Police in Tenaha, Texas allegedly pulled over motorists–mostly black and Latino–passing through town for petty traffic violations and then shook them down for their cash and property, using forfeiture and vague drug laws to give the scam the patina of…
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Monthly Archives: August 2011
Good News from Tenaha
Posted in states
Sheriff Accused of Enriching Himself with Forfeiture Dollars
A sheriff in Virginia has been accused by a grand jury of some pretty blatant corruption: Indictments handed down last week by a Middlesex special grand jury allege Sheriff Guy Abbott procured an inflatable boat, two other boats and a…
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Posted in states
The Mayor’s Pimpmobile
The mayor of Tampa, Florida drives an alleged pimp’s old SUV: Mayor Bob Buckhorn’s city vehicle, a jet black GMC Yukon Denali with tinted windows, was seized from a man charged last month with sex trafficking, sexual battery and forcing…
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Posted in states
The Perpetual Forfeiture Machine
Gibson Guitar is an American institution, manufacturing the guitars of choice for musicians ranging from Chet Atkins to Zakk Wylde, Bob Dylan to Frank Zappa, and Woody Guthrie to James Hetfield. Now, the company is under violent assault from heavily…
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Posted in federal
The Federal Loophole: Part 2
Federal adoption offers law enforcement two primary advantages over processing forfeitures in state court. First, law enforcement agencies in states that restrict the amount of money an agency can receive through forfeiture may receive more money than if they used…
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Tagged with: asset forfeiture, equitable sharing, federal adoption, Institute for Justice
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
More Forfeiture Coverage
At Forbes, the Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell discusses the forfeiture article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. Here are some highlights: As a grumpy libertarian, I routinely get agitated about taxes, spending, and regulation. As far as I’m concerned, much of…
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Posted in Drug War
DOJ mafia strongarms Google for $500 million; largest forfeiture penalty in history
Politico reports: Google agreed to forfeit $500 million for helping online Canadian pharmacies to reach American consumers by letting the drug companies place advertisements through its AdWords programs, the Justice Department announced Wednesday. The $500 million settlement with DOJ is…
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WSJ coverage means new fuel for reformers
Today Wall Street Journal published a feature article by John Emshwiller and Gary Shields on asset forfeiture abuses in the United States titled “Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent with Guilty“. Hopefully, the attention brought by such high-profile coverage will…
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Police Are Still Subject to the Laws of Economics
People like to believe that if we just put good people in the government, we can avoid corruption and they will keep it efficient and just. It’s a nice thought, but it ignores how drastically our behavior is shaped by…
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Posted in Drug War
Prosecutors v. Commissioners
This is a relatively strange story out of Hollywood, Maryland: Negotiations that have been going on for the better part of a year to include the county, sheriff’s and state’s attorney’s office in dealing with assets seized in drug raids…
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Posted in Uncategorized
Update: Sheriff Escapes Justice
Last week, I wrote about Nicholas County, Kentucky Sheriff Leonard Garrett, who was on trial for using the county’s forfeiture dollars as his own personal slush fund. In a surprising turn of events, Garrett has accepted a plea bargain and…
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Posted in states
Great Innovations in Pranking
SWAT teams have become so widespread that people across the country (and even Canada.) are calling in false reports designed to elicit a SWAT raid–a practice known as “swatting.” Naturally, this is causing some distress among the SWAT teams who…
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Posted in Drug War
Forfeiture Abroad
This CBS News article about Colombia’s massively corrupt forfeiture program is instructive: But 20 years after the DNE was established, billions of dollars in drug assets that the government planned to use to benefit crime victims and law enforcement have…
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Posted in Drug War
Sure, the Sheriff’s Homeowner’s Insurance is a Law Enforcement Expense!
From the AP: A Kentucky sheriff is on trial over how he used more than $43,000 from a drug-asset forfeiture account belonging to the county. In opening statements Thursday, special prosecutorKathryn Hendrickson said Nicholas County Sheriff Leonard “Dick” Garrett used asset forfeiture money “like…
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The Forfeiture Heard Round the World (or at Least the Midwest)
In Detroit’s Metro Times, John Sinclair writes movingly about the Camp Zoe seizure and compares it to a similarly misguided prosecution in Michigan in the early 1970s: A story I read recently in the Drug War Chronicle took me back over those…
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The Drug War Is a Sham
The federal government is once again accused of complicity in the drug trade: Lawyers for the drug- trafficking son of one of Mexico’s most powerful kingpins contend he helped run the Sinaloa Cartel — and was a fugitive from charges…
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Posted in Drug War
Civil forfeiture: Denying rights, fostering corruption
Indiana attorney Paul Odgen has an excellent post this Monday on the new policy of the city of Indianapolis to use civil fines and penalties to sanction unlicensed escorts far in excess of the punishments allowed by Indiana’s criminal law.…
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There Are so Many Problems with This
Law enforcement in Iredell County, North Carolina are practically inviting corruption into their force with this $400,000 cash seizure. Let’s set aside the strong possibility that the seizing officers were patrolling for money as opposed to drugs, and assume that…
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Employment shakeups at NOAA’s troubled Office of Law Enforcement
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a press release confirming the appointment of Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Buckson as the new director of NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE). Richard Gaines, of the Gloucester Times, first reported…
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