Lu emailed me a link to this story:
TENAHA, Texas— You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you’re African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.
That’s because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.
More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
Officials in Tenaha, situated along a heavily traveled highway connecting Houston with popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, say they are engaged in a battle against drug trafficking and call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state’s asset-forfeiture law. That law permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets.
But in 147 [out of 200 cases], Guillory said the court records showed, police seized cash, jewelry, cell phones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly—and discovered all but one of them were black.
“The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African-Americans,” Guillory said. “None of these people have been charged with a crime, none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable.
Sometimes racism is subtle and you need to think to realize that it’s in operation. Other times, it’s just spectacular. I hope the folks win their lawsuit and bankrupt that town.
I read this story, and my first thought wasn’t “robbery”. It was “piracy”.
Didn’t we used to hang pirates?
Argh, asset-forfeiture law is one of the sleaziest things in regular practice. I’m not even remotely shocked to see it used to further racism, but it is an evil on its own even without the racism. The police shouldn’t be able to take your stuff and then make you prove that it had nothing to do with a crime.
Yeah, I read that story – it was on the front page of the Trib. Just outrageous.
What I didn’t figure out from the story was how the cops figured out that these folks had large amounts of cash on them in the first place. If I’m carrying $6K (regardless of the reason), how do the cops know? Did they do a search of the vehicle? Did they do a search of the driver’s or passengers’ persons? Did they ask them if they had cash? On what pretense did they find this out?
This reminds me of a report on one of those news shows years ago where Louisianna State Police were being allowed to keep seized assets and (I think) given a bonus on how many traffic stops/fines they generated for the state. The outcome of that was something very similar to this where a trooper could make up a reason, seize your valuables, and send you on your way without legal recourse. Most of the stops were out-of-state plates and PoC. Granted, my memory might be a little fuzzy on the details, but it sounds like this city might have caught on to what Louisiana was doing and co-opted it. Boo on them!
Asset-forfeiture laws are abused all over the place. I remember one case from my hometown where the police seized a man’s tavern because he knew drug-dealing was going on there. How did they know he knew? He had called the police and asked them to break up the drug-dealing at his tavern.
But this is one of the most outrageous and egregious set of abuses I’ve ever heard of. It’s criminal.
I thought the same thing as RonF–How did these police officers know that these people had something of value in the first place? Whatever the case, these police officers deserve to lose their job, pensions and any other collateral they have to their names, and jailed. This is outrageous and nothing can excuse their racist actions.
My guess is that they pulled over any people of color in nice cars, and searched them. You don’t need a pretext to search a car, if the person agrees to the search — and most people won’t turn down a cop who asks for permission to search. (And, of course, turning down a cop can be dangerous.)
(The article mentioned the cops searching one of the cars, and finding a glass pipe with no pot in it. That was the couple they confiscated $6000 from.)
My guess is that they pulled over any people of color in nice cars, and searched them.
Bingo. Tenaha is 30-40 miles from my hometown, on the way to Shreveport. You pull over the sports car (you might be a little more cautious about pulling over an older model Mercedes with in-state plates — that could be a middle-aged professional, even, God forbid, a lawyer — but late model high end cars are a good bet), for a speeding violation because there’s nothing around for miles so of course people are speeding. Check the license or ask where they live — is the person from one of the small towns nearby? If so, maybe better not mess with this one, because they might know someone worth knowing in Tenaha or roundabouts, and also have it be worth their time to come back to defend the charges. (A much bigger pain to haul up from Houston to do that.)
Police officers develop a good sense of where people fit in society. Powers can be used for good or evil, and all that. I’m not surprised that they got away with it for so long.
I hope the folks win their lawsuit and bankrupt that town.
I hope so too, but I’m extremely skeptical it would actually happen (and even more skeptical that losing the suit would cause them to actually change the practice, as opposed to seizing *more* property in order to pay off the penalties). Do any of the legal folks reading have a sense of how likely a suit like this is to win?
I have the feeling this shit is going down all the time. It’s just that usually there’s not a Mr. Guillory deliberately checking for racial disparities.
Did they say how many cars they pulled over without finding large amounts of cash or valuable property? Or total number of cars pulled over?
Asset forfeiture laws are terrible. Some prosecutor in my country tried to launch an audit of how the money seized was spent (after hearing it was spent buying office furniture from a D.A. campaign contributor) and she was harassed and threatened out of her job.
No, they didn’t.
Maybe it was “Either we search your car with your consent or we hold you over for a day or so while we get the warrant.” I don’t know.
I can see where they’d target out of state plates, especially on more expensive cars. Heck, I live in Illinois, and like a lot of Illinois residents I often go up to Wisconsin for vacation (or taking the Troop camping). It’s a commonplace presumption in Illinois that the Wisconsin State Police and the local cops there target Illinois drivers for tickets, etc. on the principle that Illinois drivers will pay rather than go to court to contest the ticket. But after your car was stopped, how do they either find the cash or get you to tell them you have it?
For that matter, I wonder how many people were stopped and refused to permit a search of their vehicle, and what happened to anyone who did?
I’m just asking and speculating. Hopefully the answers will come out as the investigation proceeds.
Here in the Chicago area there were problems with seized assets being used and misused by the cops. Now the various agencies take those assets that are not directly applicable to law enforcement use and auction them off periodically. They advertise it like that, too, letting people know that they can come out and see the cars, etc. that werew seized from drug dealers and such get auctioned off. In fact, there was some controversy surrounding seized guns. Those agencies that auctioned them off got hit by the gun rights opponent groups and those that destroyed them got hit by the gun rights advocacy groups.
Didn’t we used to hang pirates?
That’s so 18th Century. Nobody’s got the guts for that now. Most countries just pay a ransom to get their cargo and crews back. There are almost no U.S. flagged merchant ships these days, so U.S. warships tend not to get involved so much. If our assistance is requested we either just let them run off when we show up or take them into custody and send them back where they come from, where they probably beat what system exists. Unless they’re stupid enough to actually fire on our warships – then they get sunk. This is what’s going on off of Somalia, for example, or at least is now that Somalia has finally faced the fact that they can’t police their own territorial waters and have authorized foreign warships to fight piracy.
those that destroyed them got hit by the gun rights advocacy groups.
Good grief, does “gun rights advocacy” now refer to advocating for the gun’s rights? I can’t see any other reason to be bothered that guns once owned by criminals are being destroyed. Are we suffering from some nationwide shortage such that law-abiding gun owners can’t find guns to buy?
I can’t see any other reason to be bothered that guns once owned by criminals are being destroyed.
Playing devil’s advocate, then, how about that if you sell them, you satisfy the market such that fewer new guns are made and enter the system?
A gun is a tool. The fact that a criminal owned one, or even used it, is irrelevant to its future usefulness.
Playing devil’s advocate, then, how about that if you sell them, you satisfy the market such that fewer new guns are made and enter the system?
Er, if you’ve destroyed one gun such that it can’t be sold and reused, and another gun is made to take its place, why is there any difference in the total number of guns in the system? Why is an old gun better than a new gun? Indeed, old guns often are grandfathered into gun regulation, such that safety devices and other new standards of manufacturing don’t apply to the old guns. If I wanted a gun that was the least likely to cause accidental injury to myself or loved ones, I’d definitely prefer the new gun.
I suppose one also could try to keep reselling old guns to try to decrease the market for new guns such that gun manufacturers have to go out of business and that reduces the lobbying power of the gun lobby and that increases political impetus against allowing new gun manufacturers when the old guns are nonfunctional and leave the market and there’s demand for new guns and people try to reenter gun manufacturing … but that seems a bit attenuated and implausible.
Then there’s the ones which fall through the cracks and wind up as gifts given to police officers including high-ranking ones and then somehow, wind up in the vicinity of individuals shot and killed by police, as happened in one case in Claremont, California.
Or guns found in officers’ lockers which trace back to supposedly being destroyed or sold.
It’s this “grey area” between the destruction(opposed by guns rights activists) and sale (opposed by gun control activists) which police accountability activists are concerned about.