New Orleans shoeshine man wins legal battle over $30k seized by DEA agents
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
Insult to injury. They took his money within a few mins of meeting him. This shouldn't happen in the first place, but they should have to return the money within 72 hours of verdict/resolution.
I think that doesn't cover the payment itself, the gov. entity just recognized the debt but he needs to collect. It he wants to enforce collection, he'll need to get a court order (not really that knowledgeable about the US system, so maybe he already have the right to enforce collection).
Small police and sheriff’s departments do the same thing so it’s not just an issue of big government.
The only way "small government" would remedy this is if they were so outnumbered by the populace that citizens could take their property back by force. But in reality, the citizens would just get gunned down.
The second amendment basically lets you shoot a cop if they infringe on your rights. Then you get hunted down and either convicted without a fair trial or shot in the back. Naturally I would not advise pulling your gun on a police officer.
The only counter example I can think of is the recent case where a guy returned fire at a van full of cops (they were blindly spraying 'less-lethal' munitions at civilians from an unmarked van) after they shot at him. He got off because his defense was able to prove he had no way to know he was shooting at cops, otherwise he was gonna spend his life in prison.
I hear this a lot, and it's silly. You just don't see it happen because generally the people who own the powerful weaponry are responsible and don't shoot at cops. Helicopters go down easy with 50BMG, and tanks are massively impractical the moment you get out of a city. They're easy to disable, have limited range, and can't safely handle a lot of terrain.
> The only counter example I can think of is the recent case where a guy returned fire at a van full of cops (they were blindly spraying 'less-lethal' munitions at civilians from an unmarked van) after they shot at him. He got off because his defense was able to prove he had no way to know he was shooting at cops, otherwise he was gonna spend his life in prison.
I think we'll be seeing more of this as more middle class people buy firearms and learn about self-defense laws. Cops abuse their power a lot, and it's beginning to happen to people who have lawyer money.
The historically-valid small government is a local warlord.
It's not the size of the government that matters, it's the level of control and oversight over said government that determines what they can do.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated […]
Of course they were called in, they knew money often has drug residue on it and those dogs will be guaranteed to find something.
> In addition to returning all of the seized money – $28,180 – prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case against him with prejudice, meaning they cannot go after the money at a later date. As part of the deal, Warren agreed not to pursue legal action against the government
They don't want any precedents to get in the way in the future. Can someone else pursue legal action instead? Say, his family as they were deprived of it as well?
All money that's been in circulation has drug residue on it. Courts should not be admitting that as evidence.
How can that not create an incentive to abuse the trust placed in law enforcement officers?
Are there any missing checks and balances I’m missing on this that go unreported?
I remember it because of how thoroughly the law prof eviscerated every defense that the DA put forward in defense of the practice, the episode itself was held in the wake of the Philly DA seizing a grandmothers home because her grandson sold a small amount of marijuana outside of it.
The DA was trying to actively avoid answering the question of how evicting an elderly woman on fixed income from her home without due process was legal.
It turns out that the Philadelphia Police prior to the current DA specialized in robbing minorities via civil forfeiture, and were some of the most prolific abusers of civil forfeiture in the country, treating the seized money as profit they could use towards their budget, which incentivized them to find victims who couldn’t fight back.
Her brother was a good, hard-working, enterprising dude. The situation basically broke him, and not just financially. He was always a "manly man", a strong head of his household, but he and his family had to go live with his mother. The whole situation was so sad, and for nothing - a handful of Modesto cops saw an opportunity to get free shit.
I know that there is a lot of shit in Germany if you dig for it. But that is a very different level.
I hate to be glib about it, but that's Modesto for you. Most of the towns in that area are ran in that way.
It's especially bad when it comes to corruption and criminality within the police, because they face next to no accountability from higher up the political ladder (they are essentially untouchable by the state and federal government), and because ~half the local voters will unconditionally support them, and because there's only so many political fights the other ~half will get into.
Congratulations to the DEA for winning the budget for the war on drugs.
It would be a start
duck
I'm not sure I'd support this, but I wouldn't be viscerally opposed to it either. Taking the money on the basis of that suspicion alone, however, is criminal.
(edit: 5.4% of Americans don't have a bank. https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html)
A person shouldn't be subject to seizure of their savings just because they're a little different than most in the handling of their finances.
I might be OK with the warrant you describe, but that's not what this was.
I agree, that was the whole point of my comment.
> I might be OK with the warrant you describe, but that's not what this was.
I know, that's why I presented hypothetical alternative actions law enforcement could have taken, as a thought experiment.
At the root of the issue is this: absent explicit evidence of a crime, should possession of arbitrary amounts of cash be considered suspect? Suppose he'd been pulled over with 2 million dollars cash in a truck and said he'd intended to use it to buy a mansion but the transaction fell through. How should law enforcement respond? Is there any amount of cash where you'd say "Something isn't right here"?
In part because having $2M cash isn't illegal, and in part because if you make it illegal, you have to start defining what the maximum acceptable amount of cash is.
Want an example? You and I are posting on an internet forum whose name has the word "hacker" in the title !! :-)
The DEA agent is just another dude, like me. He should have 0 powers; and always defer the judgement to the competent court.
I don't understand your comment. I'm not suggesting that the DEA agent should be able to put him in jail. I'm saying they should not be allowed to just seize the cash. I'm asking if people think it would be ok for them to apply for a warrant to check his email/phone records based on the info they have (man carrying $30,000 cash with an unlikely explanation), and if it would be ok for a judge to approve that warrant. A search warrant doesn't mean he gets arrested.
"Unlikely" in _your_ experience. Your suggestion is a prescription for the police going on fishing expeditions of the poor and unlucky who are least able to defend themselves. (Poor people are more likely to use cash for everything, and less likely to have alternatives.)
Just because you're not arresting them doesn't mean it isn't harassment.
An officer pulled over someone who had removed their hat after seeing the officer. The officer reasoned that the individual removed his hat to avoid being profiled and stopped by the officer, which the officer deemed suspicious. The judge agreed it was suspicious, but ruled that merely removing one's hat is not evidence of a crime.
- Person is unemployed and so needs to find the best deal on everything. The best deal happens to be far away.
- person needs a vehicle so he can get to a job
- person has bad credit and/or is unbanked
- person is not in a position to buy a $14,000 loan ($30k @ 20%, prevailing rate for "deep subprime" used car loans per Experian)
This person is spending their last money to invest in their next job. How would you move the money if you don't have a bank?
Richer people buy cars from other states all the time, for example by paying CarMax or a dealer a transfer fee to move the car for them (and thereby are not getting the best deal as the dealer takes a margin).
You don't need a $30,000 truck (which, again, represents your life savings) to get to work. Just the cost of collision insurance and the cost of flying to Columbus and driving it back to New Orleans would wipe out any putative savings obtained.
Again, I'm not saying the cops should have seized his money. I'm explicitly saying they shouldn't be able to do that. I'm asking if there's a middle ground between "cops can arbitrarily decide to seize any cash you're carrying" (status quo) and "there is no amount of cash that a person can possess which triggers reasonable suspicion of illegal activity" (what many people here seem to be advocating)
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