Hubby felt the same way about defending a couple of potential clients. Do it once, and you are owned, whether you like it or not.
206,000,000 Turkish Lira = $146 USD
Didn’t they just knock six zeroes off the Turkish lira a couple of years ago? Or has it devalued itself that much again?
Also, I believe Mexico and some other countries use the $ sign to indicate pesos, so you could say ‘$206 million Mexican’, but that would be 206 million Mexican pesos, not dollars.
With a little experience of this in my hand, I’ll say that the cash is only cash. If you’re thinking straight and ethically (happy to say I never strayed from the path, at least as pertains to the subject at hand), the money has no value . It’s evidence, and nothing more. If you take a chunk out of the pile of cash you’re (a)reducing the amount for which the shit’em (in parlance) will be seen by a jury as having had - no small consideration, (b)you’re just as bad as the shit’em, and © the shit’em can (and will) say, “BS - I had $405 million, not $305 million. The cops are lying.” After the investigation into that , the whole case will be thrown out because a bunch of jurors just learned that they can’t trust the police. Begin downward spiral…
A few weeks ago a friend of mine told me something rather interesting.
She used to work in a local government canteen and got friendly with a bunch of guys who did the really filthy work (like clearing out a house where some old lady has been dead for six weeks in mid Summer - with a herd of cats).
They said it was amazing the things that would turn up, in one case they found £60,000 in cash in some old lady’s place. They considered it fair compensation for lousy wages and disgusting work.
If this had been in the US, and not in some areas that are known for ‘creative’ law enforcement, I’d say that the vast majority of the cops involved would be honest enough not to steal any of it. They rest would be smart enough to know they’d get caught eventually. Mexican cops, on the other hand…
Not only that but if I were running a police department I would know who was on such raids. I would have all of the members of the raid checked on from time to time to see if they were living beyond their police pay.
As say, at least one of them is bound to get careless and then the whole thing comes apart.
I have an uncle who works in drug enforcement and has been involved in some very serious busts. They video tape the whole bust for evidence. From the contact with the street level idiot (if possible) to the raid and seizure. They even taped the inventory of the evidence. I am sure some slick lawyer out there would crucify them on the stand if they did not.
Exactly. In order to steal any non-trivial amount of money, you would need to collude with several other people who you’d have to trust not to not only keep your secret, but to not get caught themselves. You’d also need to be lucky enough to not have the facts of the case contradict your story, thus revealing your illegal conduct. Most illegal operations with that type of money are highly organized, keep detailed records, etc. Millions of dollars in cash takes up a lot of space. You’d need to keep all the people you caught detained while you hide handfuls of money. It’s a logistical nightmare.
An dishonest cop would be better off alerting the dealers before hand for a kickback, instead of trying to steal from them after busting them. Both acts would require similar forethought and dishonesty.
It looks like it doesn’t have to be a huge sum of money to entice some American cops to partake of the spoils.
They confiscate World Series tickets from scalpers and then use them themselves.
That’s cheating and you know it! However, I concede that I should’ve thought of that.
I’m not surprised. As I said upthread, I’ve witnessed, firsthand, a cop taking part of a simple possession (marijuana) bust to smoke later. (It was pretty blatant–he told his buddy not to get an evidence bag, and instead stuffed it into an empty cigarette pack lying nearby, and put that in his shirt pocket.) And I’ve heard all kinds of stories about American cops (particularly in San Antonio and San Francisco, although I’m sure it happens in lots of other places too) simply taking a stoner’s stash for themselves and letting them off scott-free.
The is both the USD and Mexican peso sign. Many stores in Mexico indicate prizes "US" if they’re in USD.
Ignorance fought, thanks!
So, if the authorities capture a huge stash of drugs…does that make the price on the street go down, or up?
The word “dollar” seems to come from Spanish:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_180.html
And the $ symbol is descended from “Pesos”:
But did you actually have the $2,000 to pay him?
Furthermore, a dealer is in a risky game, might be picked up at any time and expose you for a better deal. And again, if the dishonest money is to be of any use you must spend it and living beyond your means is a commone tipoff that something is going on.
During the investigation of New york police curruption in the Jimmy Walker administration it was pointe out that a police lieutenan owned an apratment building in Palm Beach, Several expensive autos and one of his children was going to a costly private school. When asked for an explanation he answered that his wife took in laundr. Possibly apocryphal but illustrative of the difficulty of hiding money when you are working for wages.
IME as a past user of a number of substances:
Depends on the other supply and demand factors involved, and on the drugs. Weed markets are almost completely unaffected by big busts, especially in warm climates, because most of the best stuff is homegrown anyway; most people who buy chronic in this part of the world are two to four degrees from the guy who harvests it, at the most. And it’s not hard to fill a Rolodex with pot dealers’ phone numbers if you smoke with enough people.
Popular imported drugs like cocaine and heroin are different, but not that much different in a border state. A big border bust might choke off a major supply chain in Chicago (I’m speculating here–I don’t know much about how it works up there), but the Arizona coke community might hardly notice because there’s so much of the stuff pouring across the line at any given moment.
Designer drugs can be a whole 'nother animal. In California you might meet a handful of people who move thousands of dollars worth of ecstasy regularly, and major labs are common enough that a big bust would probably force you to scramble but you’d find another source. OTOH, early-2000s Arizona was “served” entirely by one lab in Phoenix, and when that lab went down it meant nobody had E in the whole state for a couple of years (they still might not, I wouldn’t know). I never took E, but when I lived in Arizona at the time, it was my understanding that you only got E if you or a close friend were willing to drive to California for it; and even then, only in small amounts. The guy who took it across the state line probably could’ve inflated the price by 50-200% if he played his cards right.
Long story short: a big bust either has no tangible effect or drives the price up, IM(limited)E. I haven’t been involved in any of that for a good while and I didn’t know much about it at the time, so MMV.
Sure, privacy laws be damned. “Those laws don’t apply to us - we’re police officers!” Oh, wait, that’s what started the whole thread in the first place.