A little for you, a little for me
In February of 2014, there was a
civil asset forfeiture seizure by the DEA of 24-year-old Charles Clarke's $11,000 life savings. It is yet another example of how fascistic the U.S.' civil asset forfeiture policies are. Mr. Clarke was traveling back to Florida (where he attended college) from Cincinnati (where he has family). He was stopped because his bags smelled like marijuana. From there he was asked if he had any weapons or drugs or cash. He said he had some cash. They asked to search his stuff, DID NOT FIND ANYTHING, and then, according to one of the
arresting agent's sworn affidavit:
I asked Clarke where the currency was located and Clarke stated that it was in his pocket. I asked him to remove the currency so that I could verify the amount of currency. Clarke removed the currency from the right cargo pocket of his camouflage pants and placed it on a small table. The amount of money found on Clarke's person was $11,000,00 in U.S. currency.
From there Clarke tells him it's money he's collected from his mother's disability and after (according to this agent) some time admits to having smoked marijuana in the car ride to the airport—explaining the smell of it on his luggage.
I advised Clarke that the currency would be seied based upon probably cause that it was proceeds of drug trafficking or was intended to be used in an illegal drug transaction.
Agent William T. Conrad then alleges that Clarke "clamped his hand down on the currency and said" that Agent William T. Conrad could not take it. They arrested Clarke after he pushed another officer's hands "away from the currency" and charged him with assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct.
I think we can throw out all of those charges just based on the fact that the neither the DEA nor any of the other law-enforcement agencies involved in this financial windfall for justice have been able to present a case or evidence of a case. But they want that money, y'all!
Two local agencies were involved in the seizure of Clarke's cash: the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport Police, and the Covington Police Department, which is the home office of the DEA task force officer who detained and spoke with Clarke. But according to the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties group now representing Clarke in court, 11 additional law enforcement agencies -- who were not involved in Clarke's case at all -- have also requested a share of Clarke's cash under the federal asset forfeiture program. They include the Kentucky State Police, the Ohio Highway Patrol, and even the Bureau of Criminal Investigations within the Ohio Attorney General's office.
$11,000.00 is a lot of cash. People need to wet their beaks.
These numbers all come from an Institute for Justice review of the Justice Department's Consolidated Asset Tracking System, the federal asset forfeiture database. The airport police have requested the lion's share of Charles Clarke's $11,000, at 40 percent. The Cincinnati Police Dept. has requested an additional 6.14 percent of it, with the rest of the agencies requesting 3.07 percent each. That all adds up to just under 80 percent, which by law is the maximum amount local agencies are allowed to receive in cases like this.
How about the fighting drug war stuff and charges and whether or not you guys should even have the money. That's not how civil asset forfeiture works,
as we know.
Unlike criminal forfeiture, where the government takes someone’s property only after he or she has been convicted of a crime, police and prosecutors can use civil forfeiture to take the cash, cars and homes of people without ever having to convict or even charge the owner with any wrongdoing. This is because civil forfeiture cases technically are filed against the property rather than its owner, leading to unusual names such as United States v. $11,000 in United States Currency.
Let's be clear, the facts of this case are the most
understandable I have seen from a law enforcement's point of view. Young guy has a ton of cash, smells like weed, has a one-way plane ticket, drug dog loses his mind. Kid has an arrest in his "record." The problem is that even in this case what is being lost in our civil liberties is obvious. Smelling marijuana is not proof of anything more than this guy has been around marijuana (or on a skunk farm). It's easy to get up in arms about the
more obvious money grabs by law enforcement but the resulting money grab behind the scenes for this young man's money should be the clear tipoff that this has nothing to do with trying to stop drug trafficking.