“With electronic banking, credit and debit cards, and cash apps, there’s no good reason to have that much cash. You must be up to no good, probably drug money.”
With at forfeiture laws, it kinda is illegal.
The money is guilty whether or not a crime can be shown.
This overreach was a measure to attack the drug trade. The idea was to take the assets and cash of the big drug dealers, so the threshold for action was deliberately at low and does not require the ability to charge a crime, just a “suspicion” based on what “normal people would do”. Call it the Scrooge McDuck Tax. If you like rolling around in piles of cash, gold, and jewelry, that’s too bad.
In 2017 the Justice Department looked at a sample of 100 warrantless asset seizures by the DEA and found that in 56 of those cases, “there was no discernible connection between the seizure and the advancement of law enforcement efforts”. That is, in most of the cases where the DEA stole seized money, they had no legitimate reason to do so. The DOJ also reported that between 2007 and 2016, the DEA and FBI alone (not including local law enforcement) seized over 5 billion dollars in cash.
I think if you say “No” to a car search you’ve in essence given them probable cause. And your car’s getting searched.
You ask “Why?” you’ve given them probable cause. Your car is getting searched.
You say “Sure” your car’s getting searched.
Then there’s the fallback where you have to sit for an hour waiting for a canine unit, with the dog finely attuned to its master’s wishes about where and when to “alert”.
There is a limit to how long they can make you wait for a canine unit. It’s not a hard rule but “reasonable” or some-such soft legal language.
And yeah…while I love dogs and believe they can smell out drugs I have zero faith in police canine units. I believe the dogs will “alert” on their person’s command. Maybe if they smell drugs too.
As @Whack-a-Mole says, they can’t make you wait very long, but there is also a reason drug dogs are called “probable cause on 4-legs.”
Pretty much. Being too nervous, being too calm, driving too fast, driving too slow, driving too exactly the speed limit, etc.
That’s not even a joke. In most places the seizing agency gets to keep the money.
The whole civil asset forfeiture thing is one of those activities that everyone except the courts and police think must be illegal and unconstitutional. State legislatures occasionally try to push back, but often fail due to lobbying from police organizations, and the fear they’ll appear weak on crime.
In other jurisdictions, it’s handled differently. The police are not the arbiters of what will constitute “proceeds of crime.”
Essentially, there is a government office of civil forteiture. The office does not need to prove that you were convicted of a crime. The office however, must establish that the property in question is either proceeds or an instrument of unlawful activity, and will use the evidence gathered by the police in making its case. The case goes before a court automatically, and the judge decides if the case has been met. Gang-banger McDruggie has ample opportunity to prove that his 3 million dollar house and fancy cars come from legal revenue. It’s generally used to go after big, obvious players, not the dude on the street with $1000 cash in his pocket.
TLDR: In some places/countries It’s not up to the person whose property has been seized to commence legal proceedings: It’s up to the government (forfeiture office) to prove it’s case in court.
No. they have to have actual probably cause to believe that there is something illegal in the car. Simply standing on your rights is not grounds. Being non-white is not grounds.
IIRC recent SCOTUS case was that they cannot detain you any longer than it normally/reasonably takes to process whatever they pulled you over for. I.e. if a broken taillight, as long as it normally takes to produce a ticket.
Yes, police dogs’ results statistics are notoriously bad, and it’s believed that a lot will respond to the handler’s subtle cues, to be “probable cause on a leash”. Second only to “I smelled marijuana” as an excuse.
The worst case I read about was a stretch of Texas highway. The police pulled over a family, and seized all their cash - threatening if they objected and did not sign a waiver accepting this, then they would be arrested and their children (accompanying them) put in CFS custody until things got settled. Apparently the cops targeted out of state older vehicles, on the theory these were people who could not manage credit cards and bank acounts so were likely travelling long distances using a bundle of cash. The most egregious were some departments that had a device for draining pre-paid credit cards (since unlike regular cards, you can’t reverse the tranaction later) on the pretext that they were often used by drug dealers to carry untraceable cash.
A study of NYPD a couple of years ago said the average forfeiture was about $180, meaning that when they were doing stop-and-frisk on assorted minorities they also relieved them of any spare change they were carrying.
A Canadian government official a few years ago warned that it was not safe to travel with large amounts of money in the USA because the police were liable to steal it.
The thing with civil forfeiture is that the cost is near zero, no pesky jail and lawyer details, hearings, etc. Unless the amount is closer to $10,000 or more, it can cost more in lawyer fees to get it back than the amont that was taken. Add to that, out-of-state travellers are often the target because, conveniently, if they are living on a cash basis, they cannot afford the lawyer or the travel time to come fight it. Plus, there is no requirement to notify the owner, they or their lawyer may have to monitor the system and keep checking for when any hearing is scheduled. Some jurisdictions this can take months.
The federal government at one point required forfeiture to link to a crime, but the Trump administration rescinded this. As some states also crack down on uncharged seizures, cops rely on involving the feds to ensure they can bypass state requirements.
So to the OP - yes, they can take it and do. Also note, this applies to police wandering airports, if TSA finds large amounts of cash, the local police may swoop in. then you get to figure out how to get your cash back. (Over $10,000 must be declared when going abroad, but not internally).
The biggest problem apparently is the incentive - many police departments get to keep the cash for their own departmental budgets.
IIRC (I can’t search for it now) I read a story where the local police took money from someone. That person went after the police to get their money back so the local police transferred the money to the feds and then shrugged their shoulders that they no longer had the money, go after the federal government if they want it back.
Not sure where the case went from there but I think the courts said that was bullshit, the locals owed the person the money and it was up to the local police to get the money back from the federal government.
Goes to show though how shitty the local police may try to be about this stuff.
After the man was pulled over on a pretense, his money was taken from him. Once the Institute for Justice became involved, which then could provide attorneys for him, Nevada quickly gave the money back.
The win is that the courts have allowed the lawsuit to proceed:
So my experience was a case I worked on involving a seizure of cash at the airport.
The client lived in California. He had flown to Tennessee, and was now returning home, with a layover in Arizona.
When he arrived in Arizona, police pulled him aside and asked to search his bag. They knew, from it having gone through security in Tennesse, that it was full of cash - about $90,000 worth, along with a bunch of random clothes (which didn’t fit him),
Police suspected drug dealing. He did have a criminal history of doing so, and on his phone he did have text messages where’s he’s talking about the prices of weed in California.
Except: recreational weed is legal in California. There were no drugs found in the bags. And if he was somehow laundering money, that’s a federal tax thing. Or, at most, a Tennessee state thing.
Was it suspicious? Sure, I think so. He was adamant that it wasn’t his money, but he didn’t want to tell the names of the people who gave it to him (he claimed it was for real estate investing).
But what gave Arizona the right to seize the money? Why was my client required to provide sources for where it came from?
(Incidentally, while this case was ongoing, Arizona changed its laws to require a crime to have been committed before money could be seized. Last I heard- since I left the firm while this was being litigated - this guys’ case was on appeal).
ETA: Another example I just recalled was a guy who lived in Colorado, and was pulled over driving back from Arkansas. He had no reason to drive to Arkansas (he said he just wanted to make a road trip), and had about $100,000 in cash on him. He explained the reason for the money was that he didn’t trust his girlfriend, so he took it out of his safe in his house and brought it with him when he traveled. He also said he didn’t trust banks, so he never used credit cards.
Again, suspicious as hell. But why does he owe an explanation?
Clearly stating to an officer “I do NOT consent to a search of my vehicle” is never probable cause for a search. (NEVER answer “yes” or “no” to the question “Do you mind if I take a look inside your car?”)
Would some officers then come up with a pretext for probable cause? I’m sure it happens. But then that’s a probable cause they would have to justify in court, whereas if you agree to let them search you have no defense at all against whatever they find being entered into evidence.
The Supreme Court found in Rodriguez v. United States that holding a suspect without probable cause to wait for a canine unit for as little at ten minutes was unconstitutional. But if the cops can argue that you voluntarily waited than all bets are off. Again, you’ll get the “Do you mind waiting around for a bit” or “I need you to go wait in your car.” You’ve got to assert your rights with a polite “I’d like to leave now officer, am I free to go?”
This is CRAZY. Note that he has the right to refuse the LEO searching his car. But a lot of people think, I’ve done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide. Go ahead and search. That’s essentially what he said.
No. Do not consent to the search. Instead, respectfully say, Officer, I want to cooperate fully with you but I do not consent to this search.
