DEA Seizes Man's Money for No Reason

[Aggrad02]

This made me extremely angry. I am not sure how I would react in such a situation.

DEA Seizes Man's Money

ACLU sues DEA on behalf of truck whose money was seized

© 2007 The Associated Press

TOOLS

Email

Get section feed

Print

Subscribe NOW

Comments

Recommend

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A trucker has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration, seeking to get back nearly $24,000 seized by DEA agents earlier this month at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas.

Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained "needles or cash in excess of $10,000," according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit Thursday.

Prieto told the officer he didn't have any needles but did have $23,700.

Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.

Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Prieto's right to be free of unlawful search and seizure by taking his money without probable cause and by fingerprinting and photographing him.

"Mere possession of approximately $23,700 does not establish probable cause for a search or seizure," the lawsuit said.

It said Prieto pulled into the weigh station about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8 and was let go about 4 p.m.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

They told him the process probably would take a year, the ACLU said.

The ACLU's New Mexico executive director, Peter Simonson, said Prieto needs his money now to pay bills and maintain his truck. The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

"The government took Mr. Prieto's money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night," Simonson said. "In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator."

The DEA did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Peter Olson, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, which oversees state police, said he could not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit names DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy, DEA task force officer Gary T. Apodaca, DEA agent Joseph Montoya and three state police officers identified only as John or Jane Doe.

--Dustan

[Chris Grieb]

I agree with your concern but I suspect it is legal. Legal not right. There is a belief among law enforcement that if you have cash it is for illegal purposes. Many people in the DC -NYC corridor who have been found with large amounts of cash and have had it confisicated.

Edited August 25, 2007 by Chris Grieb

[Aggrad02]

I agree with your concern but I suspect it is legal. Legal not right. There is a belief among law enforcement that if you have cash it is for illegal purposes. Many people in the DC -NYC corridor who have been found with large amounts of cash and have had it confisicated.

How can they legally take (steal) your property just for having it. I don't understand.

--Dustan

[Brant Gaede]

I agree with your concern but I suspect it is legal. Legal not right. There is a belief among law enforcement that if you have cash it is for illegal purposes. Many people in the DC -NYC corridor who have been found with large amounts of cash and have had it confisicated.

How can they legally take (steal) your property just for having it. I don't understand.

--Dustan

You are innocent til proved guilty. Your money is guilty til proved innocent--that is your job. This is the essence of the legal justification for property seizure. It is wrong and irrational but supported by the courts all the way up. By giving property separate legal status from its owner it can be denied constitutional protection given to sentient human beings.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

I agree with your concern but I suspect it is legal. Legal not right. There is a belief among law enforcement that if you have cash it is for illegal purposes. Many people in the DC -NYC corridor who have been found with large amounts of cash and have had it confisicated.

How can they legally take (steal) your property just for having it. I don't understand.

--Dustan

You are innocent til proved guilty. Your money is guilty til proved innocent--that is your job. This is the essence of the legal justification for property seizure. It is wrong and irrational but supported by the courts all the way up. By giving property separate legal status from its owner it can be denied constitutional protection given to sentient human beings.

--Brant

I suspect The Authorities are trying to force or at least encourage people to keep most of their money in a bank or a credit card account. That way it can be tracked. Cash is wonderfully anonymous and the government does not like it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This makes an interesting legal issue.

Cash is supposed to be legal tender for settling all debts. Yet it seems to be illegal for individuals to carry it after a certain quantity. A case could be made that the debts of individuals beyond that quantity are also illegal or at least subject to legal restrictions that correspond to the ones placed on the legal tender for settling them.

I bet a smart lawyer could make a hell of a mess with this if he got the itch.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

This makes an interesting legal issue.

Cash is supposed to be legal tender for settling all debts. Yet it seems to be illegal for individuals to carry it after a certain quantity. A case could be made that the debts of individuals beyond that quantity are also illegal or at least subject to legal restrictions that correspond to the ones placed on the legal tender for settling them.

I bet a smart lawyer could make a hell of a mess with this if he got the itch.

It is not illegal to carry cash. You can legally carry all you want to. The problem is holding onto it when an officer of the law finds you in possession of it. There are procedures for you to get it back. Good luck with that. If you leave the country with I-don't-know-how-much you have to declare it--I think.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

The Reason magazine blog Hit & Run has a great post by Radley Balko about this incident. I would also recommend the comments on the post.

[Robert Campbell]

Dustan,

Reason has run a number of good articles in the past about Federal "asset forfeiture" laws, which are the basis for arbitrary seizures like the one you mentioned.

A Supreme Court that was worth its weight in doo-doo would have declared such laws unconstitutional quite some time ago. But the Court has been extremely deferential to the "war on drugs."

Robert Campbell

[James Heaps-Nelson]

This is ridiculous. There are plenty of reasons someone might carry cash. Many people with poor credit histories cannot get credit cards and other reasons pop up. My wife and I bought a new car at a substantial discount from a gentleman who wanted $16,500 in cash. Not quite the sum of money this trucker had, but in the ballpark. In many places in Asia, you cannot use credit cards or checks. America, however is the land of banks, credit and the monthly payment :-).

Jim

[Chris Grieb]

I still think this a shame and an abuse of power. I just don't know what to do about as long as we keep the so-called war on drugs.

[mvir9]

I still think this a shame and an abuse of power. I just don't know what to do about as long as we keep the so-called war on drugs.

Herein lies the crux of the problem (well stated Chris). I have several good friends that are police officers, and they readily admit that too much cash is an indication of drug distribution. For example, if a man gets pulled over after having cashed his work check and he has the smallest amount of marijuana in his possession, the police will, at minimum, attempt to charge him with distribution. Their evidence that he is distributing is the amount of cash that is in his possession.

Sadly, in the case posted here, the primacy of a lot of cash as evidence has taken over, and drugs are no longer necessary to instigate further investigation, seizure, and/or charges. Frustrating, indeed!

[Chris Grieb]

Ron Paul's failure to talk about the so called "War on Drugs" is my biggest disappointment in an otherwise wonderful candidate.

[Aggrad02]

Ron Paul is anti-War on Drugs

13 articles he has written on the subject:

Ron Paul on the War on Drugs

--Dustan

Edit: Also if you google RON PAUL WAR ON DRUGS you will find many more articles and speeches on his stance.

Edited August 28, 2007 by Aggrad02

[Aggrad02]

This is Ron Paul being critical of the War on Drugs in NH 8 days ago at the Stratford County GOP Straw Poll (which he won with 71% of the vote)

--Dustan

[Ross Barlow]

I am outraged at this whole episode. The USA should be under the rule of objective laws that protect a person until proven guilty by solid evidence. Fear of the Drug-Demons has allowed the police power to grow unchecked.

In my adopted country of Siam, the War on Drugs is in a different category altogether. (I am not mentioning this to belittle the situation of the above-mentioned victim of the US drug police, but rather to show that it is a world-wide problem.) The previous administration here – the Taksin regime, the last elected administration before the military coup of 19 September 2006 took over and exiled him – instituted quite a one-sided war.

The Taksin regime vowed to eradicate drugs here. Most of the targeted people were involved in meth manufacture, sale and use, but it was not limited to just them. In a period of time of less than two years, the Police used SWAT-like raids to hit known and suspected drug dealers/users in force. The number killed by being gunned down in these raids was over 2,500 and very few of them were cops. You do not want to be mixed up with illegal drugs in any way here in the Land of Smiles. If you are into recreational drug use, be prudent and go somewhere else.

I am a guest here, a resident alien who loves this country and intends to stay. So I am not going to engage in local politics in any way. If things seem archaic here, consider that it has only been 75 years since absolute monarchy was replaced by a constitutional monarchy. There have been over a dozen constitutions written and scrapped since then, and more military coups than I can count. But the country is maturing fast. And consider that it has escaped the horrific scale of brutalities suffered in every single country on its borders.

My point is that state power grows to a frightening degree when the victims are hard to defend, e.g., druggies. When the law goes after what the majority of society regards as “misfits” or “outsiders,” it is hard to muster up enough outrage among citizens to check the growth and abuse of state power.

To defend liberty, even the most undesirable people must be defended, as long as they are not initiating aggression against others. Rand strongly disapproved of many instances of using drugs, but I am quite sure she expressed similar thoughts about the freedom to do so. Does anyone have references at hand with an instance of this in Rand’s writings? (I do not have her works at hand.)

-R.B.

[Jonathan]

I remember that there were a few cases of asset forfeiture in the early 90s that got some serious mainstream media attention, and a lot of people were outraged that such things could happen in America. The cases that I remember the most involved people whose reasons for having large amounts of cash were verified (some were traveling to destinations where they planned to purchase supplies for their businesses from sources where it wasn't uncommon for people to pay cash for 10 to 20 grand worth of materials, and in a couple of cases it was even required that they pay cash), they had no history of drug use, trafficking or any other illegal activity, but their money was confiscated and held for years, and in a few cases never returned, because drug-sniffing dogs had indicated that some of the money probably had traces of illegal substances on it.

As members of the press pointed out back then, apparently it didn't occur to the drug enforcement officials (or it didn't matter to them) that money, being a very public item, could easily have traces of illegal substances that came from previous owners.

I remember thinking at the time that drug enforcement officials should be tested with frequent surprise inspections. Everything they own -- every square inch of all of their property -- should be gone over regularly with drug-sniffing dogs with the most sensitive drug-sniffing noses. If the dogs "hit" on anything, whether a dollar bill in an agent's pocket or a marijuana seed in his back yard near a public alleyway, the agent should be fired, investigated for suspicion of drug trafficking, and all of his property should be confiscated until he proved that none of it was ever used for illegal activity (to a jury made up of innocent people who had had their property confiscated in the past by drug agents).

J