License To Shill: Highway Robbery

[Vashta Nerada]

One afternoon in August 2012, Mandrel Stuart was driving with his girlfriend into Washington, D.C., when a Fairfax County cop pulled him over on Interstate 66, ostensibly because the windows of his SUV were too dark. Lacking the device necessary to check whether the tinting of the windows exceeded the legal limit, Officer Kevin Palizzi instead cited Stuart for having a video running within his line of sight. While Palizzi was filling out the summons, another officer arrived with a drug-detecting dog. Claiming the dog alerted to the left front bumper and wheel of Stuart's GMC Yukon, the cops searched the car and found $17,550 in cash, which they kept, assuming that it must be related to the illegal drug trade.

Stuart, who had planned to use that money to buy equipment and supplies for his barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Virginia, was astonished that a routine traffic stop could so easily turn into grand theft. But as Washington Post reporters Michael Sallah, Robert O'Harrow Jr., and Steven Rich explain in a revealing and troubling series of stories that ran this week, taking Stuart's hard-earned money was perfectly legal, thanks to civil forfeiture laws that turn cops into highway robbers.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/09/11/how-cops-got-a-license-to-steal-your-money

[guido911]

I use heavy cream in my mashed potatoes instead of milk. Big difference.

[Vashta Nerada]

County Sheriff Attacks Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill

Canadian County Sheriff Randall Edwards says an attempt to stop the seizure of personal property by law enforcement even though the property's owner is not charged with a crime is counterproductive and "asinine."

In an email, Edwards attacks Senator Kyle Loveless and the reform bill he has introduced, the "Personal Asset Protection Act," that will be studied in the interim.

Edwards claims drug interdiction programs will collapse if the bill becomes law.

Wrote Edwards in defense of the highly-criticized practice of civil asset forfeiture:

"Senator Kyle Loveless has authored a bill that will deregulate drug cartel traffic throughout our state. The bill takes all the drug monies and  proceeds from asset forfeitures away from local law enforcement, who make the majority of the seizures, and gives it to the state.

"This is without a doubt the single worst, most damning, most asinine and devastating bill I have ever seen for this State and local law enforcement.

This bill, if passed, will set the war on drugs back twenty years and will literally shut down the drug interdiction in this state, allowing drug traffic to run with 10 to 15 percent regulation, compared to the total state and local drug interdiction units now working interdiction in the state.

"Although the bill allows the state to continue to keep its share of the funds, it forces the local agencies to turn over its proceeds to the state. 

Local agencies will no longer be able to afford to work drug interdiction as a result of this bill.

"The State has not paid a penny of my Drug Interdiction program, I don't know why they or anyone else in their right mind would think the state would be entitled to my agencies (sic) proceeds from it. The proceeds Kyle Loveless is proposing to take fund close to half of my cash funds, funds that support all my public safety programs, ranging from investigating on-line child sexual predators, to supporting nine K-9 Units and four full time drug interdiction units. These drug funds also account for a large part of my agency's equipment, cars, radars, cameras and a multitude of other public safety equipment that Sheriffs will no longer will be able to buy, as well as jobs paid for and funded through these cash funds.

"Words can't adequately express how this bill poses a serious and imminent threat to public safety and most directly the war on drugs in this state and nation. It's completely asinine."

http://mccarvillereport.com/archives/29222

[Hoss]

Once again, this guy is on it.

[Ed W]

Do I understand this right? He's arguing that he can take someone's property even if the person isn’t convicted. Does that mean the property committed a crime?

[dbacksfan 2.0]

Do I understand this right? He's arguing that he can take someone's property even if the person isn't convicted. Does that mean the property committed a crime?

Correct. They don't even have to arrest you. All they need is reasonable suspicion that it's involved in criminal activity. No arrest, no warrant, no trial.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

https://www.ij.org/foreword-2

[patric]

Correct. They don't even have to arrest you. All they need is reasonable suspicion that it's involved in criminal activity. No arrest, no warrant, no trial.

Some bizarre circular logic at work here.
Courts have ruled that probable cause exists to search something when a police dog "alerts" its handler.
Handlers get police dogs to "alert" through voice and hand cues,
essentially inventing the probable cause they need to conduct a search.

Because some of the dogs training involves funding drugs,
any money that the dog finds is considered by police to be "drug money"
and "drug money" is guilty of a crime by its mere existence,
so the police can pocket it without due process.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

Yes, and a routine traffic stop, goes from a ticeket to "Before I let you go, may I search your car? You can say no and I will detain you while I get a canine here because I believe you have drugs in the car. Or you can say yes and I will detain you while I get a canine here. You're not under arrest, but by me citing you for a tail light out that gives me the right to detain you while I search all of your belongings in the car and the car as well. Do I have your permission to search your car?"

[patric]

"This bill, if passed, will set the war on drugs back twenty years and will literally shut down the drug interdiction in this state, allowing drug traffic to run with 10 to 15 percent regulation, compared to the total state and local drug interdiction units now working interdiction in the state."

"The State has not paid a penny of my Drug Interdiction program, I don't know why they or anyone else in their right mind would think the state would be entitled to my agencies (sic) proceeds from it. The proceeds Kyle Loveless is proposing to take fund close to half of my cash funds, funds that support all my public safety programs, ranging from investigating on-line child sexual predators, to supporting nine K-9 Units and four full time drug interdiction units. These drug funds also account for a large part of my agency's equipment, cars, radars, cameras and a multitude of other public safety equipment that Sheriffs will no longer will be able to buy, as well as jobs paid for and funded through these cash funds."

That sheriff couldnt have done a better job of showing how corrupt the "War On Drugs" really is, except maybe:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/11/how-the-dea-took-a-young-mans-life-savings-without-ever-charging-him-of-a-crime

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/dea-asset-forfeiture-joseph-rivers_n_7231744.html

[heironymouspasparagus]

Been going on a long time.  Similar to the falsely labeled "Patriot Act".

[patric]

Oh forgot one:

http://www.fox23.com/videos/news/new-law-may-change-what-happens-to-seized-drug/vDSC5r/

Its ironic that a law intended to take away the incentive to act criminally, itself needs another law to take away the incentive to criminally exploit it.

[Vashta Nerada]

Do I understand this right? He's arguing that he can take someone's property even if the person isn't convicted. Does that mean the property committed a crime?

Vehicle forfeiture efforts could be lucrative, but difficult in Twin Peaks shooting

As if they weren't busy enough pursuing charges against some 170 suspects in the deadly Twin Peaks shooting, local criminal justice officials also face the question of what to do with their belongings.

Waco police have impounded about 135 motorcycles and 80 cars and trucks from the parking lot where nine people were shot dead on May 17. Police have said the vehicles were needed for evidence.

It's possible some of the vehicles could be declared illegal contraband associated with a crime, and ownership transferred to the county through a process known as civil forfeiture. The collective value of the vehicles likely exceeds $1 million, assuming typical vehicle values.

As of Friday afternoon, McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna had not filed any civil forfeiture notices with the McLennan County district clerk. But Reyna is known for aggressive pursuit of civil forfeiture, and defense attorneys are watching his moves in this case where so much property is at stake and so many owners are in jail.

Some 170 people remain in the McLennan County Jail, each on $1 million bond, on charges of engaging in organized criminal activity in the Twin Peaks shooting. But, the arrest warrant affidavits are practically identical and don't point to any one person's specific role in the shootings.

Civil forfeitures are "extremely profitable" for district attorneys, who on average spent $702 prosecuting a forfeiture case in return for $15,182 in proceeds, according to a December 2014 report to the Texas Legislature by the Public Policy Research Institute.

Since Reyna was took office in 2011 he has boasted of taking more than $1 million of contraband through forfeiture, including cars, computers, even fancy hubcaps. He used the process to acquire a 2004 Freightliner trailer-tractor rig that was seized by state troopers in 2011, a truck that ended up with County Commissioner Ben Perry's precinct.

Reyna's office uses 30 percent of the proceeds from the forfeitures and shares 70 percent with the agency that seized the goods.

Stan Schwieger, a Waco defense attorney who has fought civil forfeiture cases here, said he sees challenges in using the procedure in the Twin Peaks case. "I don't know parking a bike on a public parking lot and showing up for a couple of bad wings and some beer, how that renders property to be contraband," he said.
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/twin-peaks-biker-shooting/vehicle-forfeiture-efforts-could-be-lucrative-but-difficult-in-twin/article_117085cd-2edf-57bc-b3b0-09e4cc90dfea.html

[Conan71]

I'd always heard that 1% clubs like the Bandidos require prospects and members to sign over the title of their bike to the club.  If that's the case and the Texas Bandidos, the Scimitars, and whomever the third club were are brought up on a RICO action, they may not have such a hard time successfully confiscating the bikes if they are titled as club, rather than individual property.

[patric]

I'd always heard that 1% clubs like the Bandidos require prospects and members to sign over the title of their bike to the club.  If that's the case and the Texas Bandidos, the Scimitars, and whomever the third club were are brought up on a RICO action, they may not have such a hard time successfully confiscating the bikes if they are titled as club, rather than individual property.

Reading past the spokesman's narrative, there were about a dozen (99%'ers) motorcycle groups there to talk about upcoming legislation, with the Banditos in the minority.
Police basically scooped up anyone wearing a black T-shirt, mostly weekend hobbyists who cant afford to sit in jail for the estimated weeks/months it will take just to get a bond reduction hearing.