Posted on 03/17/2005 5:45:12 PM PST by Graybeard58
A Pontoon Beach police officer acting on a hunch searched a tractor-trailer at a truck stop and discovered almost $3.3 million in suspected drug money, one of the largest cash seizures in the area's history.
The money, confiscated Friday, was mostly in $20 bills and took a team of 10 officers almost 12 hours to count, said Pontoon Beach Police Chief Charles Luehmann.
snip
"We catch people with anywhere from $5,000 or $6,000 all the way up to a half million usually," said St. Louis police spokesman Sgt. Sam Dotson. Almost "$3.3 million, I'd say that's a huge find for Pontoon Beach."
snip
If the driver can't provide proof he obtained the money legally, federal law requires that it be divided between Pontoon Beach police and federal agencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Forcefully, and with great vigor...
And get a really big wallet...
And no one dollar bills. lol
All forfeitures should require the gov't to prove criminal acts and all the money should go into the general fund of the state,to be disbursed as the legislature deems proper. Giving any agency control of its own budget only leads to even more waste than usual.
I've never had that problem.
"How do you stuff $3.3M in your wallet?"
I really don't know. My man servant handles that.
I've got $16 in my wallet - but don't tell my wife.
If the driver can't provide proof he obtained the money legally, federal law requires that it be divided between Pontoon Beach police and federal agencies.
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What about innocent until proven guilty? I guess that doesn't apply anymore huh?
What constituted "out of range" for the purposes of your progam?
We all understand the benefit to criminals of being able to launder their ill-gotten gains. Who doesn't know how Al Capone was finally imprisoned?
Our money used to be marked, "Pay to the bearer on demand". Now, the government no longer promises to pay the bearer. Instead, they can make up any requirements they like to deny payment and confiscate the notes.
Usually the FBI or police are not entitled to monies from things pertaining to doing their jobs. For instance, when reward money is issued they are exempt. Why is this different?
Ask Henry Hyde. He wrote the asset forfeiture laws we 'enjoy' today.
Well, he wrote it when he wasn't fooling around with another man's wife and calling it a 'youthful indescretion'.
There was a local child psychologist accused of pedophilia because of some mildly questionable photographs he had developed. He pled guilty because of the threat of forfeiture of his home, as he had a wife and children to protect.
So, property seizure is not limited to drug activity, and authorities are using this power to deny a fair trial, even though there was no evidence this doctor profited off of the offense.
I've never been subject to this law, but am adamantly opposed to such an odious legislated infraction of our Constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure. The entire edifice of civil asset forfeiture rests upon the legal fiction of in rem jurisdiction, where the property being seized is treated as the guilty party. The longer this offensive practice stays on the books, the more I'm encouraged to diversify my assets out of the United States purely as a defensive measure.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that prevents this practice from devolving in the future into prosecutors shaking down citizens with small businesses, and taking part in turning our nation into a fourth-rate penny-ante patchwork of strongmen fiefdoms given a tissue-paper legitimacy by these sham laws. And before any naysayers out there say this is just paranoid fantasy, what prevents private sector attornies from going on fishing expeditions for tort cases? That right, nothing except the evaluated odds of winning. So what in hell makes you think prosecutors are going to be any different when they figure out that they are unlikely to be slapped on the wrist for wrongful prosecution because the expense of mounting a legal counterattack is so punishingly damaging to most businesses?
CAFRA requires proof by a preponderance of evidence that the property should be forfeited. There is a common mistaken belief that the burden of proof upon the government is satisfied by mere suspicion. This used to be true, but no longer since the passage of CAFRA in 2000. It would be even better if the required test of evidence was clear and convincing evidence, given the rapacious pecuniary interest of the government bureaucrats involved.
Based upon the sketchy details given here however, I'm unmoved by the officer's "hunch" as sufficient evidence to satisfy the "preponderance of evidence" test, especially because the truck driver was released without being charged. The definition of "preponderance of evidence": a standard of judging evidence by which the judge or the jury determines whether an issue of fact is more probable than not probable.
If this is really drug money, at the very least the truck driver is a courier, if not an actual dealer. The driver was not arrested for inebriation, illegal drug possession, or even disorderly conduct. If there are any police officers here, I would really like to hear what kind of evidence on earth could let you conclude that yes, this is drug money and yes, you can let the courier go without being charged at the same time. How can you possibly be helping a drug operation, be caught red-handed, and walk away?
The prosecutors, chiefs of police, and law enforcement officers who take part in any seizures knowing they haven't a solid leg to stand on but do so anyways because the spin of the seizure roulette wheel says that they get to keep the property more often than not because the owners simply can't justify mounting a legal defense that exceeds the value of the property should be tried for violating the Constitution. Thank God this is not yet a widespread trend, but it is only a matter of time.
Is this still America?
Here you go. Read a few horror stories:
http://www.drugtext.org/library/specials/presumedguilty/parttwo.htm
It's all just too much. We've completely spun off the Constitutional wheel and everything is out of control. We are so SCREWED.
When I think about all of that I also think about how much worse it could be under a John Kerry presidency and a democrat controlled congress, or even worse - Hillary.
In addition to all those things you mentioned, the democrats would like to turn our national defense over to the U.N.
The words at the beginning of the article sets a bad tone for me to this whole incident.
Where the hell was my third choice? To LIVE?
So if one was attempting to be slick about it, they'd be better off running the dirty cash through someplace like a sports stadium concession business or Walmart, huh?
Tracking cash flow in the dope and terrorist activities is basically one in the same, and should be priority one. You would be shocked at the fine upstanding businesses that are laundering this dirty money.
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