Posted on 12/09/2021 10:22:41 AM PST by Red Badger
On Sunday, a Facebook post from the Dallas Police Department went viral. It depicts a police dog, Ballentine, who is a member of the department's interdiction unit, operating out of Dallas' Love Field Airport. The caption praises Ballentine for sniffing out more than $100,000 in cash from a traveler's bag.
What is left out of the description is what, if anything, the traveler did wrong.
When contacted by Reason, Dallas police declined to give any specifics. The only comment provided was a statement that the squad "seized $106,829.00, from a 25-year-old female who is a resident of Chicago, IL., but was travelling on a domestic flight… [Her suitcase] contained nothing but blankets and two large bubble envelopes containing the currency. The individual was not arrested at this time. However, the money was seized and will be subject to the civil asset forfeiture process."
Civil asset forfeiture is the practice by which law enforcement may take certain goods, including cash, if they are suspected to be tied to criminal activity. But in practice, officials do not even have to prove that a crime has been, or would be, committed. Legally, there is no limit on the amount of cash a traveler can carry on domestic flights, but forfeiture allows authorities to seize any amount they deem suspicious.
In most cases, the owner of the seized property faces no recourse but to file suit against the particular agency. Texas is no exception: According to the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm, the standard of proof in Texas for police to seize property is simply "preponderance of the evidence," while "an innocent owner bears the burden of proving that she was not involved in any crimes associated with her property before she can get it back."
Texas law enforcement agencies additionally have a "strong incentive" to seize property, as they are entitled to a significant percentage of the proceeds. In fact, IJ is currently suing Harris County, which encompasses Houston, over its application of the state's asset forfeiture law.
Cops regularly use civil asset forfeiture to boost their own budgets while depriving innocent people of their property. Earlier this year, a Nevada Highway Patrol Officer confiscated a man's life savings during a routine traffic stop, even after admitting that it was "not illegal to carry currency." In Georgia, the state government agency charged with enforcing tax crimes misappropriated more than $5 million in seized funds between 2015 and 2020. And for years in Oklahoma, district attorneys used forfeitures like their own personal piggy banks, living for free in seized houses and paying off student loans with seized cash.
Jennifer McDonald, who works at IJ and authored the report "Jetway Robbery? Homeland Security and Cash Seizures at Airports," tells Reason that this Dallas case is "pretty typical" of forfeitures. According to IJ's research, McDonald says there is "very little evidence in the data that there is strong criminality tied to these seizures. In most cases, nobody is even arrested…If somebody is truly laundering money, or trafficking drug proceeds, or whatever it is that law enforcement alleges, wouldn't you think that there should at least be an arrest going on?"
As for the 25-year-old woman from Chicago, she was not detained and was allowed to continue on to her destination. Yet in order to recoup her seized funds, she will likely have to travel back to Dallas, retain an attorney, and argue in court that the money was not involved in criminal activity. In essence, she will have to prove a negative, and she will have to shoulder the costs for doing so, despite having already lost more than $100,000.
The fact that a person, with little warning, can have her property seized without being charged with a crime is bad enough. The idea that to get that property back, the burden would then fall to her to prove her own innocence, against a crime that was not charged, is unconscionable. Since Dallas police did not charge this traveler with a crime, they should give the money back—and then Texas legislators should rip out the state's forfeiture laws by the roots.
It's a she. Surprising how many people hide cash, and travel with it. No proof of a crime. I have friends who bury cash in jars in their back yards, retrieve some to make large purchases. Crazy? Yes. People traveling to auctions or sales events often carry thousands of dollars in cash. That's nuts, but they do it. As for contesting a seizure, a good lawyer might cost you $100,000 to defend you, so someone might not challenge the seizure.
Sorry. It was meant to be sarcastic.
I don’t care if why they were transporting the money, they had a right to it unless the cops and the courts could prove a crime involving that money.
So they shouldn’t have take the money unless they arrested the owner. And they shouldn’t keep the money unless they can prove that it was the proceeds from a crime.
Civil Asset Forfeiture makes me very angry because it turns cops into thieves.
Yes I know.
He often talked about his Jacksonville gig on DC101. Especially his experience of riding shotgun with the Jacksonville po-lice, which fed into his Officer Greasemanelli skits!
Here come da Judge!
I guess when you take 106 large into custody, it doesn’t get “no-bail” from the Soros DAs...
“Zed’s dead, honey. Zed’s dead.”
Because there were a whole bunch of “true conservatives” who needed to show how tough they were in the War on Drugs. If you questioned asset seizure, you supported giving heroin to grade-schoolers.
It wasn’t a good idea when created.
My father in law worked in the construction industry in Sacramento. He would often tell of how in the 1950’s and 1960’s as the stately old homes of downtown were demolished to make way for government buildings a coworker found $80,000 in $20 gold coins.
That’s 250 pounds of gold. Which was all illegal to own at the time.
The coworker was never seen again and I personally believe that by refusing to turn in the money he did the right thing. Screw the law. The government really is nothing but legalized thievery when they outlaw gold and when they have effectively outlawed the personal possession of cash.
Sickening isn’t it!
sometimes the police are nothing but common thieves. My tagline is relevant.
Except it was still a stupid idea even when you view it through the lens of attempting to take drug traffickers’ money. There’s been an awful lot of stupid ideas excused as “but we had good intentions!”
Even when this was first proposed people pointed out that it didn’t have any safeguards and it could be used to seize money without due process. All the police had to do was seize the money “because they suspected it was the proceeds of crime” and never file charges. Ever.
It needs to go away.
Also, it is now thought that *every* non-new $20 in circulation has trace amounts of illegal drugs on it.
I think most of us agree with that buts it’s far different if you have loads of cash
I’m in a cash business and deal with it to the point I got a lawyer in one jurisdiction ....to obtain a court signed document that we showed when pulling deposits and carrying around a gym bag with cash....50-100k
At first the county DA said ..we should hire Brinks
Where is that his effing business.
There should be due process to seizures as in after an arrest freeze and take assets after conviction and with court approval
All local seizures stay local
Federal seizures gives a small percentage to local and the rest goes to general fund like taxes would
A racket.....
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
You say that as if it is a bad thing. ;-)
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