(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 !! :-)
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.
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)