The IRS seized $59,000 from a gas station owner. They still refuse to give it back.

Just a few years after he opened it, zealous government investigators fishing for criminals seized all of the station’s money on a hunch — and wiped the family out.

No, they weren’dt money launderers or terrorists or mobsters or tax evaders. The government found no evidence of criminal activity.

But after the investigation ended, after the gas station went under, and Kwon’s wife died amid the stress of it all, after he moved from his neighborhood in shame and

the Internal Revenue Service changed its policy so no other small business would get steamrolled this way — the agency won’t give Kwon his money back.

That’s $59,117.47 the IRS is holding on to.

As recently as August — the last time Kwon, now 73, asked for his money back — the IRS said no.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-irs-seized-59000-from-a-gas-station-owner-they-still-refuse-to-give-it-back/2017/10/16/57828500-b296-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?utm_term=.42169e516c8a&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

[boutons_deux]

“It’s been complete hell”: how police used a traffic stop to take $91,800 from an innocent man

The money was supposed to go toward buying a legendary music studio. Now his dreams are on hold

Phil Parhamovich had been waiting for this moment for a long time. The 50-year-old had spent years restoring houses, cars, and musical instruments, often clocking 12-hour workdays, to save up more than $91,000. And now it was all going to pay off: He would buy a music studio in Madison, Wisconsin, where Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins recorded songs — not just fulfilling a dream of owning a monument to grunge rock, but also giving him a space to work on his own career as a musician.

Then came the police stop this past March. By the time it was over, police in Wyoming would take all of Parhamovich’s money — the full $91,800. Parhamovich, who has no criminal record, was not accused of or charged with a serious crime;

he only got a $25 ticket for improperly wearing his seat belt and a warning for “lane use.”
But Wyoming Highway Patrol officers found and eventually seized the $91,800 in cash, as it was hidden in a speaker cabinet — by getting Parhamovich, under what he claims was duress, to sign away his interest in the money through a waiver.

He has since tried to get his money back. But state law enforcement officials have rejected his pleas. Responding to a request for records related to Parhamovich’s case,

state officials said they consider the cash “abandoned.”

The state has even moved to forfeiture the money without notifying Parhamovich of the relevant court hearing until after it happened.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/1/16686014/phillip-parhamovich-civil-forfeiture

[Winehole23]

Chicago area again:

https://reason.com/archives/2018/04/25/chicago-debt-impound-cars-innocent

[RandomGuy]

Chicago area again:

https://reason.com/archives/2018/04/25/chicago-debt-impound-cars-innocent

It may interest you to know that Sessions is pushing to reverse course on stopping this.

[Winehole23]

It may interest you to know that Sessions is pushing to reverse course on stopping this.God forbid taxes should pay for LE bureaucracy.

[boutons_deux]

A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on. U.S. Customs took it without charging him with a crime.

A 64-year-old Cleveland man is suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection after agents strip-searched him at an airport in October and took more than $58,000 in cash from him without charging him with any crime, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week in Ohio (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2018/05/20180531103121666.pdf).

Customs agents seized the money through a process known as civil asset forfeiture (https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?utm_term=.cf3861d5acfc), a law enforcement technique that allows authorities to take cash and property from people who are never convicted or even charged with a crime.

The practice is widespread at the federal level. In 2017, federal authorities seized more than $2 billion in assets from people,

a net loss similar in size to annual losses from residential burglaries (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-15) in the United States.

Customs says it suspects that the petitioner in the case, Rustem Kazazi, was involved in smuggling, drug trafficking or money laundering. Kazazi denies those allegations and says that the agency is violating federal law by keeping his money without filing any formal complaint against him.

He carried the cash in three counted and labeled bundles in his carry-on bag, he said, along with receipts from recent bank withdrawals and documentation pertaining to his family's property in Tirana, the Albanian capital.

The CBP agents led Kazazi to a small, windowless room and conducted multiple searches of him and his belongings, he said.

According to Kazazi's declaration, the

agents asked him to remove all of his clothing and gave him a blanket to cover the lower portion of his body.

Kazazi said that a man wearing rubber gloves then “started searching different areas of my body.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/31/a-64-year-old-put-his-life-savings-in-his-carry-on-u-s-customs-took-it-without-charging-him-with-a-crime/?utm_term=.67756f6e88d5

America The Beautiful, Ugly as Fuck

[boutons_deux]

Utah's Top Court Says Cops Can't Use Federal Loophole To Dodge Criminal Charge Requirement For Forfeitures

A win for at least one resident -- and victim of shady forfeiture practices -- has been handed down by Utah's top court.

Kyle Savely had $500,000 taken from him by Utah law enforcement during a traffic stop.

No charges were filed and Savely was never arrested,

but a dog told (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171124/11044338675/drug-dog-testing-process-eliminates-handler-bias-unsurprisingly-cops-dont-like-it.shtml) the Utah Highway Patrol it could search the vehicle and seize the cash, even though the search failed to produce any drugs.

The Utah Highway Patrol apparently had no charges to file,

but rather than return the money when Savely requested it back,

it chose to hand it over to the DEA via equitable sharing.

Equitable sharing with the feds allows state agencies to bypass more restrictive state laws and help themselves to 80% of whatever's seized.

The DEA pitched in, too, hoping for 20% of the seized cash, further demonstrating the perverse incentives of the federal forfeiture loophole. From the decision (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4815009/Utah-Forfeiture.pdf) [PDF]:

On February 10, 2017, seventy-five days after UHP’s seizure, Mr. Savely filed a petition in state district court seeking the release of his property.

In a hearing on February 21, 2017, the state district court ruled in favor of Mr. Savely, concluding that UHP was required by the Act to procure an order from a state district court that authorized UHP to release the seized cash to the DEA and,

thus, that UHP had unlawfully transferred the funds.

Additionally, the state district court concluded that UHP had failed to take one of the actions required by Utah Code section 24-4-104(1)(a) and therefore ordered UHP to return the funds to Mr. Savely.

UHP immediately stopped payment on the January 24, 2017 check sent to the DEA.

In response, the DEA served UHP with a second federal seizure warrant

on February 23, 2017, after which UHP requested that the state district court reconsider its initial ruling.


Savely challenged this move, claiming the state had jurisdiction over the seized cash and could not use equitable sharing to route around state law. The court agrees for the most part,

the court sides with Savely.

It points to one clause of the law, along with its intent -- "to protect property owners" during forfeiture proceedings --

as evidence the state government (and its residents) were seeking to close the federal loophole that would have erased the protections it had enacted.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180902/18044740570/utahs-top-court-says-cops-cant-use-federal-loophole-to-dodge-criminal-charge-requirement-forfeitures.shtml (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180902/18044740570/utahs-top-court-says-cops-cant-use-federal-loophole-to-dodge-criminal-charge-requirement-forfeitures.shtml)

[Winehole23]

forfeiture without legal authority.

Mississippi LE agencies didn't notice the law had lapsed.


An Associated Press review of a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics database shows more than 60 civil asset forfeitures with nearly $200,000 in property taken by state and local agencies under a law that lapsed on June 30.


That law allowed police to take $20,000 or less in property associated with illegal drugs, regardless of whether someone was convicted criminally, unless an owner fought the seizure in court within 30 days. Police agencies keep 80 percent of the money, with 20 percent going to a district attorney or the Bureau of Narcotics.


Now, Mississippi agencies must sue in court and get a judge to approve seizures, as they already were required to do with larger amounts.
https://www.tampabay.com/ap/national/mississippi-police-took-property-without-legal-authority-ap_national1c9640ced8464be2932f3974606fe889

[boutons_deux]

He lost his $42,000 Land Rover for a $385 crime.

The Supreme Court considers whether the constitutional ban on 'excessive fines' applies to states

the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the state’s seizure of a $42,000 Land Rover from a man who made two small drug sales valued at under $400.

It rejected his claim that this was “excessive” and ruled the 8th Amendment did not protect him.

That decision ran into sharp skepticism Wednesday from the justices and will almost surely be reversed.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch cut off the state’s attorney before he could launch into his defense and upbraided him for ignoring decades of court history and centuries of English law.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-court-fines-20181128-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter

[Winehole23]

Philly cops seized houses then bought them at auction:

1072119779580895233

[Winehole23]

1090753142906671104

[boutons_deux]

SC, once a slave state, always a slave state.

The Confederacy + red states are why America can't make progress to a better America

[Winehole23]

police might lose their taste for policing if they don't get to keep the money they take from people they pull over:


Jarrod Bruder, the executive director of the South Carolina Sheriff’s Association who frequently lobbies for law enforcement interests at the Statehouse, said that without the incentive of profit from civil forfeiture, officers probably wouldn’t pursue drug dealers and their cash as hard as they do now.


If police don’t get to keep the money from forfeiture, “what is the incentive to go out and make a special effort?” Bruder said. “What is the incentive for interdiction?”
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/taken/2019/02/03/sc-civil-forfeiture-police-defend-practice-say-funds-essential-law-enforcement/2746412002/

[boutons_deux]

...

[boutons_deux]

Supreme Court says constitutional protection against excessive fines applies to state actions

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,

on just her second day back on the bench after undergoing cancer surgery in December, announced the decision for the court (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-1091_5536.pdf), saying that the 8th Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause protects against government retribution.

“For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history:

Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” Ginsburg wrote.

“Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies .

. . Even absent a political motive, fines may be employed in a measure out of accord with the penal goals of retribution and deterrence.”
The court ruled in favor of Tyson Timbs of Marion, Ind.,

who had his $42,000 Land Rover seized after he was arrested for selling a couple hundred dollars’ worth of heroin.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-constitutional-protection-against-excessive-fines-applies-to-state-actions/2019/02/20/204ce0d4-3522-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-constitutional-protection-against-excessive-fines-applies-to-state-actions/2019/02/20/204ce0d4-3522-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0fa91f8b4f9b&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1)9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0fa91f8b4f9b&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-constitutional-protection-against-excessive-fines-applies-to-state-actions/2019/02/20/204ce0d4-3522-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0fa91f8b4f9b&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1)

So who defines what is "excessive" ?

[Winehole23]

A court defines what is excessive.

This is an encouraging decision

[RandomGuy]

A court defines what is excessive.

This is an encouraging decision

RBG has two more years to go. Hope she makes it.

[boutons_deux]

Even if RBG can hangs on (preventing 6-3), all a Dem pres AND Dem Senate can do is keep the court 5-4.

[Winehole23]

Inside baseball:

1098244852721115136

[boutons_deux]

How police departments make millions by seizing property

In South Carolina, :lol civil forfeiture targets black people’s money most of all, exclusive investigative data shows

hen a man barged into Isiah Kinloch’s apartment and broke a bottle over his head, the North Charleston resident called 911. After cops arrived on that day in 2015, they searched the injured man’s home and found an ounce of marijuana.

So they took $1,800 in cash from his apartment and kept it.
______

When Eamon Cools-Lartigue was driving on Interstate 85 in Spartanburg County, deputies stopped him for speeding. The Atlanta businessman wasn’t criminally charged in the April 2016 incident. Deputies discovered $29,000 in his car, though, and decided to take it.
______

When Brandy Cooke dropped her friend off at a Myrtle Beach sports bar as a favor, drug enforcement agents swarmed her in the parking
lot and found $4,670 in the car.

Her friend was wanted in a drug distribution case, but Cooke wasn’t involved. She had no drugs and was never charged in the 2014 bust. Agents seized her money anyway.

She worked as a waitress and carried cash because she didn’t have a checking account. She spent more than a year trying to get her money back.

The TAKEN team scoured more than 3,200 forfeiture cases and spoke to dozens of targeted citizens plus more than 50 experts and officials. Additionally, the team contacted every law enforcement agency in the state.

This yielded a clear picture of what is happening:

Police are systematically seizing cash and property —

many times from people who aren’t guilty of a crime —

netting millions of dollars each year.

South Carolina law enforcement profits from this policing tactic: the bulk of the money ends up in its possession.

“Having cash makes you vulnerable to an illicit practice by a police organization.

“It’s a dirty little secret. It’s so consistent with the issue of how law enforcement functions

many of the people they are taking money from are not drug traffickers or even users.”

Officers gather in places like Spartanburg County for contests with trophies to see who can make the largest or most seizures during highway blitzes.

They earn hats, mementos and free dinners, and agencies that participate take home a cut of the forfeiture proceeds.

That money adds up. Over three years, law enforcement agencies seized more than $17 million, our investigation shows.

The TAKEN investigation key findings:

• Black men pay the price for this program. They represent 13 percent of the state's population. Yet 65 percent of all citizens targeted for civil forfeiture in the state are black males.

“And when you add in racial disparities around policing and traffic stops and arrest and prosecution, we know this is going to have a disproportionate effect on black communities.”
• If you are white, you are twice as likely to get your money back than if you are black.

• Nearly one-fifth of people who had their assets seized weren't charged with a related crime.

Out of more than 4,000 people hit with civil forfeiture over three years, 19 percent were never arrested.

They may have left a police encounter without so much as a traffic ticket. But they also left without their cash.

Roughly the same number — nearly 800 people — were charged with a crime but not convicted.

Greenville attorney Jake Erwin said the overarching idea is that

the money being seized is earnings from past drug sales, so it's fair game. :lol

“In theory, that makes a little bit of sense," he said. "The problem is that they don’t really have to prove that.”

In some states, the suspicions behind a civil forfeiture must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court, but

there is no requirement of proof in South Carolina. :lol

When a forfeiture is contested, prosecutors only have to show a preponderance of evidence to keep seized goods.

Police don’t just seize cash.

Practically anything can be confiscated and sold at auction:

jewelry, electronics, firearms, boats, RVs.

In South Carolina, 95 percent of forfeiture revenue goes back to law enforcement. The rest is deposited into the state’s general fund.

These seizures leave thousands of citizens without their cash and belongings or reliable means to get them back.

They target black men most, our investigation found — with crushing consequences when life savings or a small business payroll is taken.

Many people never get their money back.

Or they have to fight to have their property returned and incur high attorney fees.

(https://www.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/27/civil-forfeiture-south-carolina-police-property-seizures-taken-exclusive-investigation/2457838002/)https://www.greenvilleonline.com/in-depth/news/taken/2019/01/27/civil-forfeiture-south-carolina-police-property-seizures-taken-exclusive-investigation/2457838002/

"Old Times There Are Not Forgotten"

[boutons_deux]

Data From Court Documents Shows Texas Law Enforcement Playing Small-Ball Forfeiture, Not Doing Much To Stop Drug Trafficking

Texas Tribune did it the hard way. Reading through thousands of pages of court filings, the paper was able to tease out the granular detail law enforcement agencies don't like the public seeing (https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2019/texas-civil-asset-forfeiture-counties-harris-webb-reeves-smith/).

What the Texas Tribune uncovered is exactly the reasons asset forfeiture is both problematic and incredibly popular with law enforcement agencies.

Cop shop PR officers may hold press conferences to announce things like the $1.2 million in cash seized from a traffic stop, they're very quiet about the day-to-day work of forfeiture.

The reality is the $50 million a year taken through forfeiture in the state of Texas is composed of hundreds of very small cash seizures.



Half of the cash seizures were for less than $3,000. In Harris and Smith counties, more than two-thirds were under $5,000.
About two of every five forfeiture cases started with a traffic stop.
Many cases were connected to possession of small amounts of drugs. In Smith County, a woman’s 2003 Chevrolet Trailblazer was seized after police found half of a gram of suspected methamphetamine and a partially-smoked blunt in the car.
In nearly 60% of the cases, people didn’t fight their seizures in court at all, resulting in judges turning over the property to local governments by default.
Two of every 10 cases didn’t result in a related criminal charge against the property owner or possessor; in Webb County, more than half didn’t.
And in about 40% of the cases, no one who had property taken from them was found guilty of a crime connected to the seizure.


Small seizures (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170718/11443037812/asset-forfeiture-killing-criminal-organizations-with-16-seizures.shtml) work out best for law enforcement.

The cost of fighting the forfeiture usually outpaces the value of the seized property (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181031/21453840955/michigan-cops-destroying-drug-cartels-with-microscopic-drug-busts-seizures-20-year-old-vehicles.shtml).

This leads directly to the 60% default rate observed by the Texas Tribune.

Bypassing criminal charges reduces the amount of time police and prosecutors have to spend processing the case, increasing the profitability of the seizure.

Even in the case of the $1.2 million seizure, no criminal charges were brought.

Prosecutors claimed there was no criminal act to pursue since the driver claimed he was unaware of the cash officers found hidden in his trailer.

And, under this deliberately-limited scope, there isn't an obvious criminal act the driver could have been charged with.

But instead of trying to locate the source of the money assumed to be tied to illegal activity, law enforcement kept the money and presumably allowed a drug operation to continue mostly unimpeded.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190623/15494942459/data-court-documents-shows-texas-law-enforcement-playing-small-ball-forfeiture-not-doing-much-to-stop-drug-trafficking.shtml (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190623/15494942459/data-court-documents-shows-texas-law-enforcement-playing-small-ball-forfeiture-not-doing-much-to-stop-drug-trafficking.shtml)

====================

Texas police can seize money and property with little transparency. So we got the data ourselves.

https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2019/texas-civil-asset-forfeiture-counties-harris-webb-reeves-smith/

[boutons_deux]

How the government can steal your stuff: 6 questions about civil asset forfeiture answered

Until now, the Supreme Court (http://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-ruling-on-civil-forfeiture-2014-11) and lower courts, however, have consistently upheld civil asset forfeitures (http://law.jrank.org/pages/1231/Forfeiture-Constitutional-challenges.html)

when ruling on challenges launched under the Fifth Amendment.

The same goes for challenges (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-1091) under

the Eighth (https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/eighth_amendment) Amendment, which bars “excessive fines” and “cruel and unusual punishments,” and

the 14th Amendment (https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv), which forbids depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

Under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-findings-two-civil-rights-investigations-ferguson-missouri), the Obama-era Justice Department determined that

civil asset forfeiture was more about making money than public safety.

It then changed the guidelines for asset adoption (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-prohibits-federal-agency-adoptions-assets-seized-state-and-local-law).

“I love that program (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sessions-welcomes-expansion-of-asset-forfeiture-i-love-that-program/),” Attorney General Jeff Sessions :lol said in 2017.

William Barr, Sessions’ successor in the Trump administration, has also defended this policy (https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/william-barr-confirmation-hearing-attorney-general-watch-live-stream-today-2019-01-15/).

https://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150630&page=4&highlight=forfeiture

So Dems reduced civil forfeiture, but Repugs ratcheted it up again.

Repugs love crapifying America. It's was Repug voters want.

And of course, Repug whores in robes Federal judges will support rampant civil forfeiture, aka, robbery

[boutons_deux]

These Cops Are Seizing Cash from People Who Smell Like Weed Before They Fly to California

Smelling like cannabis and

buying your ticket right before your flight from this Florida airport

are apparently great reasons for cops to take your stuff.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvgvvm/cops-seizing-weed-cash-flying-fort-lauderdale-to-california-lax?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_777491

[Winehole23]

worse than reported burglaries

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoXeOJ2VQAMpouH?format=jpg&name=900x900

https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/

[Winehole23]

to put it another way, police defunding us

[RandomGuy]

to put it another way, police defunding us

Wow. I knew a lot of departments had started leaning on that, but the scope and scale is a bit shocking.

[Winehole23]

Wow. I knew a lot of departments had started leaning on that, but the scope and scale is a bit shocking.Here's a relatable true life tale about it:

1335946070812200961

[boutons_deux]

"We got him!"

Fucking over citizens is a fucking game to CBP / ICE / law "enforcement"

Citizens are degraded to dehumanized, objectified targets to be punished, to be "got".

[boutons_deux]

Law enforcement STEALING from citizens.

Police Say Seizing Property Without Trial Helps Keep Crime Down. A New Study Shows They’re Wrong.

Civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow police to seize property without trial, are

frequently justified as tools to seize millions from kingpins.

A new study reveals

the median amount taken is as low as $369 in some states.

https://www.propublica.org/article/police-say-seizing-property-without-trial-helps-keep-crime-down-a-new-study-shows-theyre-wrong

[boutons_deux]

9. Asset Forfeiture Reforms

Asset forfeiture, especially civil asset forfeiture (without a criminal conviction), is

increasingly unpopular, with 35 states (https://ij.org/activism/legislation/civil-forfeiture-legislative-highlights/#:~:text=Since%202014%2C%2035%20states%20and,Arkan sas%20(2019)) and the District of Columbia approving reforms between 2014 and 2019.

A September poll (https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Results-for-Institute-for-Justice-Civil-Forfeiture-245-9.30.2020-1-Civil-Forfeiture-2.pdf) by YouGov found that only 26 percent support allowing police to seize cash or property from someone without a criminal conviction.

According to a Forbes article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/11/12/poll-most-americans-want-to-defund-civil-forfeiture/?sh=544b2d4657b5),

“59 percent of Americans oppose ‘allowing law enforcement agencies to use forfeited property or its proceeds for their own use.’ …

Opposition to equitable sharing [a federal program that allows state and local police to evade state laws against civil asset forfeiture] was even higher, with 70 percent against the program.”

Here are some reasons why:

In March, in Georgia, the department of revenue got caught (https://www.ajc.com/news/local/revenue-agency-gives-state-disputed-fofeiture-funds/68WId2A2r2dpNUXEkBMe1O/) spending millions of dollars in seized cash on “engraved firearms, pricey gym equipment, clothing, personal items, even $130 sunglasses.”

That same month, in Michigan (https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/macomb-county-prosecutor-accused-of-running-criminal-enterprise-dating-back-to-2012), Macomb County prosecutor Eric Smith was hit with a slew of criminal charges for allegedly taking funds seized from drug and other suspects for his own personal use,

including “a personal security system for his house, country club parties, campaign expenses and to buy flowers and make-up for his secretaries.”

In July, in Chicago (https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2020/7/20/21331819/vehicles-seized-impounded-drug-cases-due-process-chicago-city-council-settlement), the city agreed to a $5 million payout to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by two people whose vehicle was seized after a passenger was arrested for marijuana possession. The settlement will apply to hundreds of other cases where drivers had their vehicles impounded as part of drug cases.

Also in Michigan (https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2020/02/05/seize-forfeiture-michigan-sheriff-lawsuit/4666153002/), the Wayne County Sheriff’s office faces a similar lawsuit for seizing thousands of cars and other property belonging to residents without criminal convictions.

Such abuses helped New Jersey (https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/governor-murphy-signs-legislation-mandating-comprehensive-disclosure-transparency-requirements-civil-asset-forfeiture/) become the 16th (https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2020/01/28/new-jersey-is-now-the-16th-state-to-require-convictions-for-civil-forfeiture/?sh=6d927da677fd) asset forfeiture reform state when Governor Phil Murphy (D) signed into law a bill mandating comprehensive disclosure and transparency requirements for the system of civil asset forfeiture in January.

Unfortunately, the few remaining non-reform states are tough nuts to crack, as we saw with

reform bills killed in Arizona (https://reason.com/2020/05/22/why-did-arizona-democrats-kill-a-bill-protecting-citizens-from-police-overreach/), Georgia (https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/57974), Kentucky (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/20rs/hb250.html), and Tennessee (https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennessee/tennessee-house-committee-advances-civil-asset-forfeiture-reform/article_884e1886-a1f7-11ea-b4d8-f7714014881a.html). :lol RED states

But, at least Tyson Timbs, the Indiana man whose seized Land Rover resulted in a 2019 Supreme Court decision (https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/02/20/supreme-court-says-range-rover-seizure-violated-constitution/2926312002/) scaling back civil asset forfeiture,

finally got his Land Rover back (https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/2020/05/28/civil-forfeiture-fight-not-over-but-indiana-man-gets-land-rover-back/5266677002/)—six years after it was seized over a drug bust.

https://www.laprogressive.com/drug-pandemic

[Winehole23]

1417496099011678224

[boutons_deux]

fucking corrupt, criminal cops, even in a deeply Blue State

It's Easy For Police To Seize Money.

Worcester's District Attorney Makes It Hard To Get It Back

later dismissed them against Jones-Bernier and all but one person.

Despite that, law enforcement officials held onto his money and phone.

In Massachusetts, they can hold that money indefinitely, even when criminal charges have been dismissed.

Trying to get one’s money back is so onerous, legal experts say

it may violate due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

It’s especially punishing for people with low incomes.

Four years passed before the Worcester County district attorney’s office tried to notify Jones-Bernier, as required by law, about the status of his money.

Massachusetts is an outlier among states when it comes to civil forfeiture laws.

Prosecutors in the commonwealth are able to keep seized assets using a lower legal bar than in any other state.

https://amp.wbur.org/news/2021/08/18/civil-forfeiture-police-money-massachusetts-worcester-joseph-early

[Winehole23]

still happening

1433062695138385922

1433063378642161665

[boutons_deux]

NO DRUGS, NO ARREST, BUT TEXAS POLICE TAKE CASH ANYWAY

Mississippi driver Ameal Woods worried about thieves when he came to Texas with

$42,000 to buy trucking equipment in 2019.

a sergeant from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office stopped him on Interstate 10 near Houston,

accused him of following another vehicle too closely, :lol

and launched a roadside interrogation.

One of the sergeant’s first questions was about cash.

Carrying cash is not a crime, and cash transactions are normal for secondhand truck dealers. Woods had nothing to hide, so he volunteered information.

the sergeant took the cash and sent Woods on his way, penniless.

Following the seizure, Harris County prosecutors sued for the cash using a process called civil forfeiture.

The money making scheme, which remains legal in Texas despite several bipartisan attempts at reform (https://www.texastribune.org/2018/12/07/texas-civil-asset-forfeiture-legislature/),

allows the government to keep assets permanently without convicting anyone of wrongdoing.

https://texassignal.com/op-ed-no-drugs-no-arrest-but-texas-police-take-cash-anyway

[boutons_deux]

cops' victim is black, of course

Former Shoe Shiner Wins Back Nearly $30,000 Seized by Federal Agents

Authorities at an airport last year seized a bag of cash that Kermit Warren was carrying to buy a truck.

It was his life’s savings but

prosecutors contended the money was linked to drugs.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/10/31/us/31xp-forfeiture/31xp-forfeiture-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/us/federal-agents-money-forfeiture.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/us/federal-agents-money-forfeiture.html)

ever expanding qualified immunity, created by SCOTUS,

plus civil forfeiture and

corrupt, racist cops,

America is fucked and unfuckable

[Winehole23]

Nice robbery, guise

1468410691770105857

[boutons_deux]

Cops are fucking thieves, among all their other crimes. Thanks, SCOTUS

Report Shows Kansas Law Enforcement Seized $21 Million From People,

Most Of Whom Were Never Charged With Crimes

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/13/report-shows-kansas-law-enforcement-seized-21-million-from-people-most-of-whom-were-never-charged-with-crimes/

[boutons_deux]

Deputies accused a Texas sheriff of corruption and dysfunction. Then came the mass shooting


COLDSPRING, Texas (AP) — Sheriff Greg Capers was the classic picture of a Texas lawman as he announced the capture of a suspected mass killer: white cowboy hat on his head, gold star pinned to his chest, white cross on his belt and a large pistol emblazoned with his name on his hip.

https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/6a8a3ed/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6396x4260+0+2/resize/599x399!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Fc3%2F49%2Fe e9ca7ecbba1f8511f80eae42c6b%2Fe762aaa8d0744e6eac6b a7163acdc4b7

years of complaints about corruption and dysfunction that were previously unknown outside the piney woods of San Jacinto County.

challenges police face across rural America, where small staffs must patrol vast jurisdictions.

It also reveals the difficulty in holding powerful law enforcement officials accountable in isolated areas with little outside oversight.

Former deputies said

Capers’ office has long neglected basic police work

while pursuing asset seizures that boost its $3.5 million budget but don’t always hold up in court.

The county paid $240,000 in 2020 to settle a whistleblower’s lawsuit accusing Capers of wide-ranging misconduct.

Capers fostered a “fear-based” culture and oversaw the improper seizure of tens of thousands of dollars of property.

deputies failed to follow up on reports of 4,000 crimes,

including sexual and child abuse.

https://apnews.com/article/texas-neighbors-shooting-sheriff-3fc5e6d5c0dc004b67d3e94a76812732

His county has 27000 residents.

[Winehole23]

Theft under the color of law.

1697404460329324907

[Winehole23]

Stealing from orphans in this case.



What happened to Eh Wah undercuts this narrative. He was not a drug lord or even a low-level dealer. He was a volunteer manager for a Christian rock band, raising money for Thai orphans and Burmese refugees. Some of the cash belonged to Eh Wah and the band members, following a monthslong tour across several states. The rest came from concert donations and belonged to the orphans and refugees.

Carrying cash is legal. The money in the car was legitimate. And none of it related to a broken taillight — the reason for the 2016 traffic stop on U.S. Route 69. Eh Wah, who neither smokes nor drinks, had nothing illegal in his vehicle. Other than driving with a burned out bulb, he did nothing wrong.

The deputies pounced anyway, putting civil forfeiture in motion.

To prevail, at least in theory, the government must link seized assets to criminal activity by a preponderance of the evidence, a low standard that means government hunches are more likely correct than not. But in the vast majority (https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/pfp3content/forfeiture-is-hard-for-owners-easy-for-the-government/easiest-forfeiture-procedures-predominate/federal-forfeitures-by-type/) of cases, the government does not have to prove anything by any standard.

Property owners get trapped in procedural mazes and lose by default. Many people give up without ever seeing a judge. They often have no choice. Civil forfeiture includes no right to counsel, and attorney fees often outweigh the value of seized assets.

Once the process ends, participating agencies keep 100 percent of the proceeds for themselves. The result is a powerful incentive for police and prosecutors to self-fund through aggressive enforcement.
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2023/08/28/why_cash_seizures_backfire_on_oklahoma_police_9756 95.html

[Winehole23]

Predictable whining.

Losing in the NY Post bodes ill for thieving police.


During a talk-radio debate last week, Tulsa’s district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, warned that civil-forfeiture reform would invite “some of the most violent people in the history of this planet” to set up shop in Oklahoma, making decapitated bodies “hung from bridges” a familiar sight in the Sooner State.

Last month, Steve Jones, an assistant district attorney, told Tennessee legislators “criminals will thank you” for making it harder to confiscate people’s property.

These are the noises that cops and prosecutors make when people talk about restricting their license to steal.
https://nypost.com/2015/11/17/lame-excuses-for-letting-the-cops-be-robbers/

[Winehole23]

https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/

[Winehole23]

Culley v. Marshall


On Monday the Supreme Court will hear a case to decide whether the Constitution requires a prompt hearing after law enforcement seizes vehicles for civil forfeiture. The plaintiffs in Culley v. Marshall had their vehicles seized because a family member and friend allegedly possessed drugs while borrowing them. Law enforcement held each car for over a year without a hearing.


In Culley v. Marshall, the state of Alabama argues that prompt hearings would be unworkable because police need time to investigate after they take cars. But that gets the working of the justice system backward. Police need to investigate before they take property, not after. If it’s unclear property is involved in a crime, police shouldn’t seize it in the first place.


The Supreme Court should take a page from the Sixth Circuit. If the government takes a person’s car—for many, their most crucial asset—then it should at least provide a speedy hearing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-police-simply-take-your-car-supreme-court-civil-forfeiture-5a529ff2