DEA steals money because it must be illegal

[tarheelbybirth]

After scraping together enough money to produce a music video in Hollywood, 22-year-old Joseph Rivers set out last month on a train trip from Michigan to Los Angeles, hoping it was the start of something big.

Before he made it to California, however, Rivers fell victim to a legal form of government highway robbery.

Rivers changed trains at the Amtrak station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 15, with bags containing his clothes, other possessions and an envelope filled with the $16,000 in cash he had raised with the help of his family, the Albuquerque Journal reports. Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration got on after him and began looking for people who might be trafficking drugs.

Rivers said the agents questioned passengers at random, asking for their destination and reason for travel. When one of the agents got to Rivers, who was the only black person in his car, according to witnesses, the agent took the interrogation further, asking to search his bags. Rivers complied. The agent found the cash -- still in a bank envelope -- and decided to seize it on suspicion that it may be tied to narcotics. River pleaded with the agents, explaining his situation and even putting his mother on the phone to verify the story.

No luck.

“These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers told the Journal. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

This has got to stop.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...ers_n_7231744.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

 

[THE_DEVIL]

Welcome to the American Police State 2015, taking away your rights, property and safety with impunity.

This should be stopped immediately at all levels of government.

I think I remember reading somewhere that Iowa is working changing the confiscation laws to make it illegal for the state to act in this manner.

 

[Lone Clone]

After scraping together enough money to produce a music video in Hollywood, 22-year-old Joseph Rivers set out last month on a train trip from Michigan to Los Angeles, hoping it was the start of something big.

Before he made it to California, however, Rivers fell victim to a legal form of government highway robbery.

Rivers changed trains at the Amtrak station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 15, with bags containing his clothes, other possessions and an envelope filled with the $16,000 in cash he had raised with the help of his family, the Albuquerque Journal reports. Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration got on after him and began looking for people who might be trafficking drugs.

Rivers said the agents questioned passengers at random, asking for their destination and reason for travel. When one of the agents got to Rivers, who was the only black person in his car, according to witnesses, the agent took the interrogation further, asking to search his bags. Rivers complied. The agent found the cash -- still in a bank envelope -- and decided to seize it on suspicion that it may be tied to narcotics. River pleaded with the agents, explaining his situation and even putting his mother on the phone to verify the story.

No luck.

“These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers told the Journal. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

This has got to stop.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...ers_n_7231744.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

Yeah, this has been the topic of considerable discussion. There's a woman in Spirit Lake whose bank deposits from her cafe weren't as big as the feds thought they should be, so they took all her money. Not sure what the latest on that case might be. I think Grassley is involved in an effort to fix it, but I could be wrong...I'm thinking one method of attack was to prohibit local governments from getting any of the confiscated assets.

 

[dandh]

I still don't understand how this can be constitutional. They're clearly depriving you of property without due process.

 

[Nat Algren]

I'm happy to see there are people finally waking up to what is going on around them. Libertarians have been screaming about this for years. Unfortunately, the Deep State is here and it is going to be like putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

 

[Thomas Barnes]

They should only take the money if it is for sure drug money? Did they find anything or any drugs??

 

[KennyPowers_96]

What is this, Russia? WTF is wrong here when you cannot carry legal currency without it being stolen from a government agency?

 

[L. Wade Childress]

the Spirit Lake case was resolved. she was flagged for structuring transactions under the 10k reporting limit. they were also wrong in that case but they were a lot more right than this case. it just took forever to get cleared up.

 

[BABiscuit]

I still don't understand how this can be constitutional. They're clearly depriving you of property without due process.

Isnt that why they enter the seizure directly against the property and not the person? So the official record is Podunk vs $12,574 and an iPod.

 

[Nat Algren]

Another case:

“Asset Forfeiture” in D.C.: Cops Steal Your Car, the Judge Demands Ransom
Here’s how the institutionalized theft called “civil asset forfeiture” works in Washington, D.C.: If the police steal your car, you may eventually get it back – if you’re willing to pay ransom for the privilege of letting a judge decide if the thieves get to keep it permanently.

TheNewspaper.com reports that D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeremy Bank stopped Virginia resident Frederick Simms on May 29, 2011 for supposedly making an illegal right turn on Martin Luther King Boulevard. In keeping with the standard script, Banks lied by claiming that he smelled the aroma of marijuana. A search of the car revealed a handgun. Simms was arrested and his car impounded.

With the help of a public defender, the 22-year-old Simms was acquitted of all charges last December 7. However, the D.C. municipal government – which has one of the most flexible and abusive “civil asset forfeiture” statues in the American soyuz – retained possession of the 2007 Saturn Aura XE in the hope of permanently confiscating it through a forfeiture action.

Following his acquittal, Simms was told that he would have to pay a $1200 fee in order to file a court challenge against the seizure of his automobile. Spokesmen for the criminal clique that had stolen his car didn’t bother to tell Simms that he could apply for a reduction or waiver of the “bond.” After learning that this was possible, Simms attempted to apply for a waiver, and was told that he would have to get the application notarized and provide three years of tax returns. After doing so, Simms was informed that his waiver was denied, and the bond – essentially, a ransom demand for an amount he would lose if the thieves ratified their theft of his car – would be reduced to $800.

“I cannot afford to pay $800 to try to get my car back,” Simms explained in a court filing. “All of the money I make from my wages … goes to transportation, rent, daycare, utilities, groceries, car insurance, and the $360 a month I pay on the car loan….”

On May 1, Simms filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the District, which responded by beginning forfeiture proceedings the following month – more than a year after the initial traffic stop. In a preliminary hearing, one of the lawyers representing the D.C. criminal clique observed that the forfeiture proceeding (that is, the process of ratifying the theft) might take about a year. This would mean Simms would be deprived of the use of a car on which he was still making loan and insurance payments. In the meantime, sniffed the mob lawyer, Simms would just have to make use of “public” transportation.

Federal District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled that it was an “irreparable harm” for the district to keep Simms’s car. However, he required that the innocent motorist pay a $1000 forfeiture bond – that is, a ransom to get back the car the police had stolen from him until a judge decides whether the thieves can keep it.

Read the ruling here.

- See more at: http://www.republicmagazine.com/new...udge-demands-ransom.html#sthash.ZXcCQQfj.dpuf

 

[Nat Algren]

Asset Forfeiture as Cop-Shopping
William Norman Grigg

Undercover police monitoring a bar in Las Cruces, New Mexico were giddy with covetousness when they saw a man drive up in a brand-new Mercedes. As city attorney Harry S. Connelly later explained, the cops were delighted to find that the man had been drinking, exclaiming: “We can hardly wait.”

Under what Las Cruces calls the law, vehicles can be confiscated from suspected drunk drivers through civil asset forfeiture – a process that doesn’t require a criminal conviction, or even criminal charges.

In a videotaped seminar teaching prosecutors the art of asset forfeiture (which was obtained by the good folks at the Institute for Justice), Connelly explained that he encourages police to send him wish lists when they seize property: “If you want the car, and you really want to put it in your fleet, let me know – I’ll fight for it. If you don’t … I’ll try to resolve it real quick through a settlement and get cash for the car….”

“Mr. McMurtry made it clear that forfeitures were highly contingent on the needs of law enforcement,” points out the Times. “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.”

Thanks to the practice of asset forfeiture, every traffic stop and undercover police operation is a potential shopping expedition for the police, who can steal what they want and devise a justification at leisure. Like the Bolshevik commissars depicted in Dr. Zhivago, who would exclaim “It’s only just!” as they seize the property of the bourgeoise at gunpoint, American cops consider themselves entitled to poach whatever they can from the public they supposedly serve.

“I’m your modern-day Robin Hood,” gloated a police chief in New Jersey. “I steal from the rich, the drug dealers, to give to the poor, the police.” The reality, of course, is that the police are faring much better than their private sector competition in the criminal underworld: Two Long Island County police departments confiscated $31 million through asset forfeiture.

Most asset forfeiture operations are entirely opaque to the public, and are used as slush funds for both official business and the indulgence of the personal whims of police and prosecutors.

The New York Times points out that forfeiture seminars like those taught by Connelly are commonplace, which is both alarming and entirely predictable, given the increasingly predatory nature of the regime that rules us.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/asset-forfeiture-as-cop-shopping/

 

[Nat Algren]

Asset Forfeiture Evidence of the Growing U.S. Police State
Michael S. Rozeff

As evidence of the growing U.S. police state, here are statistics on drug war asset seizures (in dollars) made by U.S. attorneys:

1989 $285,000,039
1990 451,870,952 +58.6%
1991 596,879,728 +32.1%
1992 325,786,450 -45.4%
1993 385,000,701 +18.2%
1994 418,224,247 +8.6%
1995 464,666,914 +11.1%
1996 377,527,900 -18.8%
1997 570,656,170 +51.2%
1998 280,808,572 -50.8%
1999 535,767,852 +90.8%
2000 312,676,413 -41.6%
2001(a) 199,043,103 -36.3%
2002 322,246,408 +61.9%
2003 342,862,000 +6.4%
2004 (b) 300,779,267 -12.3%
2005 313,866,115 +4.4%
2006 841,094,697 +168.0%
2007 1,323,094,697 +57.3%
2008 1,103,810,683 -16.6%
2009 1,129,381,466 +2.3%
2010 1,786,567,692 +58.2%

Growth is irregular but at a very high rate (over 9 percent continuously compounded a year).

a. In 2001, the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act temporarily derailed growth.
b. In 2004, the introduction of a new system of tracking seizures temporarily derailed growth.

These asset seizures fund further growth of the police state. The same process is at work whenever any state expands its power and size. In earlier centuries, as monarchs extended taxes to peasants, they frequently revolted. The taxes aided the monarch in building up armed forces to quell revolts and collect taxes, that is, to institute a stronger state.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/asset-forfeiture-evidence-of-the-growing-u-s-police-state/

 

[Nat Algren]

Officer Larry Bates: The Face of Highway Robbery in Tennessee
William Norman Grigg
https://www.addtoany.com/share_save... of Highway Robbery in Tennessee&description=
Officer Larry Bates: Highway robber, impenitent perjurer

In the State of Tennessee, highway robbery in the name of “asset forfeiture” is commonplace — and Monterey PD Officer Larry Bates, who stole $22,000 from New Jersey businessman George Raby, is the embodiment of this unfathomably corrupt practice.

Reby, an insurance adjuster, was stopped for speeding by Bates on Interstate 40. Like too many honest and innocent people, Reby made the mistake of answering questions posed by the armed stranger who materialized at the driver’s side door.

Bates asked if Reby was carrying any large amounts of cash.

“I said, `Around $20,000,” Reby recalled in a television interview with the Nashville CBS affiliate. “Then, at that point, he said, `Do you mind if I search your vehicle?’ I said, `No, I don’t mind.’ I certainly didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong. It was my money.”

In fact, the ingenuous businessman actually handed the money to the officer.

What Reby didn’t understand is that through the practice of “civil asset forfeiture,” every traffic stop is a potential highway robbery — and police everywhere are encouraged to view cash and other valuables as subject to confiscation on the pretext that they are “proceeds” of narcotics trafficking. All that is necessary is for the officer to cobble together what he considers a plausible statement justifying his suspicion — however emancipated from the facts of the case — that the money or valuables is connected to actual or potential narcotics commerce.

Bates didn’t arrest Reby. He did, however, steal his money, later insisting that this was proper because the businessman “couldn’t prove it was legitimate.” In the work of fiction he filed later as an official affidavit, Bates invoked his “training” to justify the seizure, insisting that “common people do not carry this much currency.”

“On the street, a thousand-dollar bundle could approximately buy two ounces of cocaine,” Bates told a news reporter for Channel 5, as if this crashing non sequitur ended the discussion.

Reby explained — and documented — that he had an active eBay bid on a car. Pressed by the reporter, Bates admitted that Reby had said as much during the traffic stop.

“But you did not include that in your report,” the TV reporter pointed out in his interview with Bates.

“If it’s not in there, I didn’t put it in there,” simpered the officer — offering an evasive answer of the sort that comes readily to a practiced liar and thief.

Asked why he hadn’t mentioned this germane fact in his report, Bates took refuge in sullen silence before replying: “I don’t know.”

Click link for balance.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/officer-larry-bates-the-face-of-highway-robbery-in-tennessee/

 

[dandh]

Isnt that why they enter the seizure directly against the property and not the person? So the official record is Podunk vs $12,574 and an iPod.

It doesn't make any difference, in my opinion. What ever happened to "possession is 9/10 of the law"? They should have to prove it is not yours, not the other way around. In my humble opinion, of course.

 

[HallofFame]

Ugh our government is scum. Don't local agencies get to keep the money they confiscate? Makes me sick. I hope someone stands up for these people and the ACLU sues each person involved.

 

[Heel Gyeah]

'Merica, F Yeah!

 

[BABiscuit]

Here is an old New Yorker article that has some examples that really sound like BS. IMO, this makes law enforcement look much worse than the incidents of brutality.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

America's law enforcement agencies are starting to make the Sheriff of Nottingham look honorable.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

Here is an old New Yorker article that has some examples that really sound like BS. IMO, this makes law enforcement look much worse than the incidents of brutality.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

We don't have to choose between the the 2 types of abuse and corruption. We have both.

 

[lucas80]

The DMR has been running a string of articles about these shameful seizures.
I wonder why so many people offer the money up? I'd politely say none of your effing business if a cop asked me that question. If it escalated beyond that, fine. It would all be on my iPhone. I'd still lose, and probably wind up in handcuffs. But, it might be worth it.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

The DMR has been running a string of articles about these shameful seizures.
I wonder why so many people offer the money up? I'd politely say none of your effing business if a cop asked me that question. If it escalated beyond that, fine. It would all be on my iPhone. I'd still lose, and probably wind up in handcuffs. But, it might be worth it.

John Oliver had a terrific bit on this a while back. Not as funny as his usual stuff but very good.

Here's a LINK.