Police Agencies in Texas Stealing Property from People Who Haven’t Even Been Charged with Criminal Activity
February 9th, 2009Via: Express News:
A two-decade-old state law that grants authorities the power to seize property used in crimes is wielded by some agencies against people who never are charged with — much less convicted of — criminal activity.
Law enforcement authorities in this East Texas town of 1,000 people seized property from at least 140 motorists between 2006 and 2008, and, to date, filed criminal charges against fewer than half, according to a review of court documents by the San Antonio Express-News.
Virtually anything of value was up for grabs: cash, cell phones, personal jewelry, a pair of sneakers, and often, the very car that was being driven through town.
Some affidavits filed by officers relied on the presence of seemingly innocuous property as the only evidence that a crime had occurred.
Linda Dorman, an Akron, Ohio, great-grandmother had $4,000 in cash taken from her by local authorities when she was stopped while driving through town after visiting Houston in April 2007. Court records make no mention that anything illegal was found in her van. She’s still hoping for the return of what she calls “her life savings.”
Dorman’s attorney, David Guillory, calls the roadside stops and seizures in Tenaha “highway piracy,” undertaken by a couple of law enforcement officers whose agencies get to keep most of what was seized.
Guillory is suing officials in Tenaha and Shelby County on behalf of Dorman and nine other clients whose property was confiscated. All were African-Americans driving either rentals or vehicles with out-of-state plates.
Guillory alleges in the lawsuit that while his clients were detained, they were presented with an ultimatum: waive your rights to your property in exchange for a promise to be released and not be criminally charged.
He said most did as Dorman did, signing the waiver to avoid jail.
The state’s asset seizure law doesn’t require that law enforcement agencies file criminal charges in civil forfeiture cases. It requires only a preponderance of evidence that the property was used in the commission of certain crimes, such as drug crimes, or bought with proceeds of those crimes.
That’s a lesser burden than is required in a criminal case. And it allows police departments and prosecutors to divvy up what they get from such seizures — what critics say is a built-in incentive for unscrupulous, underfinanced law enforcement agencies to illegally strip motorists of their property.
Some lawmakers, fed up with calls from irate constituents, say enough is enough. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said the state’s asset forfeiture law is being abused by enough jurisdictions across the state that he wants to rewrite major sections of it this year.
“The idea that people lose their property but are never charged and never get it back, that’s theft as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, believes some law enforcement agencies in his cash-strapped district in the Rio Grande Valley have become so dependent on the profitable seizures that they routinely misapply the state’s civil forfeiture law.
“In a lot of cases, they’re more focused on trying to find the money than in trying to find the drugs,” he said.
That means law enforcement agencies in the Valley tend to target vehicles heading south into Mexico rather than northbound cars, Hinojosa said, because the southbound vehicles are more likely to be transporting cash — the profits from the drug trade — as opposed to just the drugs.
In 2008, three years after stripping a man of $10,032 in cash as he drove south along U.S. 281 to buy a headstone for his dying aunt, Jim Wells County officials returned the man’s money — and the county then paid him $110,000 in damages as part of a settlement. Attorney Malcolm Greenstein said criminal charges never were filed against his client, Javier Gonzalez, nor any of the dozens of people whose records he reviewed. People were given the option of going to jail or signing a waiver, Greenstein said. Like Gonzalez, most signed the waiver.
This is the sort of thing that drives me up the wall about our “leaders”; not the actions of these extortionist cops – that was bad enough. But the bullshit posturing of this ostensibly outraged legislator: “The idea that people lose their property but are never charged and never get it back, that’s theft as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Well no shit, Senator Sherlock. Of course its theft, but where the hell were you while the pigs were raking in the dough from this tidy racket for years and years? Now any bill to rectify this matter will probably be debated for ages before dying in committee. But faux outraged politicians like this asshole will go on patting themselves on the back for being such tireless defenders of the public interest.
I love this quote:
““No doubt about it. (U.S. 59) is a thoroughfare that a lot of no-good people travel on. They take the drugs and sell it and take the money and go right back into Mexico,” said Bowers, who’s been Tenaha’s mayor 54 years.”
Lol, mayor for 54 years.
This stuff goes on all the time, in other forms.
Something similar happened to me a few years ago.
A family down the block from us was evicted from their home. They were homeless. I allowed the 15-year-old daughter to stay with us till her family got settled. She stayed a couple of nights. A few months later, she filed a complaint against my son for statutory rape. A couple of months after that, the police came by with a search warrant and confiscated both my computer and my son’s, along with my son’s digital camera.
My son was never charged with a crime, due to insufficient evidence. I have never gotten any of this property back, and I’m pretty sure I never will.
Whenever I’ve inquired about it, I’ve been told the property is being retained “as part of an ongoing investigation.”
At one point I was told that I could file a motion in court to have the property returned. I think the filing fee would be about $50.
My thinking is that no judge would order the property returned because it has probably long since “disappeared.”
Welcome to the New Reich, the American Police State.