I don’t know…But here is a story about it. Your on your own to find the truth. After the article there will be some links to other sites that will present the device in a different light.
Police Use Device to Strip Money from Drivers’ Debit Cards
Police officers are using a new technology, called ERAD machines, to siphon funds directly from drivers’ pre-paid cards in the course of ordinary traffic stops.
The tactic, which cops have deployed for months in states like Oklahoma, is a new twist in “civil forfeiture,” a controversial legal process that lets police seize funds from motorists if they suspect money is tied to a drug crime. Critics, however, liken the practice to banditry—noting the police use forfeiture to pay themselves, and that citizens must take extraordinary legal measures to get their money back.
The arrival of the handheld ERAD machines, which stands for Electronic Recovery and Access to Data, comes at a time when fewer people are carrying cash. They work by imitating the payment terminals found at ordinary retailers, and allowing cops to slurp up the values found on pre-paid cards for Visa (V, +1.40%) , Starbucks (SBUX, +0.80%) and so on.
For now, it appears the ERAD devices are only able to siphon funds from pre-paid cards, and not from a driver’s personal bank account or credit card.
According to Matt Miller, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, the advocacy group first became aware of the ERAD machines several months ago. Miller says law enforcement groups have been touting them as a way to seize funds from drug dealers, many of whom use pre-paid debit cards to move funds around.
Indeed, a recent press release from the Department of Homeland Security talks up the benefits of ERAD technology.
“[L]aw enforcement seized approximately 1,000 cards from a suspected drug trafficker. With this technology they were able to identify more than $48,000 in funds that were loaded onto the cards,” said the release. “Since it was put into field testing, the Prepaid Card Reader has resulted in approximately $1 million dollars being seized by state and local law enforcement agencies from suspected criminal activity. ”
The trouble, says Miller, is that drug dealers are far from the only ones who use pre-paid debit cards. He points out that a growing number of employers are using services such as Visa Payroll, which encourages them to pay workers through the cards.
Miller says that law enforcement typically offers an example of using ERAD in order to seize funds in the event a driver is found with a suspicious stack of 50 pre-paid Starbucks cards in the truck of a car. But in reality, the police may also be using it to suck up funds from a single card in a driver’s wallet.
“The tech seems to have come out of nowhere and there’s no oversight of this,” he said. “A whole lot of these cases are for forfeitures of $500 or $800.”
He adds that the overwhelming majority of the seizures result in default court judgments, often because people don’t have the means or will to fight the police in court.
Americans Stripped of Cash, Cars—and now Cards
The controversy over civil forfeiture soared to national attention in 2013, in part thanks to a scorching New Yorker article called “Taken” that described how certain police departments are effectively using traffic stops to rob citizens of cash. Comedian John Oliver also took up the subject in a widely-watched 2014 episode of Last Week Tonight.
Most of the incidents arise in so-called “forfeiture corridors” in states like Texas and Pennsylvania, where police officers confiscate cash from motorists, even though many of them were using the cash for legitimate small businesses or personal matters.
Typically, the police do not even bother filing a criminal drug charge, but instead just bring a forfeiture case to keep the cash. In the event the motorist who once held the cash wants to recover it, he or she is required to intervene in the case, the time and cost of retaining an attorney and attending court is often not a viable option. The cops win almost every time.
Civil liberties groups like the Institute for Justice have notched a few victories. In February, for instance, the group forced an Oklahoma Sheriff’s Department to return $53,000 it lifted from a Christian rock band during a stop over a broken tail-light.
While civil forfeiture raises numerous due process questions, a broad-based Constitutional victory has proved elusive, in part because governments have been quick to walk away from cases that come under close legal scrutiny.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration, which took steps last year to rein in a federal law encouraging the seizures, decided to backtrack in March and allow the forfeiture program to continue.
It will be interesting to see how many law enforcement agencies decide to make ERAD machines part of their day-to-day operations. While Oklahoma has acknowledged to using 16 of the devices, it’s unclear for now who else is using them.
Miller, the lawyer, says for now the privacy concerns are real, remarking, “You have a police officer with a scanner that might go into someone’s bank account. It raises red flags with due process and the fourth Amendment.”
If you are pulled over in one of five Michigan counties and a police officer believes you’re impaired by drugs, you could be asked to submit your saliva to be tested.
A Michigan State Police official explained the process for the state’s new roadside drug testing pilot program that begins Wednesday, Nov. 8, in Berrien, Delta, Kent, St. Clair and Washtenaw counties, that runs for one year.
Drug Recognition Experts (DREs), with specialized training in the signs of drug impairment, will carry handheld devices to test for the presence of drugs in drivers’ saliva.
Despite the new tool, police will continue to follow established procedures during traffic stops to check for drug impairment, MSP First Lt. Jim Flegel said.
“They’re not going to be randomly pulling people over, they have to have a valid reason,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for things like weaving in their lane, driving too fast, driving too slow, not using your turn signals — indicators that would indicate that somebody’s driving while impaired.”
After making a traffic stop, police would still have to establish probable cause for impairment, he said, by performing field sobriety tests.
“The only difference with the pilot program is if they determine they’re impaired on some type of drug, they’re going to ask them to submit to the oral fluid swab,” Flegel said.
The Alere DDS2 oral fluid test instrument will be used to measure for the presence of drugs in drivers’ saliva, Michigan State Police spokeswoman Shanon Banner said
NILES, Mich. — Michigan State Police officers are conducting roadside saliva tests on suspected drug-impaired motorists as part of a program spurring questions about the tests’ accuracy.
State Police Special First Lt. Jim Flegel told the South Bend Tribune that the program uses a portable saliva-testing device that can tell officers if there are certain drugs in a driver’s system, such as marijuana or opiates. The program will test the accuracy and reliability of the Alere DDS2 device, which is meant to assess the presence of drugs in about five minutes.
(HMMMM…..DNA Collection device?)
Law enforcement and academic experts say settling on such a test is complicated because drugs affect everyone differently and there is wide variation in the potency of pot and other drugs and the way they are consumed. As a result, there is no consensus on what level amounts to impairment.
“Nobody should be compelled to take this test until we’ve got some confirmation that it is an accurate test,” Michael Komorn said. “That’s basic fundamental liberty and freedom, that government shouldn’t be able to subject individuals to tests.”
The $150,000 program is called the Preliminary Oral Fluid Analysis. It aims to combat an increase in fatal crashes caused by drug-impaired drivers, Flegel said. Officers must have a reason to suspect impairment before testing a driver, he said. Officers have undergone a two-week training course and must follow a 12-step analysis to assess potential drug impairment.
The state saw a more than 30 percent increase in fatal crashes from 2015 to 2016. There were almost 240 fatal crashes in 2016, compared to almost 180 crashes the previous year.
The program is currently being used in five Michigan counties: Berrien, Delta, Kent, St. Clair and Washtenaw.
Police will report to the Legislature in a year about the program’s accuracy and the number of arrests. The program could be rolled out to more areas if it’s found to be effective, Flegel said.
Published: Nov 27, 2017, 10:14 am • By The Associated Press
Lansing— The road to the Michigan Capitol is lined with marijuana.
It’s almost impossible to drive to the capital dome without seeing scores of shop signs emblazoned with bright green medical crosses and plucky names — BudzRUs, TruReleaf, Best Buds, Kind Provisioning Center — all along Michigan Avenue and the city at large. A constant stream of people filter in and out of the pot shops.
In major cities such as Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Lansing and Flint, medical marijuana dispensaries are largely left alone.
In other areas, however, police follow federal and state law, in effect treating medical marijuana as an illegal narcotic and a public safety issue. Regional state police drug teams have raided and closed dispensaries with the help of county prosecutors across the state, including in Grand Traverse, Kent, Oscoda, Otsego, St. Clair and Wexford counties.
This unequal treatment occurs as Michigan implements new regulations on everything the industry does, from growing to transporting to selling. On Dec. 15, those trying to get into or stay in business can submit applications for an official state license.
It has been unclear since voters approved a 2008 referendum allowing marijuana for medical use what the state’s law actually permitted. In 2013, the Michigan Supreme Court decided that dispensaries are illegal.
But the ruling has left some communities without local access to medical pot while others have a glut. Still others face legal fees and prison.
“I’ve shed tears over this. This has never been about money for me,” said Chad Morrow, a 39-year-old Gaylord resident and former dispensary owner facing up to seven years in prison. “To have that taken away — it’s disheartening and heartbreaking, honestly.”
Although Morrow obtained permission from the Gaylord Planning Commission and the City Council to open a dispensary called Cloud 45, it was raided multiple times by a regional state police drug unit before he closed it in 2016 pending criminal charges.
Mixed messages from the state also helped inspire at least one medical marijuana crackdown in Grand Traverse County, the most recent county-wide enforcement action against dispensaries operating for years. Police sometimes conduct raids even if the prosecutor doesn’t play ball, said lawyers specializing in marijuana cases.
“I think Traverse City had the largest concentration of places north of Lansing, so it was the biggest target,” said Matt Abel, a criminal defense attorney in Detroit and an expert on marijuana cases. “Why they’re doing it now when these places have existed for years? It (makes us think) it has something to do with the upcoming licensing.
“They see this as an opportunity to clear the playing field and the patients be damned.”
Eight dispensaries closed
The prosecutor in Grand Traverse County helped close all eight of the county’s dispensaries in October after state regulators said staying open past the Dec. 15 application opening would hurt such shops’ chances of getting a license to do business legally.
In November, the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs changed course and issued an emergency rule telling pot shops that staying open past mid-December wouldn’t hurt their licensing chances. But Grand Traverse County prosecutor Robert Cooney already had issued cease-and-desist letters to the four medical marijuana shops in Traverse City and four others around the county.
Capt. Michael Caldwell, State Police commander for the region, said a regional state police drug unit called Traverse Narcotics Team, or TNT, acted “because dispensaries are illegal.”
Caldwell would not say why the probe began in September when the dispensaries were open for business for years beforehand.
“No, I can’t comment on any specifics of those investigations,” he said. “Once these owners obtain legal license to operate a dispensary, then they have nothing to fear. However, until that happens, they’re in violation of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, and they’re subject to enforcement action.”
Cooney said his cease-and-desist letters were in part prodded by comments from state Michigan Medical Marihuana Licensing Board member Donald Bailey, a retired state police sergeant from Traverse City who worked in drug enforcement. At an August meeting, Bailey said he wanted to close all dispensaries before licenses were issued to be in line with the Supreme Court ruling.
Bailey’s motion was met with sustained public outcry before LARA told the board at a later meeting that it does not have the authority to shut down dispensaries.
But Bailey’s comments and LARA’s prior warning that provisioning centers could sabotage their licensing chances by staying open past the mid-December application deadline led Cooney to believe the state wanted them shuttered.
“To me, (that) indicated that the state really wants these illegally operating business shut down before the new law,” he said, indicating he thought the state and localities wanted to collect taxes and licensing fees from legal businesses under new state rules.
Cooney informed the dispensaries in his letters that state law does not allow them to sell medical marijuana. The law allows a “caregiver” to cultivate and grow medical marijuana for up to five patients.
First Lt. Josh Lator, a state police commander at the Houghton Lake Post in northern Michigan, said police have been monitoring the Grand Traverse dispensaries for some time, and “the biggest reason” they acted now was “because every one of the places that the team contacted … were operating in violation of Michigan law.”
Licensed ‘caregivers’ lacking
Although dispensaries are currently illegal, many patients have argued that finding medical pot would be difficult if all the shops closed.
Michigan lacks enough licensed “caregivers” to provide for all of its patients. There are 272,215 patients and 43,266 caregivers in Michigan — or more than six patients for every caregiver. Caregivers can only grow medical marijuana for up to five patients each.
State police spokeswoman Shanon Banner said the department keeps no statistics on its medical marijuana dispensary raids, and that enforcement occurs on a “case-by-case” basis. She declined to say why some state police units crack down on dispensaries while others don’t.
“Sometimes enforcement is the result of local ordinance; sometimes it’s related to other criminal activity,” Banner said in an email.
But dispensaries across the state sell marijuana to more than five patients without legal repercussion.
“The county prosecutors let them do it,” said Barton Morris, a Royal Oak criminal defense attorney specializing in marijuana cases.
Pro-marijuana lawyers like Abel and Morris say the patchwork of enforcement happens in the absence of centralized state police orders. They say ambitious local narcotics units such as TNT work to find county prosecutors who are willing to cooperate.
By contrast, Washtenaw County prosecutor Brian Mackie said he deals with much more pressing issues. Local police and county prosecutors are just “inundated with domestic violence, murder, rape, armed robbery,” he said.
“Marijuana is not a No. 1 priority in the county,” said Mackie, who indicated he does not favor legalizing recreational use of marijuana. “We evaluate cases that come to us. We don’t get a great many of them.”
Registered business targeted
In 2016, 12 dispensaries in Oscoda and Otsego counties were raided by regional state police narcotics task forces.
In August of that year, the owners and workers of a dispensary called Northern Michigan Caregivers in Lewiston turned themselves into police following warrants issued for their arrest on charges that stemmed from running the dispensary.
Delbert Curio, 59, ran the shop with his wife, Brandi, for nearly four years before a judge issued a search warrant following two “controlled buys” to prove the dispensary actually sells medical marijuana.
Curio even took pains to register his business with the Oscoda County Clerk, according to a state police incident report.
“Delbert and Brandi (Curio) operated the business very openly and obviously with the belief that their transactions and activities would be protected by the Michigan Medical Marijuana (sic) Act,” defense lawyer Morris wrote in a 2016 sentencing memo.
The Straits Area Narcotics Unit still seized about $2,700 in cash and all of the shop’s marijuana and marijuana derivatives, such as liquid THC and edibles. The county prosecutor initially threatened Curio with up to 50 years in prison for delivering and manufacturing marijuana, operating or maintaining a laboratory and maintaining a drug house, according to a court document.
Instead, Delbert ended up getting four years of probation and permission from a local judge to use medical marijuana to treat his advanced lung cancer.
It’s incomprehensible that state police are still busting people as other state officials attempt to work out the regulatory details that will lay the groundwork for huge profits in the marijuana industry, said Michael Komorn, a Farmington Hills-based criminal defense lawyer specializing in marijuana cases.
“It can’t be reconciled with any kind of logic,” Komorn said.
Novi Judge Brian MacKenzie has provided “falsified” court documents to prosecutors to hide his practice of improperly handling domestic violence cases, according to a new filing by Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper. And in some cases, he has kept defendants on probation beyond the two years allowed by law, Cooper claims.
Cooper made the allegations in a motion filed before Oakland Circuit Judge Colleen O’Brien to find MacKenzie in contempt of court. O’Brien is expected to issue her ruling within weeks.
MacKenzie’s attorney, David Timmis, said, “These attacks are factually inaccurate and misleading,” and accused Cooper of trying to harm MacKenzie’s re-election chances in November.
“This is an experienced, compassionate and award-winning judge who has been lauded throughout his career,” Timmis said in an e-mail to the Free Press.
Cooper’s office has been reviewing MacKenzie’s files after O’Brien ordered in February that he hand them over to prosecutors because he was treating repeat domestic violence offenders as if they were first-time offenders and then placing them on probation, a violation of state law.
“The problems are far worse than we could have imagined,” Cooper wrote in her Aug. 6 filing. Her review of the files uncovered conduct on criminal cases “that ranges from outright dismissals of valid criminal convictions to the falsification of official judicial records; issues that compromise the very integrity of the criminal justice process of that court.”
Her office found cases in which defendants were kept on probation after more than two years, a violation of Michigan statutes, she said.
Timmis said there was no evidence of doctored files, and the defendants who were on probation for more than two years were serving “protracted” jail sentences or had violated MacKenzie’s probation and faced new charges.
If Cooper’s allegations are true, it could spell trouble not just for MacKenzie, but for Oakland County, which funds his court.
“This may be much more than bringing a case in front of the judicial tenure commission, this could have a criminal aspect along with civil claims,” said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and expert on criminal procedure, judicial ethics and the legal profession.
Defendants kept on probation longer than two years could sue the county because their rights had been violated, he said.
“It would not be a defense even if the probationer agreed to it,” he said. “You’re not agreeing to anything when you’re standing in front of a judge. You’re accepting what the judge does.”
In charging that documents have been altered, Cooper cites a 2010 case in which a defendant was charged with assault and battery following a domestic assault. Cooper’s staff obtained a copy of the original 2010 court docket showing the man pleaded no contest, and that MacKenzie took his plea “under advisement” meaning the case would be dropped if the man stayed out of trouble. The file read “Plea Advisement Spouse Act Bench Trial.”
The defendant, though, was not eligible for such a deal because he had five prior arrests.
The case was closed in April 2012.
But when MacKenzie’s staff handed the file over to Cooper’s office on July 11 on orders of O’Brien, the records had changed, Cooper said.
There was no mention of spousal abuse or a no-contest plea. Instead, it showed the man had pleaded guilty to a minor drug charge — although there were no drugs involved, and that MacKenzie had again taken the case “under advisement.”
“If records have been altered, that could be a criminal violation for anyone involved,” Henning said.
Cooper, in her filing, says, “It requires little speculation to guess why the entries on an illegally dismissed case would be subsequently changed to delete references to the (Spousal Abuse Act).”
Timmis denied that the original involved a domestic assault and that the current records provided to the prosecutors are accurate. “There was never any attempt to falsify documents related to this matter” and questioned the accuracy of the prosecutor’s records.
O’Brien, should she find MacKenzie in contempt, has several options, including ordering him to appear before her, sanctioning him in writing or jailing him.
Cooper has forwarded a copy of her complaint to the Michigan State Court Administrative which can refer it to the tenure commission for sanctions as well.
MacKenzie’s troubles come as he faces his first challenge since he took the bench in 1988. He faced off against two challengers in the Aug. 5 primary and came in second, with 7,727 votes, behind attorney Travis Reeds, who garnered 8,003. Attorney Scott Powers finished third with 5,559 votes.
Aug 20, 2014 – Novi Judge Brian MacKenzie has provided “falsified” court documents to prosecutors to hide his practice of improperly handling domestic …
Brian W. MacKenzie 52nd District Court Judge Judge Brian MacKenzie has served as a Judge of the 52nd District Court, located in Novi Michigan, since 1988.
Feb 14, 2014 – It is “uncontested” that a Novi District Judge Brian MacKenzie didn’t follow … Jeffrey Arthur Roberts: In another dispute over Michigan’s Spousal …
Jun 11, 2014 – The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission recently filed a formal complaint … death threats against fellow Novi District Judge Brian MacKenzie, …
Mar 24, 2014 – NOVI, Mich. – Four years ago, Judge Brian MacKenzie presided over his calling card: a drunken driving case. Walled Lake police upped the …
Dec 5, 2013 – NOVI, Mich. (WXYZ) – The 7 Action News Investigators are digging deeper into the rare complaint filed by Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica …
Feb 13, 2015 – … Jessica Cooper in her handling of concerns at the Novi’s 52-1 District Court. … disputed cases before former Novi Judge Brian MacKenzie.
Oct 19, 2014 – Novi District Judge Brian MacKenzie has been using a convicted felon with history of drunken driving and other offenses to drive around and …
Mar 24, 2014 – A secret recording being reviewed by the FBI of Novi District Judge Brian MacKenzie and defense attorney Timothy Corr discussing a case in …
Dec 5, 2013 – At about 5:00-5:30 a.m., I awake, grab a cup of coffee and scan the headlines for interesting stories. Today, I found one that disappointed me.
