Dallas Police Steal* $100,000 from Woman at Love Field

D Magazine ^ | 12/8/2021 | Peter Simek

[simpson96]

Two local TV news outlets, WFAA and CBS11, picked up a story this week that was first reported on the Dallas Police Department’s Facebook page. On the surface, it reads like a feel-good story: On December 2, an adorable K9 named Ballentine identified a piece of carry-on luggage at Dallas Love Field Airport that contained $100,000 in cash. Police seized the money and posted a photo of the dog with stacks of cash laid out on a table. Good boy. Case closed. But not so fast.

According to the reports, the money belonged to a 25-year-old woman from Chicago, who was neither arrested nor charged with a crime after her luggage was seized by police. So why did the police take the money? Well, according to Texas law, police don’t need a reason to take your property so long as they believe it either has been part of a crime or they believe it will be involved in a crime. That grants law enforcement sweeping powers to basically seize any property they believe is suspicious, even if they don’t have much evidence. The fact that the K9 identified the bag is, in and of itself, not evidence; 90 percent of cash in circulation has been shown to have trace amounts of cocaine.(snip)

Civil forfeiture laws allow law enforcement to seize property without due process.

[Svartalfiar]

good luck in that fight if they have all your money.

that is the problem with these laws.

If you successfully fight an asset forfeiture, you should get 10 or 100 times your stolen stuff back. Better to get rid of it altogether, but if we can't then the cops need to at least be wary of using at much as they do.