Reason Mag: The Forfeiture Racket - Police and prosecutors won't give up their license to steal

[Bozita]

http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/26/the-forfeiture-racket

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

Radley Balko from the 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.

more...

[formercia]

1. K&R.

Important subject.

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. This needs to end NOW

Or there is NO point in electing Democratics.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. A chilling read.

Almost anyone can get caught in this trap.

Highway robbery has a new meaning.

Thanks for posting.

kicking.

[shawcomm]

4. kick

It's ridiculous. "War on drugs" When will this war on the American people stop? Cops running around in paramilitary gear. They want to look cool and pretend to be military, but want the overmatched safety of using military gear and weapons against citizens. They're supposed to protect and serve US, not set themselves apart and protect and serve themselves.

[JDPriestly]

5. This is positively medieval-sounding. Is this really true?

What is Reason? Is it a reliable source?

[dmr]

6. Yes. Read this from the Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,6051682.story

Highway robbery? Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars

By Howard Witt Tribune correspondent
March 10, 2009

TENAHA, Texas— You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you're African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.

That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.

More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
More at link

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. I was told years ago by a very old lady that it was like that in Edinburgh between the wars,

though, in that the police, themselves, were considered thieves by the working people. I expect it would have been on a much more modest scale. Bottles of spirits, that sort of thing was what she spoke of seeing herself.

She accepted a clerical job in the offices of the local constabulary, and it was a while before the feathers of her family and the local community were eventually unruffled.

Joe Bageant is never too wide of the mark, you soon learn, and he seemed to have been 'bang on the money' about the US being essentially a criminal enterprise. Though I'm not sure he said, 'essentially'.

[Uncle Joe]

8. The so called War on Drugs is a racket; legalized organized crime.

Talking about your Alice in Wonderland reasoning, this is the way to get around that innocent until proven technicality.

<snip>

"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."

<snip>

This is a raping of the Constitution and whether you use drugs or not, your own freedom and power is diminished. It's done for the primary purpose of disenfranchising and/or alienating the American People from their government and livelihoods, while putting the people under the heel of the corporate supremacists.

Thanks for the thread, Bozita.

[tom_paine]

9. Ah, the true face of Inverted Totalitarianism in our Empire

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20080515_chalmers_johnson_on_our_managed_democracy/

Not to worry, American Idol's on. Remember, as the 1930s Germans used to say and as we say now, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide."

History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

[Uncle Joe]

10. They came for the drug user, but I wasn't a drug user, so shut up while

I veg out watching the corporate media, COPs is on or is that America's Most Wanted!?

[ThomCat]

11. In many places, the cops are the criminals.

They're rob you blind, and get away with it. You can't trust cops. :eyes:

NEVER carry cash. Unfortunately, that means trusting your money to banks, and the banks will steal from you too by hitting you with dozens of bullshit fees, but at least there your remaining money is insured.