Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes.
Largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes.
Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back.
Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms that teach the techniques of “highway interdiction” to departments across the country.
One of those firms created a private intelligence network known as Black Asphalt Electronic Networking & Notification System that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop.
Many of the reports have been funneled to federal agencies and fusion centers as part of the government’s burgeoning law enforcement intelligence systems — despite warnings from state and federal authorities that the information could violate privacy and constitutional protections.
A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.
“All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym. Hain is a marketing specialist for Desert Snow, a leading interdiction training firm based in Guthrie, Okla., whose founders also created Black Asphalt.
Cash seizures can be made under state or federal civil law. One of the primary ways police departments are able to seize money and share in the proceeds at the federal level is through a long-standing Justice Department civil asset forfeiture program known as Equitable Sharing. Asset forfeiture is an extraordinarily powerful law enforcement tool that allows the government to take cash and property without pressing criminal charges and then requires the owners to prove their possessions were legally acquired.
The Post found:
There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half of the seizures were below $8,800.
Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures.
Hundreds of state and local departments and drug task forces appear to rely on seized cash, despite a federal ban on the money to pay salaries or otherwise support budgets. The Post found that 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.
Agencies with police known to be participating in the Black Asphalt intelligence network have seen a 32 percent jump in seizures beginning in 2005, three times the rate of other police departments. Desert Snow-trained officers reported more than $427 million in cash seizures during highway stops in just one five-year period, according to company officials. More than 25,000 police have belonged to Black Asphalt, company officials said.
State law enforcement officials in Iowa and Kansas prohibited the use of the Black Asphalt network because of concerns that it might not be a legal law enforcement tool. A federal prosecutor in Nebraska warned that Black Asphalt reports could violate laws governing civil liberties, the handling of sensitive law enforcement information and the disclosure of pretrial information to defendants. But officials at Justice and Homeland Security continued to use it.
Civil forfeiture cash seizures
Under the federal Equitable Sharing Program, police have seized $2.5 billion since 2001 from people who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued. Police reasoned that the money was crime-related. About $1.7 billion was sent back to law enforcement agencies for their use.
Here’s a list of some of the money sent back to local police in the United States for seizures made alone or with others.
New York City Police Participated in 2,167 seizures – $27 million of $134.2 million
Los Angeles County Sheriff, Calif. Participated in 2,564 seizures-$24.3 million of $126 million
Los Angeles Police, Calif. Participated in 2,375 seizures-$18.4 million of $86.1 million
Houston Police, Tex. Participated in 798 seizures-$14.7 million of $63.3 million
Wayne County Sheriff, Mich. – 530 seizures-$13.4 million of $31.6 million
St. Louis County Police, Mo. – 644 seizures-$11.5 million of $42.1 million
Douglas County Sheriff, Neb. – 159 seizures-$11.5 million of $16.2 million
Atlanta Police, Ga. – 827 seizures-$9.3 million of $74.6 million
North Miami Beach Police, Fla. – 64 seizures-$9.1 million of $30.3 million
Laredo Police, Tex. – 149 seizures-$8.5 million of $20.1 million
Amtrak Police, Pa. – 894 seizures-$7.9 million of $53.2 million
Chicago Police, Ill. – 634 seizures-$7.9 million of $56.3 million
Milwaukee Police, Wis. – 1,223 seizures-$7.9 million of $19 million
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police., Nev. – 243 seizures-$7.3 million of $18 million
Baltimore Police, Md. – 1,528 seizures-$7.1 million of $18.5 million
Baltimore County Police, Md. – 981 seizures-$6.8 million of $19 million
San Diego Police, Calif. – 1,498 seizures-$6.8 million of $31.6 million
Jefferson County Sheriff, Ala. – 71 seizures-$6.7 million of $11.4 million
DeKalb County Police, Ga. – 408 seizures-$6.5 million of $41 million
Port Authority Of N.Y. and N.J. Police – 380 seizures-$6.3 million of $30.5 million
San Diego County Sheriff, Calif. – 1,511 seizures-$6.3 million of $33.2 million
City Of Phoenix Police, Ariz. – 483 seizures-$6 million of $15.8 million
There are no local agencies in the United States that received rebates of more than $250,000.
Note: Table does not include statewide agencies or task forces and only includes local agencies who received more than $250,000.
Source: A Washington Post analysis of Department of Justice data
Stop and Seize: More Investigative Articles by the Washington Post
In recent years, thousands of people have had cash confiscated by police without being charged with crimes. The Post looks at the police culture behind the seizures and the people who were forced to fight the government to get their money back. Part 2: One training firm started a private intelligence-sharing network and helped shape law enforcement nationwide. Part 3: Motorists caught up in the seizures talk about the experience and the legal battles that sometimes took more than a year. Part 4: Police agencies nationwide routinely buy vehicles and weapons with money and property seized under federal civil forfeiture law from people who were not charged with a crime. Part 5: Highway seizure in Iowa fuels debate about asset-forfeiture laws. Part 6: D.C. police plan for future seizure proceeds years in advance in city budget documents. Chat transcript: The reporters behind “Stop and Seize” answered your readers’ about the investigative series.
Know your rights:
During traffic stops on the nation’s highways, the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects motorists “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The law also gives police the power to investigate and act on their suspicions.
Police have a long-established authority to stop motorists for traffic infractions. They can use traffic violations as a pretext for a deeper inquiry as long as the stop is based on an identifiable infraction.
An officer may detain a driver only as long as it takes to deal with the reason for the stop. After that, police have the authority to request further conversation. A motorist has the right to decline and ask whether the stop is concluded. If so, the motorist can leave.
The officer also has the authority to briefly detain and question a person as long as the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is based on specific and articulable facts but falls short of the legal standard for making an arrest.
A traffic infraction or reasonable suspicion alone do not give police authority to search a vehicle or a closed container, such as luggage. Police may ask for permission to search; drivers may decline. Police do not have to tell drivers that they have a right to refuse.
An officer may expand a roadside investigation if the driver’s responses and other circumstances justify a belief that it is more likely than not that criminal activity is occurring. Under this standard, known as probable cause, an officer can make an arrest or search a vehicle without permission. An alert by a drug-sniffing dog can provide probable cause, as can the smell of marijuana.
Police can seize cash that they find if they have probable cause to suspect that it is related to criminal activity. The seizure happens through a civil action known as asset forfeiture. Police do not need to charge a person with a crime. The burden of proof is then on the driver to show that the cash is not related to a crime by a legal standard known as preponderance of the evidence.
Sources: Jon Norris, criminal defense attorney; David A. Harris, University of Pittsburgh law professor; Scott Bullock, civil liberties lawyer, Institute for Justice; Department of Homeland Security.
Annette SHATTUCK’s mother was clipping coupons at their Port Huron home when local law enforcement came rushing in wearing masks and camouflage on July 28, 2014.
The officers from the St. Clair County Drug Task Force were there to execute a no-knock search warrant. And Shattuck alleges that through civil asset forfeiture, the officers seized a wide variety of items from her house, including car seats, hammers, saws and $85 that was inside birthday cards for one of her children.
Although Shattuck says she and her husband weren’t even charged with a crime for five and a half months and they still haven’t been convicted, those items are still being held by the police.
“They leave you with nothing,” Shattuck said of her situation, in an interview today. Shattuck was one of a group of individuals who spoke out today in favor of reforms to the civil asset forfeiture process as the House Judiciary Committee voted to advance new reporting requirements and increased legal standards for forfeiture.
Lawmakers are also trying to determine whether stories like Shattuck’s are isolated anecdotes with debatable details or widespread problems that point to systemic issues.
Asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to punish suspected criminals by taking money and property that officers believe were obtained through or involved in illegal activity.
According to a 2014 report from the Michigan State Police (MSP), law enforcement agencies in the state seized some $24 million in assets in 2013 related to drug crimes.
The reporting requirements in HB 4500, HB 4503 and HB 4504 are meant to help the public better track the forfeitures. Other bills in the package, which includes HB 4499, HB 4506, HB 4507 and HB 4508, would increase the legal standard for forfeiture from a preponderance of the evidence to “clear and convincing” evidence.
Those who are most in favor of civil asset forfeiture reform say the bills are merely a step in the right direction to bigger reforms. Meanwhile, the law enforcement community has been somewhat quiet about the legislation.
Judiciary Chair Klint KESTO (R-Commerce Twp.) said today that reporting bills would ultimately help determine what needs to be done.
“Everybody has their opinion we should go in this direction or that direction,” Kesto said. “That’s premature. Let’s get the data.”
Shattuck and her attorney, Michael KOMORN, who testified today, said the reporting requirements are good first steps. But greater reform is needed. Komorn said he’s heard stories about individuals having all kinds of items seized under forfeiture, including a 1925 mandolin, Bridge cards and $37 out of a woman’s purse.
Many of the cases, like Shattuck’s, involve the state’s medical marijuana laws, which don’t fit with asset forfeiture, Komorn said.
The laws can be complicated and if a patient or grower isn’t following them exactly right, the person could be subject to forfeiture.
In an interview, he detailed a case of someone whose house was raided. Law enforcement kept the seized items for a year up until the start of the trial when they all of sudden gave the items back.
“You know why they do that? Because they can,” Komorn said. “There are no checks and balances.”
When Shattuck’s house was raided in July 2014, her children were home alone with Shattuck’s mother. Shattuck said the officers separated her mother from the children as the raid took place. Her children still talk about it, Shattuck said.
When they see a police car, the 9-year-old daughter asks, “Is it coming to my house?” Shattuck was eventually charged for crimes related to the manufacturing of marijuana. The case is ongoing.
Ginnifer HENCY, of Kimball, also shared her forfeiture story today. She said law enforcement raided her house, although she believes she was compliant with the state’s medical marijuana laws.
Police took iPads and phones, she said. “They have had my stuff for 10 months,” she said.
Thomas BUCKLEY, undersheriff of the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office, said he read through the police reports of both Hency and Shattuck’s cases. “I don’t see anything in the report that anyone did anything improper,” he said.
The task force, which is funded through a millage, usually only seizes items that are involved in the crime itself or that can be directly tied to the crime, Buckley said.
And he said sometimes offenders store proceeds from drugs in unusual places. Because cases are ongoing, Buckley couldn’t provide many details about the situations. But he said the raids were part of a large investigation involving federal agents and multiple locations involved in drug dealing. “A lot of it was under the guise of legitimate medical marijuana,” Buckley said.
As for forfeiture overall, Buckey said he can’t speak for every law enforcement agency, but he believes it’s a positive. “It takes the profit out of the drug trade for a lot of people,” Buckley said.
In an interview earlier this year, Robert STEVENSON, a former law enforcement officer who now leads the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, urged lawmakers to look beyond individual anecdotes when it comes to asset forfeiture.
Komorn had a different take. He said he has an office full of documents on cases where asset forfeiture was used inappropriately. “The system is broken,” he said, holding a stack of documents on other cases. “These are examples.”
Asked if stories like Shattuck’s and Hency’s are anecdotes or widespread problems, Kesto said he couldn’t answer that and he didn’t know the specific details of their cases. “These stories are anecdotal in nature,” Kesto said. “However, I think it’s unfortunate the way these woman told their stories. If that’s what happened, that’s a real, real problem and that cannot be tolerated. “That’s why we need the reporting bills to see what’s going on.”
Ginnifer Hency says that a police raid led investigators to seize a couple of guns, a small amount of cash and cell phones , medical marijuana. And also something very personal…
“My medicine for my patients, why a ladder, why my vibrator, I don’t know either,” Hency said during a Michigan House Committee meeting.
Click to play video
Ginnifer Hency’s vibrator was not an accessory to an alleged crime that a judge says did not occur. And that last part is creating quite a story that has now gone viral and raising questions about Michigan’s civil asset forfeiture laws.
“They’ve had my stuff for 10 months now,” Hency said.
Ginnifer and her husband Dean Hency say it all happened when their home was raided last July. They both are licensed medical marijuana patients and caregivers. They claim to be targeted by St. Clair County’s drug task force.
It began when Ginnifer says she walked into a medical marijuana licensing facility as it was being raided. “They asked me how much medicine I had in my backpack,” she said. “I said six ounces then they said to get a warrant for our house.”
The havoc they wreaked,” Dean said, “they just threw stuff around. Just dirt dumped all over the place.” “We were in complete compliance with the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act and they destroyed my house,” Ginnifer said.
But St. Clair County Sheriff Tim Donnellon says they were not, and added that officers did not take her vibrator and would never have a reason to. He says aside from that allegation, the task force’s actions were justified and par for the course.
Even so, a judge (read the courts opinion here – specifically the last page regarding Hency) dismissed the criminal charge of possession with intent to distribute against Ginnifer Hency two weeks ago. But here’s what she says happened when she went to the prosecutor’s office to get her property back.
“Lisa Wisniewski who is the assistant prosecuting attorney said ‘I can still beat you in civil court, I can still take your stuff.”
Michael Komorn who is the Hencys’ lawyer said. “This is bully tactics, we have your property we couldn’t get any charges to stick, we’re just going to keep it and drag it out.”
“Here’s a person who they took her property and they couldn’t even make the charges stick let alone get a conviction. So if there’s an example of why there needs to be reform it’s this.” added her attorney Michael Komorn.
“They left my (equipment) I used to grow ‘drugs’ – they left that,” Hency said when she testified. “Now that is what the state forfeiture laws are made for.” The St. Clair County Prosecutor’s Office has about a week to appeal a visiting judge’s decision to drop those charges against Ginnifer Hency.
When she heard that, Hency said, “I was at a loss. I literally just sat there dumbfounded.”
Hency told her story at a meeting of the Michigan House Judiciary Committee, which was considering several bills that would make this sort of legalized larceny more difficult.
She was joined by Annette Shattuck, another medical marijuana patient who was raided by the St. Clair County Drug Task Force around the same time.
“After they breached the door at gunpoint with masks, they proceeded to take every belonging in my house,” Shattuck said.
The cops’ haul included bicycles, her husband’s tools, a lawn mower, a weed whacker, her children’s Christmas presents, cash (totaling $85) taken from her daughter’s birthday cards, the kids’ car seats and soccer equipment, and vital documents such as driver’s licenses, insurance cards, and birth certificates.
“How do you explain to your kids when they come home and everything is gone?” Shattuck asked. She added that her 9-year-old daughter is now afraid of the police and “cried for weeks” because the cops threatened to shoot the family dog during the raid.
Although “my husband and I have not been convicted of any crime,” Shattuck said, they cannot get their property back, and their bank accounts remain frozen.
Last February The Detroit Free Presshighlightedvarious other examples of the cruel, greedy pettiness fostered by civil forfeiture laws, which allow police to take assets allegedly linked to crime without so much as filing charges, let alone obtaining a conviction.
“Police seized more than $24 million in assets from Michiganders in 2013,” the paper noted. “In many cases the citizens were never charged with a crime but lost their property anyway.”
Now a bipartisan group of state legislators is trying to reform the laws that have turned Michigan cops into robbers.
The bills, which are backed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Klint Kesto (R-Commerce Township), would require law enforcement agencies to keep track of all forfeitures and report them to the state police, prohibit the forfeiture of vehicles used to purchase small amounts of marijuana, and raise the standard of proof for forfeitures in cases involving drugs or public nuisances.
“We must bring culpability and transparency to the system and rein in the ability of police to indiscriminately seize the property of innocent citizens,” Kesto says.
Michigan was one of five states that received a D–, the lowest grade awarded, in a 2010 report on forfeiture abuse from the Institute for Justice. Michigan’s “preponderance of the evidence” standard, which allows the government to complete a forfeiture based on any probability greater than 50 percent that the asset is connected to a crime, was one reason for that low grade.
Bills introduced by Rep. Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Township) and Rep. Gary Glenn (R-Midland) would instead require “clear and convincing” evidence, which is more demanding than the current rule but not as strict as “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the standard in criminal cases.
None of the bills addresses another major problem with forfeiture in Michigan:
Law enforcement agencies keep 100 percent of the loot, which gives them a strong incentive to target people based on the assets they own instead of the threat they pose to public safety.
Testifying (play video) before Kesto’s committee on Tuesday, Charmie Gholson, founder of Michigan
Moms United, argued that cops’ financial stake in forfeitures helps explain why the arrest rates for consensual crimes involving drugs and prostitution are so much higher than the arrest rates for violent crimes such as rape, robbery, assault, and murder.
Charmie Gholson (Image: Michigan House of Representatives)
In Michigan, Gholson said, the arrest rate (the share of reported incidents that result in an arrest) is 82 percent for prostitution, compared to 44 percent for murder, 39 percent for felonious assault, 21 percent for robbery, and 15 percent for rape. “It’s because when they catch you with a prostitute, they take your car,” she said. “Civil asset forfeiture decreases public safety.”
Gholson thinks money from forfeitures should go into the general fund, which would eliminate such perverse incentives. She also argues that forfeiture should require a conviction based on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which would effectively abolish the practice of civil (as opposed to criminal) forfeiture. The Institute for Justice, which has been fighting forfeiture abuse for years, agrees.
Both of those reforms were recently adopted by New Mexico, which got a D+ in the 2010 Institute for Justice report. The New Mexico law also bars police and prosecutors from evading state limits on forfeiture by pursuing seizures under federal law through the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program.
Last month legislators in Montana, which like New Mexico got a D+ in 2010, likewise voted to require a conviction prior to forfeiture.
But police and prosecutors in Montana will continue to keep all the proceeds from forfeitures, and they are still free to engage in joint forfeitures with the feds, which are subject to a lower evidentiary standard.
Compared to the reforms in New Mexico and Montana, the changes proposed in Michigan are pretty modest. But forfeiture critics hope the new comprehensive reporting requirement will set the stage for more ambitious reform by showing how the profit motive warps law enforcement priorities.
“You need more details about how seizures are happening,” Lee McGrath, legislative counsel at the Institute for Justice, told the Free Press. He said such data will expose the myth that “these forfeitures target big international criminal syndicates.” McGrath called the bills “a solid first step toward the ultimate goal of ending civil forfeiture.”
Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of theMichigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group with over 26,000 members, which advocates for medical marijuana patients, and caregiver rights. Michael is also the host of Planet Green Trees Radio, a marijuana reform based show, which is broadcast every Thursday night 8-10 pm EST. Follow Komorn on Twitter.
Everyday, I get calls to my office from medical marijuana patients and caregivers who have been raided or pulled over by police. Often times, these individuals are not arrested, and little if any paperwork is left behind by the various Narcotics Enforcement Teams.
Not only will these agencies leave little to no paperwork, but they’ll leave you with much less than what you owned prior to their visit. Everything from cars, laptops, grow equipment, cell phones, even family heir-looms; If there is marijuana in your house or car, there’s a good chance that the police will seize your personal property.
In fact, the police can seize what they want without charging you with a crime. Such was the case with Tarik Dehko, a grocer from Flint, Michigan. When he went to check his bank account, he instantly thought he had been the victim of fraud, as all of his $35,000 had been taken. When he contacted his bank, the answer he got was much worse: the Federal Government had seized all of his money out of his business account, simply because they didn’t like the way he was making deposits. Tarik had never been notified, and has not been charged with a crime, yet the federal government was permitted to take his money.
Anyone at all familiar with the forfeiture process knows that the police use it as a way to generate revenue for their own department by making the owner do buy backs, or selling the items at auction. Today’s forfeiture laws are cash cows for police, and it is not surprising that we see police driving fancier cars, motorcycles, or even horses. They are armed more like army rangers than civilian law enforcers, and open new departments or acquire SWAT teams with all the surplus money generated through this process.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I have been able to successfully reacquire the items seized from many of my clients without them having to pay the police agencies who stole them. Before you cut a big check to your local sheriffs department, contact Komorn Law and get what is rightfully yours returned to you.
Michael Komorn is recognized as a leading expert on the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act. He is the President of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association (MMMA), a nonprofit patient advocacy group with over 26,000 members, which advocates for medical marijuana patients, and caregiver rights. Michael is also the host of Planet Green Trees Radio, a marijuana reform based show, which is broadcast every Thursday night 8-10 pm EST. Follow Komorn on Twitter.
House Speaker: Michigan must reform asset forfeiture
Government exists to provide services to the people, not to profit off them. Unfortunately, some Michigan police departments are doing the latter with actions hidden from public view. Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives are going to change that.
Far too many people are falling prey to a well-intentioned but flawed policy called civil asset forfeiture. Under this law, officers are charging into people’s homes and businesses and seizing cash, cars and sometimes even the homes themselves. While this can be an effective way to hit real criminals in their pocketbooks, in many cases, criminal charges are never filed against the owner. Police nevertheless keep their possessions and, in some instances, auction them off for cash without any real records. When these private citizens ask for their possessions to be returned, they are often asked to pay a large fee and spend years in an impossible loop of red tape and bureaucracy.
We recently unveiled our House Republican Action Plan, a public blueprint that lays out our top legislative priorities for the next two years. We highlighted our desire to reform civil asset forfeiture laws, because we are committed to protecting the rights of every Michigan resident. We believe you deserve a better, more transparent government.
The simple truth is our widely criticized law allows law enforcement to boost their budgets at auction with little or no responsibility. Most Michiganians have no idea this takes place, and many who do have seen their lives turned upside down with no way to hold the state responsible when mistakes are made.
These cases sound like isolated incidents of corruption and abuses of power, but they are far from it. This is state law, and the police who conduct the raids are well within their legal right to seize and sell the property of the innocent and guilty alike and bury the results. It is well past time to bring some accountability into the system.
We will hold public hearings on this issue and bring in experts from all sides to testify to find the best possible solution. Whatever we come up with, people should never feel powerless to stand up for their rights and reclaim the property that’s rightfully theirs.
Our local police have an important job to do, and they do it well. But we have to ask why the law directs them to treat innocent people the same as criminals when it comes to asset forfeiture. What good is our criminal justice system if we cannot draw a distinction between going after criminals and punishing the innocent?
Everyone agrees the system needs more transparency and that we need to limit the profit incentives for police. The challenge is to design a system that protects both our rights and the public safety of our communities. We will have to work through every concern to find the best long-term solution, but we will find an answer that works for the people.
State Rep. Kevin Cotter, R-Mt. Pleasant, serves as the speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, and represents the 99th District.
