Civil Forfeiture - Theft by Police

[Crazed Rabbit]

http://www.ij.org/about/4058

United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Mass. (The Motel Caswell)
Federal & Local Law Enforcement Agencies Try to Take Family Motel from Innocent Owners

Imagine you own a million-dollar piece of property free and clear, but then the federal government and local law enforcement agents announce that they are going to take it from you, not compensate you one dime, and then use the money they get from selling your land to pad their budgets—all this even though you have never so much as been accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one.

The Tewksbury Police see something desirable and they want to take it. What is right and just doesn't matter for an instant - they see the potential to seize one million dollars and care not for the people they steal it from. This from those supposed to 'protect and serve'.

CR

[Major Robert Dump]

First off, I've stayed in this place travelling for work, I recognized the sign immediately.

Second, this is absurd. They take it from him, sell it, and the new owners have the same sort of "criminal activity" because a hotel/motel owner can only police what people do in the romms so much. With such a precedent they could take just about any apartment on the face of the planet

[Samurai Waki]

hmmm.... I guess things like this is why I've offered over my services to Occupiers in Portland.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

http://www.ij.org/about/4058



The Tewksbury Police see something desirable and they want to take it. What is right and just doesn't matter for an instant - they see the potential to seize one million dollars and care not for the people they steal it from. This from those supposed to 'protect and serve'.

CR

OK, wow.

Guys, I suggest you all just leave America.

Seriously, you're goverment is crap, your politicians are incompetent, demagogues, zealots or all of the above and you have no universal healthcare.

If my country was in that bad a state I think even I'd jump ship.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

At the same time, the property is among the top three locations Tewksbury police have responded to this year alone -- an address that has found itself at the center of narcotics, prostitution, assault and rape cases over the years.

"It's a black eye to Tewksbury," Selectman David Gay said yesterday. "It's been a constant thorn in the town's side since I started living here 20 years ago. This couldn't come soon enough."

"I think even the townspeople who don't want to see change -- who want Tewksbury to stay the way it is -- won't be shedding tears over this," Selectman Scott Wilson added. "It has a very negative image in town ... yet it's almost the entryway into Tewksbury. I think it could be turned into something really nice."

The civil-forfeiture case, which was filed in Boston's U.S. District Court on Sept. 29 and publicly unveiled yesterday, is based on seven major narcotics cases that yielded arrests and drug seizures at the Motel Caswell between February 2001 and November 2008.

Sgt. Thomas Casey, who heads the Tewksbury police detectives' bureau, wrote in his affidavit that the property has been "the subject of over 100 narcotics investigations" since 1994.

Among the most notable cases was the discovery in October 2005 of a methamphetamine lab run out of room 255 by a 35-year-old Tewksbury man. He was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty.

Casey's affidavit details the arrests of 10 other people caught dealing heroin, cocaine and prescription drugs out of rooms at the Motel Caswell -- with one case alone leading to the seizure of 190 baggies containing heroin.

Almost all of the investigations relied on the use of confidential informants or undercover police officers.

One informant told police in 2004 that a clerk at the motel had directed her to a different room than expected, saying that the dealer "had changed rooms ... due to suspected police activity."

Law-enforcement officials argue that all the cases, taken together, show that the Motel Caswell has been "used to facilitate the trafficking and distribution of illegal narcotics ... in the Tewksbury area since at least 2001."

But the Caswells pointed out that the arrests listed in the government's case amount to only a minuscule fraction of their total clientele.

"During the same period, the motel has had more than 100,000 guests, each of which is entitled to certain rights of privacy as guests of the motel," O'Neil wrote.

Someone was running a meth lab out of one of the rooms

CR, you do realize that video is propaganda right? Regardless of whether the seizure was unjustified. Please reassure me.

[classical_hero]

Where did you get that info from, AKA where is the link?

[Ibn-Khaldun]

At the same time, the property is among the top three locations Tewksbury police have responded to this year alone -- an address that has found itself at the center of narcotics, prostitution, assault and rape cases over the years.

Top three? So, how many crimes there have been in this year? Three?

[Vladimir]

Someone was running a meth lab out of one of the rooms

CR, you do realize that video is propaganda right? Regardless of whether the seizure was unjustified. Please reassure me.

Once again reason trumps a rabbit's rage.

Where did you get that info from, AKA where is the link?

http://www.google.com/firefox?client...en-US:official

Google: It's good for you.

[Beskar]

So it was actually seized? I thought it was propaganda saying they "could", not that they "did".

[Tellos Athenaios]

Yeah but all in all it is still plain weird. What exactly are the owners of the property charged with?

But taking the various bits of posted information here at face value, Tewksbury seems to be a caricature straight from some cheap, poor quality comic; a real life Sin City.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Top three? So, how many crimes there have been in this year? Three?

Well, take the number of people actually caught dealing drugs out of the rooms. Then ask yourself what percent of all the people actually dealing drugs the police catch.

Yeah but all in all it is still plain weird. What exactly are the owners of the property charged with?

But taking the various bits of posted information here at face value, Tewksbury seems to be a caricature straight from some cheap, poor quality comic; a real life Sin City.

Their claim is, I suppose, that he is allowing (presumably for a fee) obvious drug dealers to operate out of his motel. Very convenient for them, I would imagine, because they don't have to have a fixed address that way. But I think in civil forfeiture they charge the property and not the person...it is strange.

Most people who stay at motels are just sleeping there for a night. How many visitors would have to come to a room to deal out 160 packets of heroin? It seems perfectly plausible that they have good evidence (all the details of which obviously won't be in news articles, especially the ones whose main source is the defense lawyers ) that he was running the place as a safe haven.

Keeping a watchful eye on this kind of case is well and good, but that video

[Major Robert Dump]

It doesn't matter what goes on there. If the police are so concerned maybe they could set up a substation in one of the rooms or post a cop there like they do at Taco Bell in the hood. Oh wait, Taco Bell can fight them in court with their billions, this guy can't.

If the man is obstructing or assisting then charge him with a crime and take his property. This is gay.

[Papewaio]

So if the local bank becomes a hotspot of crime it can be seized?

Sorry Mr Bank Manager apart from the fact you were robbed half a dozen times, you also were found to have money deposited by the local hotel and as such are guilty of aiding a series of crimes.

[johnhughthom]

There was a quote in the piece Sasaki linked that suggested hotel staff knew that drug dealing was going on in the premises, very different from your bank analogy.

[Papewaio]

A) Should a business or corporation have it's assets seized if some of it's people are aiding crimes?

B) Should a bank have it's assets seized if one or more of it's employees aid in a crime?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Let's say the police are tracking some drug dealers who are using a boat to bring the stuff in. They have proof that the boat is involved. If they have enough evidence to make a case on the owner, they do and seize the boat as well (criminal forfeiture). But maybe the owner isn't actually dealing any drugs. He just has an agreement with the dealers to let them use his boat and turn a blind eye. He's acting as a kind of front. In this case the government, after proving the boat is involved, seize it (and for some reason this is referred to as seizing "guilty" property). The owner can then contest that he is innocent.

The revision to the law around 2000 added:

(1) require the federal government to prove that seized property is related to a crime; (2) create an "innocent owner" defense, to allow property owners who are unaware of the criminal activity associated with their property to recover their assets; (3) provide indigent defendants with appointed counsel; and (4) eliminate the cost bond required of owners to contest the seizure in court.

What's missing in the video and most things you'll find googling it (just had a look) is any sense of perspective what so ever. According to one informed person I found in a comment section (which I have no qualms "citing" given the OP ):

Civil asset forfeitures typically give 2 options to a claimant. The first is the ability to contest the forfeiture administratively. The claimant submits his claim and evidence to the seizing agency for review of the merits of the claim. This incurs no legal fees for the claimant, but it IS an administrative review by the seizing agency, so some claimants prefer the 2nd option, which is to demand a trial in front of a judge. The claimant is not required to hire an attorney, but most claimants that go the judicial route usually have an attorney. The trial is handled like any other trial. Interestingly, the vast majority of forfeitures are resolved administratively -- most innocent owners that can prove legitimate claims can get their property back pretty quickly. It is the claimant with the more questionable claim that typically tries to litigate, hoping to beat the system.

...

Third, even once the government proves that the property is eligible to be forfeited, it is possible for a truly “innocent owner” to argue that it should still get the property back. This often happens in cases of jointly-owned property (i.e. a husband and wife owning a car together, and the husband used the car to smuggle drugs without the wife’s knowledge), or a lienholder (i.e. your bank actually has an ownership interest in your car as collateral, until your car loan is paid off). These claimants will get a chance to prove that they had nothing to do with the underlying illegality, and get the property back.

You can't just pick out a case and saying a bunch of handwavy scaremongering things about the law. Quoting some web journalist who thinks some guy was unjustly robbed just doesn't cut it. You need some sense of perspective on how the law is used on the whole, what most cases are like, what good it does. Sometimes the police listen in on innocent people, but we don't get rid of warranted wiretapping just because it doesn't work perfectly. The idea that the police are fabricating cases on people, seizing their property, and then selling it to pad their own pockets is worthy.

[a completely inoffensive name]

at this point, I got too much work to ask questions online.

[a completely inoffensive name]

epic triple post

[a completely inoffensive name]

epic triple post

[TheLastDays]

(all the details of which obviously won't be in news articles, especially the ones whose main source author is the defense lawyers ) that he was running the place as a safe haven.

Fixed that for ya!

@acin: I don't see the point since he talked about warranted wiretapping, not warrantless wiretapping here.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Fixed that for ya!

@acin: I don't see the point since he talked about warranted wiretapping, not warrantless wiretapping here.

Whoops! Must have misread. My bad. All that triple post for nothing.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Okay, ACIN's open mind time. This is related to the Anwar thread, and after going over the conversation we had there I am still not getting it exactly. Even if such stories about blatant abuse of the law are hyperbole and lies, where exactly do you the line between "it's ok to give this power (warrantless wiretapping or what have you), because realistically nothing like that will ever happen" and "this is way too much power, and shouldn't be given to x person/position/official" is this a pragmatic view you are drawing, where intelligence communities don't really care about average civilians inane chatter, so warrantless wiretapping should be fine? Sorry if this conversation tires you.

It's not even particularly pragmatic*. If you approach privacy vs wiretapping with the emotional mindset where privacy is kind of sacred value, then the seriousness of any violation of that value becomes inflated. On the other hand, if you say, "I have two things I want. Privacy and the crime stopping ability of wiretapping" then you work out a balance that seems best. You accept that murderers who might have been caught with more lax standards won't be, and that people will be unjustly eavesdropped on who wouldn't with stricter standards. You accept it because they are conflicting desires and there is no magical way to have a perfect system. We're talking about accepting as in accepting the way the system works, not in a dismissing the cases where it goes wrong. Like we accept that people are going to die in car accidents and don't have a thread where news stories about deaths on the highway are posted every couple days. Now, poorly made cars that catch on fire or police trying to stop people filming them, that's an actual issue.

There are certainly many cases where there is obviously too much power and it's open for abuse, but for some reason the wacky ones tend to get posted here. This bit that I posted:

1) require the federal government to prove that seized property is related to a crime; (2) create an "innocent owner" defense, to allow property owners who are unaware of the criminal activity associated with their property to recover their assets; (3) provide indigent defendants with appointed counsel; and (4) eliminate the cost bond required of owners to contest the seizure in court.

Is a revision to the law--correcting what I would say was a bad law before that. Perhaps the current formulation needs fixing as well, but the "institute for justice" doesn't have anything intelligent to say about it

*or maybe it is, having a brain freeze on how to say what's pragmatic and what isn't

[Papewaio]

Surely it should be upto a court to prove the owner is guilty before seizing the property?

Is innocent until proven guilty no longer a default standard in the US?

[a completely inoffensive name]

It's not even particularly pragmatic*. If you approach privacy vs wiretapping with the emotional mindset where privacy is kind of sacred value, then the seriousness of any violation of that value becomes inflated. On the other hand, if you say, "I have two things I want. Privacy and the crime stopping ability of wiretapping" then you work out a balance that seems best. You accept that murderers who might have been caught with more lax standards won't be, and that people will be unjustly eavesdropped on who wouldn't with stricter standards. You accept it because they are conflicting desires and there is no magical way to have a perfect system. We're talking about accepting as in accepting the way the system works, not in a dismissing the cases where it goes wrong. Like we accept that people are going to die in car accidents and don't have a thread where news stories about deaths on the highway are posted every couple days. Now, poorly made cars that catch on fire or police trying to stop people filming them, that's an actual issue.

There are certainly many cases where there is obviously too much power and it's open for abuse, but for some reason the wacky ones tend to get posted here. This bit that I posted:



Is a revision to the law--correcting what I would say was a bad law before that. Perhaps the current formulation needs fixing as well, but the "institute for justice" doesn't have anything intelligent to say about it

*or maybe it is, having a brain freeze on how to say what's pragmatic and what isn't

Alright, I think I understand now. As always Sasaki, thanks for the new perspective for me to think about.

[lars573]

Surely it should be upto a court to prove the owner is guilty before seizing the property?

Is innocent until proven guilty no longer a default standard in the US?

In criminal law yes. I took it to wikipedia due to the civil in the name. Asset forfeiture (the proper name) is a civil tort against a piece of property. And thus to the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply. In fact in such a case the owner of the property is a third party claimant.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Surely it should be upto a court to prove the owner is guilty before seizing the property?

Is innocent until proven guilty no longer a default standard in the US?

People don't even have to be charged with a crime. In civil forfeiture, it's the objects themselves that are charged, and assumed to be guilty, so a person has to prove theer innocence - ie that they obtained everything legally.

I don't know what your beef with the video is Sasaki; it presents all the legally important facts. This isn't some web journalist, it's a nationwide legal group that's fought all sorts of unjust government restrictions.

Everything you list about crimes is irrelevant. Sure, police will use it as an excuse, but they haven't proven the motel owners guilty of anything. Allegations prove absolutely nothing, especially when no charges have even been filed. They've got no evidence of crimes committed by the motel owners. I guess the question is if you want the police to seize things from people just because there have been allegations against them.

Sometimes the police listen in on innocent people, but we don't get rid of warranted wiretapping just because it doesn't work perfectly. The idea that the police are fabricating cases on people, seizing their property, and then selling it to pad their own pockets is worthy.

But of course. You don't know about the issue, and it's me that's crazy because of that. I didn't say the police are fabricating cases on people. They can, and do, seize money from people without charging them with any crime, and they get to use that money or property to fund their department. Do you see the incentive for abuse there?

Gee, it's not like civil forfeiture has been abused by police in Indiana ( http://www.indy.com/posts/forfeiture...-of-the-system & http://www.ogdenonpolitics.com/2010/...aw-wheres.html ) or around the country ( http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/2...feiture-racket) ( http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/2...iture-outrage/ )

Luther Ricks and his wife worked most of their lives at a steel foundry in Ohio. Not trusting of banks, they say they’ve lived frugally, and managed to save more than $400,000 over the years, which they kept in a safe in their home.

Last summer, two burglars broke into Ricks’ home. He shot and killed one of them. Police determined he acted in self-defense, and cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing. But local police did find a small amount of marijuana in Ricks’ home, which Ricks says he uses to manage the pain of his arthritis and a hip replacement surgery. Ricks was never charged for the marijuana. But finding it in his home was enough for city police to confiscate Ricks and his wife’s life savings under drug war asset forfeiture laws. Oddly enough, the FBI then stepped in, and claimed the money for itself.

Consistent with asset forfeiture laws, the federal government now says Ricks has to prove he earned the money legitimately in order to get it back. Of course, he doesn’t have dated receipts going back thirty-plus years. And he can’t hire a lawyer—the government has of his money.

Also, under asset forfeiture laws, even if Ricks were able to prove in court that he earned the money legitimately, he, not the government, would have to absorb the court costs.

It's like I've just come back from a hike and said it's raining, while the person who stayed at home says I'm wrong because he's been watching a movie where it's sunny.

Oh, there's this good from Texas as well; http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,6051682.story

TENAHA, Texas— You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you're African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.

That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.

More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
...
David Guillory, an attorney in Nacogdoches who filed the federal lawsuit, said he combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases, suspects were charged with drug possession.

But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, police seized cash, jewelry, cell phones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly—and discovered all but one of them were black.

"The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African-Americans," Guillory said. "None of these people have been charged with a crime, none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable."

In some cases, police used the fact that motorists were carrying large amounts of cash as evidence that they must have been involved in laundering drug money, even though Guillory said each of the drivers he contacted could account for where the money had come from and why they were carrying it—such as for a gambling trip to Shreveport, La., or to purchase a used car from a private seller.

Once the motorists were detained, the police and the local Shelby County district attorney quickly drew up legal papers presenting them with an option: waive their rights to their cash and property or face felony charges for crimes such as money laundering—and the prospect of having to hire a lawyer and return to Shelby County multiple times to attend court sessions to contest the charges.

The process apparently is so routine in Tenaha that Guillory discovered pre-signed and pre-notarized police affidavits with blank spaces left for an officer to describe the property being seized.

CR

PS - You can run a meth lab in a backpack.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

No, here's the thing CR. You link to these stories of a guy taking bribes from drug dealers, and another guy dealing marijuana and crack out of his house who says it's for his "shingles" and accept them as police abuse with no questions asked. You put them on the same level with an extremely clear cut case of corrupt small town cops who are breaking the law (and who are going to get busted for it if wikipedia tells me right). I question your ability or rather your desire to discern. That video is classic propaganda.

Stories of cops sexual harrassing people while patting them down aren't a good reason to say that the cops can't pat people down anymore. Stories about someone innocent getting injured in a take down aren't a good reason to say that cops can't take people down. You can't even take a case where the cops shot an innocent man and say we should take the guns.

You can say, "tazers kill people sometimes, here's the evidence, here's the benefit to tazers, here's the alternatives that are just as good". I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what the argument would look like from any non-biased person. And that's the kind of argument you need to make here. Not "here's one case, or one town, where I believe it's been misused--this law is a travesty". Your belief that the tenaha cops are representative of the norm for cops is what convinces you.

[Crazed Rabbit]

This isn't comparable to pat-downs. Actually, I have a problem with Terry stops - where a cop can basically pat down anyone on the street he sees.

But a pat down where a cop has stopped someone he has probably cause to believe committed a crime is entirely different.

The pat down is being done because a crime was committed. That's comparable to criminal forfeiture, where the government actually has to prove someone committed a crime in order to take their property.

The whole basis of this law is take property from people without proving them guilty of any crime. It's not just ripe for abuse, it's designed for abuse - for getting people the police can't convict of any crime. If you get patted down, then you haven't lost anything after it's over.

And it's not just small towns like Tenaha, but whole states like Indiana (where police forces find loopholes to keep the funds seized instead of sending them to public schools as required in the law, and give private attorneys commissions for prosecuting civil forfeiture cases [that is unconstitutional].)

Letting police seize the property of suspected - and never convicted or even charged - drug dealers is what lead to the abuses in Tenaha.

Everyone, even alleged criminals, deserves to hold on to their allegedly ill-gotten property at least until proven guilty of a crime. Legally, how can that not be police abuse? How can police seizing property of people not convicted of anything - and therefore innocent under the law - for their own benefit not be an abuse?

CR

[Sasaki Kojiro]

If we're talking about cases where the cops abuse the law in ways that aren't legal, then we aren't disagreeing.

But for the drug dealer guy, I don't see anything wrong with the sequence of events:

1) Robbers break in and get shot (what were they doing there btw? Coincidence?)
2) Police find 11 oz of weed and some paraphernalia and traces of crack and 400 grand in a safe
3A) He's a drug dealer and they confiscate the money, but don't charge him because they haven't caught him actually dealing. Alternative legally would be claiming anyone with a certain amount of drugs is a dealer, but that's pretty dicey. Justice is served.
3B) He's innocent, and files some paperwork for no charge showing that he's been withdrawing his salary from the bank in cash for years (like his friend said he had been doing in one of the articles). He gets his money back.

I just think you set yourself too low a standard for evidence of wrongdoing when it comes to police action (ironically). And you generalize too much from selective examples. I seriously doubt that most clear cut cases of the correct application of this law ever make the news.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Yay!

http://ij.org/massachusetts-civil-fo...ease-1-24-2013

Arlington, Va.—In a major triumph for property rights, a federal court in Massachusetts dismissed a civil forfeiture action against the Motel Caswell, a family-run motel in Tewksbury, handing a complete victory to owners Russell and Patricia Caswell. In one of the most contentious civil forfeiture fights in the nation, Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts concluded, based on a week-long bench trial in November 2012, that the motel was not subject to forfeiture under federal law and that its owners were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing.
The Institute for Justice and local counsel Schlossberg, LLC, brought the case to trial to expose the injustices of civil forfeiture laws that allow law enforcement agencies to pad their budgets by taking property from innocent owners who have never been convicted or even charged with a crime.
Download the federal court ruling (pdf).
“This is a complete victory for the Caswell family and for the protection of private property rights,” said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice. “The Caswells will keep their motel, and private property rights are preserved.”
The government had sought to take the Motel Caswell from the Caswell family under the theory that the motel allegedly facilitated drug crimes. But the court found that Mr. Caswell “did not know the guests involved in the drug crimes, did not know of their anticipated criminal behavior at the time they registered as guests, and did not know of the drug crimes while they were occurring.”

CR