Two things below for you to check out. The first is a youtube video of a New Jersey man who had $20,000 in cash confiscated from him by the police as he was driving through Tennessee (they have some strange laws down there) for absolutely no reason. The second story is an article from the Huffington Post that explains how people are being told to bring bail in cash so that local law enforcement can steal it without even letting the accused out!
There are two takeaways from these seemingly unrelated cases and neither of them are good. First, there is this clear war on cash going on in police departments across the country. In both cases, the notion that large amounts of cash are present = drug related activity (despite the fact that numerous studies have shown that 75%-90% of large bills in circulation have traces of cocaine on them). Second, with local budgets being strained, police departments are becoming more aggressive in stealing (um, generating revenue) in a disingenuous manner from those they have sworn to protect.
So here is the Tennessee video (truly amazing)
The Huffington Post article is pretty lengthy so here are some key quotes:
“The police specifically told us to bring cash,” Greer says. “Not a cashier’s check or a credit card. They said cash.”
So Greer and her family visited a series of ATMs, and on March 1, she brought the money to the jail, thinking she’d be taking Joel Greer home. But she left without her money, or her son.
Instead jail officials called in the same Drug Task Force that arrested Greer. A drug-sniffing dog inspected the Greers’ cash, and about a half-hour later, Beverly Greer said, a police officer told her the dog had alerted to the presence of narcotics on the bills — and that the police department would be confiscating the bail money.
Steven Kessler, a New York-based forfeiture attorney and the author of the legal treatise “Civil and Criminal Forfeiture: Federal and State Practice,” said he had never heard of simply confiscating bail. “It’s abhorrent. You can reject bail if you suspect the money is dirty. But you don’t simply take it and hand it over to the police department.”
Indigent defendants, in particular, may decide not to pursue a forfeiture case due to the expense, particularly if they’ve already used their savings on bail, or are more concerned with fighting pending criminal charges. In many cases, the amount of cash seized would be exceeded by the costs of hiring an attorney to win it back anyway. In addition, under Wisconsin law, indigent defendants are not entitled to a public defender in civil asset forfeiture cases.
Full article here.
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The story about the confiscation of the NJ man’s cash in Tennessee is an object lesson for everyone who trusts the police or our government. So many people don’t think those things can happen in the U.S. … until it happens to them. But the take-away that everyone should keep in their back pocket is NEVER give the police permission to search your vehicle (or other property). You think you are innocent, but you are not! At least if you do not give them permission to search, you have invoked your constitutional right and if they search anyway, you will have better grounds (much better) for a motion to suppress any evidence. (then there’s that pesky little matter about corrupt and/or pro-prosecution judges, but that’s another story for another day…sigh)
Just another reason to avoid that hillbilly hellhole of a state. I can’t believe that pinhead with the tattoos on his neck is a sheriff. What a joke of a state AND a department.
You’re right Joe. Virginia may be for lovers, but Tennessee is For Redneck Hillbilly Cops. People stay far away from TN.
If you dust the cash with paprika or cayenne it will hurt the dogs sense of smell!!
Go to a typical bank branch and ask for $5 – 10K in cash, and watch them scurry around. These bank branches are merely accounting offices and don’t even have very much cash on hand.
Tennessee is populated by some of the lowest police scum on earth. Constitution-violator Weakley County Sheriff Mike Wilson recently stole 15 vehicles after one of his handy ‘drug roundups’ of 38 people timed just weeks before election. (The church people love to see drug roundups being the compassionate types.) . All of those arrested were poor people, mostly women, charged with selling scripts to their friends or snitches to be exact. Weakley has 4th highest unemployment in the state so drug arrests bring in lots of money for Judge Tommy Moore’s masonic feifdom.
All police officers stealing cash from private citizens should 1) lose their jobs. 2) Pay back the money twice. For example, someone traveling to another state to pay funeral expenses, and get’s robbed by the police, does this not anger you? So no, police officers keep your hands off of cash that does NOT belong to you. Them there camera’s will surely defeat you. So you better polish up, now.
Tennessee video has been removed . . .
Thanks for the heads up. I put up a different version.