With Greedy Cops, Highway Robbery Thrives

Admirably, The Seattle Times minces no words in its headline: "Shady Cash Fattens Towns' Coffers Along Drug Route." The article's pretty unambiguous too: legions of small-town cops pull over drivers and treat them like drug dealers based on the flimsiest of suspicions, whether actual drugs are found or not. Simply by invoking Rockefeller-era forfeiture laws, they merrily confiscate wads of money, cars, and other private property. The lawmen get to keep most of it, allowing them to buy all the donuts they can eat shiny new police cruisers.

[A] broken taillight, an expired license plate or simply a car that changes lanes excessively. That is all it takes to pull over someone who might be a drug courier. If the officer is lucky, he confiscates not only drugs but bundles of money. ... With the help of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), small towns across the country are filling their coffers with drug money as a result of federal asset-forfeiture laws that allow authorities to seize drug dealers' property, including cars, cash and houses used to facilitate crime. Local police are allowed to keep 80 percent of the proceeds, and 20 percent goes to the DEA. Small towns suffering from dwindling populations and shrinking tax bases have confiscated millions of dollars by forming highway-interdiction units.

Police officers in all kinds of towns and hamlets are sitting pretty these days, thanks to the questionable busts. The Fourth Amendment? Well, shee-at! Dontchoo lay some legal mumbo-jumbo on me, boy!

Police in Hogansville [Georgia], a one-stoplight town of about 2,600 people, recently moved from a four-room house they once shared with the fire department to a 12,650-square-foot building that cost $400,000. Five years ago, the department had only three police cars, and two of the vehicles were broken down. It now has 13 shiny new cars equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including laptop computers and high-tech radios. ... In the two years since the program began, the department has supplemented its $630,000 annual budget with $2.2 million in cash and $200,000 worth of vehicles.

It's further proof that, in the War on Drugs, there can be a veritable ocean between what is legal and what is moral; and that conversely, there's sometimes only a sliver of difference between the good guys and the crooks.

Comments

[Poustman]

Are these seizures from actual drug traffickers, or just from folks who speed or whatever and *might* be drug traffickers?

The latter would be corrupt, the former not so under the law. Whether one agrees with that law or not is another thing.

If a drug trafficker does get stuff seized, that's part of the price of doing business, I guess.

[Anonymous]

I worked at a prosecutor's office over the summer. There's always an "odor" when the cops want to search your car. And if you have an air freshener on your mirror, forget about it.