From WAVY in Virginia: The Middlesex County sheriff is being investigated by police for allegedly using county and state funds for himself. Search warrants were filed in Chesapeake court this week for a BB&T account and a Wachovia account, one…
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Monthly Archives: July 2010
Virginia sheriff under investigation for embezzlement from asset forfeiture funds
Why reforming asset forfeiture is key to ending the war on drugs
There is now broad agreement that the War on Drugs is an abject failure. I have two basic premises in making that argument. The first is that the War on Drugs has done little to decrease the use of drugs…
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Tagged with: civil asset forfeiture, corruption, Department of Justice, equitable sharing, law enforcement, War on Americans, War on Drugs
Posted in Drug War
Posted in Drug War
Update: Ed Rosenthal, federal litigation possibilities, etc
Haven’t updated the blog this week, but we’ve been busy. Here’s a quick rundown of what this week has brought us while I’m in transit to St. Louis: 1. We’re in discussions with a couple Missouri school districts regarding the…
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Tagged with: audits, Ed Rosenthal, federal lawsuit, Missouri, Sunshine Laws, SWAT, transparency
Posted in federal, states
Posted in federal, states
I’m speaking to Muleskinners on civil forfeiture in Missouri today!
Today I’ll be speaking to Muleskinners (the weekly lunch meeting of the Boone County Democrats) about civil asset forfeiture laws and their use in Missouri. If you are interested in coming to this discussion, the meeting starts at noon in…
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Posted in Uncategorized
Victims of NOAA forfeiture abuse: New Beford fishermen
From Jonathan Hemmerdinger: The money contributed, at least in part, to NOAA’s so-called asset forfeiture fund, which houses commercial fishing penalties and forfeitures of property, which can include seized fish or fishing vessels. The fund also includes money from criminal…
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A history of Missouri’s civil asset forfeiture laws, 1985-present
I’ll a guest on 89.5 KOPN FM in Columbia, Missouri, at 5pm tomorrow night. The show is called the Mid-Missouri Freedom Forum, hosted by Steve Spellman, Mark Flakne, and Mitch Richards. I’ll be speaking on Missouri’s civil asset forfeiture laws…
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Tagged with: Claire McCaskill, Department of Justice, equitable sharing, Missouri, School Building Revolving Fund, Susan Montee
Posted in states
Posted in states
Nicholas County Sheriff Leonard Garrett’s personal slush fund
On January 19, 2010, Kentucky State Auditor Crit Luallen released an audit of Nicholas County’s forfeiture fund. It contains the following, which I’ll excerpt here: The sheriff has $40,401 of disallowed expenditures from his drug forfeiture account. During the review…
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Tagged with: civil forfeiture, drug war, Kentucky, Leonard Garrett, Nicholas County, slush fund
Posted in states
Posted in states
“When you’re dealing with a million dollars or more, “Just trust me” doesn’t really cut it”
York County in Pennsylvania is one of America’s great historic counties. The city of York was designated by Congress as the first capital of the United States before later settling on Washington D.C. The county lies just a stone’s throw…
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Tagged with: civil forfeiture, corruption, drug war, obfuscation, Pennsylvania, secrecy, Tom Kearney, York County
Posted in states
Posted in states
Let me count the ways the government can take your property….all 217 of them
There are 217 provisions in federal law as of 2009 that allow for the civil and administrative forfeiture of property. They range from the obvious (18 U.S.C. 794 serious espionage) to the dated (22 U.S.C. 287c violation of import restrictions…
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Assorted Links
1. From Cracked: 6 completely legal ways the cops can screw you, including a nod (of course) to civil asset forfeiture 2. “In the nation’s largest cities, drug arrests for African Americans rose at three times the rate for whites…
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From illegal forfeiture funds to SWAT raids in Missouri
In 1990, Missouri’s Supreme Court ruled in a 5-2 decision that the commissioners of Lafeyette County, Missouri, had improperly disbursed about a million dollars in forfeiture money to local law enforcement. The suit was filed by Odessa School District (Reorganized…
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“Hi, we’re the police, and we’d rather chase federal money than fight crime”
From last week’s Wall Street Journal: Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there’s one mission on which he’s spending more than…
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Another day, another obscure federal agency abuses its forfeiture slush fund
Abuses of asset forfeiture money are common and widespread amongst American governmental agencies at all levels. Part of the problem is that an increasing number of federal agencies have access to administrative forfeiture powers and manage to retain the proceeds…
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Tagged with: administrative forfeiture, corruption, Department of Commerce, NOAA, US Rep. Walther Jones (R-NC)
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
The DEA? Or the Mafia?
The story of Jeffrey Scarabin and his $12,360 In 1992, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to return $12,360 in cash that had been seized by law enforcement from Jeffrey…
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Tagged with: civil asset forfeiture, equitable sharing, injustice, Louisiana, Scarabin v. DEA
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
