Faces of the Drug War: Woman Carrying $47K in Bra at Airport Sues

Status
Not open for further replies.
This just seems to be another cop basher thread plain and simple. They did their jobs, apaprently did them well, probably had more than enough PC to make the seizure and maybe even an arest, and you guys seemingly just want to berate.

Maybe you just don't understand the point that we disagree with the concept of guilty until provem innocent. That isn't cop bashing. If anything I would say that defending all seizures is civil rights bashing. I have no idea if this woman's story is true, and it sounds like a strange way of transporting 46K. But why not convict her of a crime before robbing her?
 
cash or funds in a bank account, they are both just as susceptible. this story hits home for me...

I am self employed, and one day had an amount greater than what was found in this womans busom simply debited out of my business account, which was then frozen and all incoming funds seized as well... based strictly on speculation of business practices from a particular state's postal inspector.

I was never charged with anything, the business was never even charged with anything, but they kept all of the money regardless. as for not fighting for the money, it was legally advised that there was slim to none chance of seeing a penny of it again... it ended up being written up as a loss.

in this case nobody even had to lay a finger on anyone, simply sign a paper and take the money electronically. and it wasn't just frozen, it was removed from the account.

after that debacle, I had a new found respect for cold hard cash.
 
When all is said and done, what remains is simply the following. THEFT UNDER COLOR OF LAW!!!!!

Cut it any way you like, salami is salami.
 
I sure hope she gets punitive damages and costs, in addition to her cash. Stupid flipping gov't agents. Wait, don't tell me, there's traces of coke on that cash (just like there are on 80% of all 100s floating around in circulation). NHBB, I'm very sorry to hear of that travesty of justice. Yes, cold hard cash has it's definite advantages, provided it's well hidden/secured/distributed. In fact, it's neither cold nor hard. I find it warm and soft myself.

But why not convict her of a crime before robbing her?
Or even at the very least, win a preponderance-of-evidence burden of proof seizure case! :cuss:
 
When all is said and done, what remains is simply the following. THEFT UNDER COLOR OF LAW!!!!!

I don't think anyone is going to disagree with that Alan. It seems either this thread changed some minds or the .gov apologizers are running scared.
 
Glenn, you can spit out your convoluted logic till your blue in the face as a smokescreen to what is in reality something that is very simple: Either they

DID

or

DID NOT

find drugs on her. If they didn't, and if they didn't already possess AT THAT TIME any other specific extrinsic evidence to support a finding that the money is drug money, then there ain't no PC, and it should be "have a nice day, ma'am; don't spend it all in one place." Any other result means the system is SERIOUSLY flawed. But I guess that's kinda what you're saying; don't blame me, I don't make the law. True enough. But you ought to be able to see through the indoctrination to realize that what I just described is the correct moral result, given our Constitutional protections of "innocent until proven guilty".

That is all I would be at libery to discuss, but that shopuld be enough to get you thinking of at least 4 or 5 points of PC in this case.

Oh good lawd. Secrecy needed eh? Now why exactly, praytell, wouldn't you be at liberty to discuss or point out those 4 or 5 things? If it's in the article, then why on earth can't you help your your fellow g men and show us all here what those obvious facts were that added up to PC? Why, why why would that be any kind of secret? Convenient that you bowed out. I seriously doubt you're a big enough of a man to jump back in and answer my question - we'll see. Let's see, 4 or 5. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and say that your trained eye sees 4 specific things from what we both agree is very scant facts. Allow me to venture to guess what they might be, and you can tell me if I'm right:

1. Dominican national origin, right? As you say, national origin might be enough to *profile* her, but it sure ain't PC; nor can it be added to any other factors to add up to PC. It's adds *zero* to finding of PC, because it itself has nothing to do with PC. Especially in light of our specific protections for national origin in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Granted, that taken together with other factors, if that country is known to be skewed statistically as a drug import staging point, then it *might* add up to reasonable suspicion *IF* and only if she were actually on a flight TO the Dom. Republic. But she wasn't, and that would only be RS, not PC.

2. The money was in her bra, and therefore one can draw an inference that she wishes it to be hidden from gov't agents, right? I and any other person can just as reasonably draw another equally-plausible inference, and that is that she wishes to hide it from potential THIEFS.

3. She was traveling on a plane, and a lot of people in the drug trade do that. So do a lot of people in many other businesses. And she had a story as to why she was traveling. Did her story check out? Did they attempt to call the doc from the airport to see if she was scheduled for surgery before robbing her? Did she have any papers from the doc's office indicating that she was a patient of his in TX? We don't know, but the point is, it's a free country, we're allowed to travel, and the mere fact that she was traveling does not amount to PC, nor any portion thereof adding up to PC.

4. The fact that it was cash, and lots of drug dealers deal in cash, and why wouldn't she just write a check for it or charge it on a CC? Many many Americans are quite leery and skeptical of banks, rightly or wrongly, esp. those members in certain ethnic groups and subcultures. Is this fear justified? See NHBB's post above. Furthermore, some people aren't allowed to have credit cards anymore, like me. :) . Furthermore, if she had judgment creditors, she would have good reason not to keep in a bank account. Futhermore, I doubt the doc accepts a check, or at least doesn't put her under until the check clears, and she didn't want to wait for that. Etc., etc., etc.

So, are those the four, or did I spot one you didn't? Are there others? Cuz none of those are PC, nor any portion that amounts to PC. Maybe all taken together, they are reasonable suspicion to detain and question, but not PC to arrest, and not PC to seize.
 
Ok,
I gotta play devil's advocate here. The lady sets off a metal detector and during the search you find 49,000 stuffed in her Bra...that doesn't sound fishy to anyone? Would you do that? Would you have your wife carry 49,000 dollars in cash in her bra to fly to texas for breast surgery? They confiscated the money and if it all pans out will return it, but It does have "shadey dealings" written all over it. I'm no expert on search and seizure, so I'll let the lawyers haggle that out, but the DEA guy called in, other than making a comment that will likely terminate his employment was right to suspect something. If you don't want to be accused of being a criminal, don't do things that make you look criminal. OK, now you guys can flame away.
 
The concept of 'probable cause' has become meaningless as it has expanded to include anything and everything they feel like at the time, plus anything they can come up with later. It's a joke.
 
Ok,
I gotta play devil's advocate here. The lady sets off a metal detector and during the search you find 49,000 stuffed in her Bra...that doesn't sound fishy to anyone? Would you do that? Would you have your wife carry 49,000 dollars in cash in her bra to fly to texas for breast surgery? They confiscated the money and if it all pans out will return it, but It does have "shadey dealings" written all over it. I'm no expert on search and seizure, so I'll let the lawyers haggle that out, but the DEA guy called in, other than making a comment that will likely terminate his employment was right to suspect something. If you don't want to be accused of being a criminal, don't do things that make you look criminal. OK, now you guys can flame away.


Is Innocent Until Proven Guilty A Lost Principle?

On a side note...
My old Great Aunt carried her cash in her bra till the day she died. She called it her "bank. I called it he shelf. :)
 
I've had a serious urge to buy a new car recently but all of a sudden I don't feel so much like having a lawyer explain just how it is that a lowly peasant such as me managed to save up such a sum.

Put that in your economy and smoke it. :fire:
 
At the not inconsiderable risk of repeating myself, the way it works, CIVIL FORFEITURE is THEFT UNDER COLOR OF LAW!!!!!

Real property, wordly goods or cash money are seized. No trial is ever held, no charges are ever brought, no indictment is ever handed down, yet it is claimed that there was NO PUNISHMENT INFLICTED ON A REAL PERSON, baloney.

Arrant nonsense from beginning to end, otherwise descxribed as above notred, THEFT UNDER COLOR OF LAW.
 
Glenn Bartley: My whole point in this discussion has been to point out that probable cause though is only cause for arrest or seizure. It is not saying someone is guilty. It is saying they are suspect and there is enough cause to effect an arrest or seizure.

The problem with civil asset forfeiture laws being used in the drug war is, if you have enough cause to arrest a person, you must then either charge the person with a crime or release him. If you have enough cause to seize property, your agency just gets to keep the property. See the difference there? There is an incentive problem, and there is a due process problem.

The legal fiction that says seizing property is not punishing the owner of the property, but is instead merely punishing "guilty" property, is creating lots of animosity out here, hence the berating. You wind up with courts saying things like this:
"n sum, even though this Court has rejected the "innocence" of the owner as a common-law defense to forfeiture, it consistently has recognized that forfeiture serves, at least in part, to punish the owner.").

That's legalese for "we're going to punish people even if they are innocent because we want the loot."

Property does not commit crimes, people do. If the property is "guilty" it is because a person committed a crime. Property doesn't care if it gets seized. Seizing property is punishing the owner, not the property. To punish someone, you should charge the person with a crime and obtain a conviction. You should not just start the punishment and have them report to court if they object and can afford to go to court.

This is why civil asset forfeiture abuse has led to policing for profit in the drug war, and like other drug war precedents, this one is reaching out to touch our gun rights.
 
Large parts of our Federal Government have degenerated into organized crime on a monumental scale.

They do things that would have made King George III blush, from taking money if they think you have too much of it to inspecting the private parts of female passengers.
 
All property is the King's property and if you behave yourself, he might let you keep it for awhile. The notions you may have about private property are just illusions, as is the BOR. So you might as well get with the program, because resistance, especially armed resistance is futile and amounts to no more than suicide by cop/soldier, followed by a complete trashing of your reputation.

The FF are spinning in disgust that we've so negligently squandered our legacy.

Maybe we deserve the bondage that is rapidly approaching.
 
King George was no wimp when it came to abusing power. He'd hang you for disagreeing with him. If he didn't like what your legislature decided, he'd dissolve it. If you didn't like that, he'd station some troops in your house. Those troops might just do a little looting and female inspecting.

Our government isn't particularly well behaved at times, but I'd prefer our modern oppression to what King George would dish out, thanks.
 
BostonGeorge wrote, quoting a comment of mine:

When all is said and done, what remains is simply the following. THEFT UNDER COLOR OF LAW!!!!!



I don't think anyone is going to disagree with that Alan. It seems either this thread changed some minds or the .gov apologizers are running scared.

---------------

Perhaps it is due to the fact that our dirtbag congresscritters, senate critters too haven't been leaned upon hard enough, by enough of their CONSTITIENTS, but I have not noticed the slightest movement in The Congress directed at changing the rules under which THEFT UNDER COLOR OF LAW (CIVIL FORFEITURE) OPERATES, have you, or for that matter, has anyone who passes this way?
 
How wonderfully childish - about in my estimation the words of an 8 year old who is not getting things her or his way and has little to offer (very little to nothing) along the lines of intelligent conversation.

Sorry it was over your head. Can we assume you possess the equipment? :neener:
 
Our government isn't particularly well behaved at times, but I'd prefer our modern oppression to what King George would dish out, thanks.
Lessee- King George could pick you up off the street and hold you in prison indefinitely without trial. Check. King George could stop you in a public place and take your money. Check. King George could take your house. Check.

Should I continue?
 
Wonder how that would play in Las Vegas where gamblers come with hundreds of thousands in cash

Oh, but those are "important" people. They aren't like us. They won't get hassled.
 
Lessee- King George could pick you up off the street and hold you in prison indefinitely without trial. Check. King George could stop you in a public place and take your money. Check. King George could take your house. Check.

Should I continue?

We're getting closer, but the whole thing about quartering troops in your home, and hiring foreign mercenaries to invade your lands, and putting warships offshore to block your trade and shell your cities, you know, stuff like that, makes me think our government is just a wee bit better behaved.
 
This kinda stuff:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
. . . . He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
. . . . He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
. . . . He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
. . . . He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
. . . . He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
. . . . He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without, and convulsions within.
. . . . He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
. . . . He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
. . . . He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
. . . . He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
. . . . He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
. . . . He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to the civil power.
. . . . He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
. . . . For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
. . . . For protecting them by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
. . . . For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
. . . . For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
. . . . For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
. . . . For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences;
. . . . For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;
. . . . For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
. . . . For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
. . . . He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.
. . . . He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
. . . . He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
. . . . He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
. . . . He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
. . . . In every state of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
. . . . Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends.
. . . . We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance, to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
 
Eye opening, isn't it, how much of that actually has a modern corollary? King George III could deprive you of life, liberty and property with impunity. So can the U.S. government today. But if you want to wait on the 'quartering troops' thing as your own line in the sand, that's ok by me.
 
Publius....

There obviously isnt a direct example of everything listed in the Declaration of Independence going on today, but a few things for you to consider:

If one of the abuses listed had not occured, do you really think the ones that had wouldnt have ben enough? Hell - take HALF of them out for all i care, and tell me it still wouldnt have been enough.

Just because the current government doesnt do all of them, are you really pretending that they have the best interests of the people in mind? If they do, it would be the first time in the history of government. Governments exist for themselves - regardless of the reasons they were called into being. Its been try since before written history.

Last but not least, you may feel comfortable with the way things are now, but a good number of us do not. Many people were perfectly fine with the way things were in 1776 too...history calls them "Tories".
 
You two are misunderstanding me. I merely saw the post which said King George would blush at the behavior of our current government, and decided to correct it. He was worse, and I don't think there can be any serious argument about that. Find one that answers the "quartering troops" point.

I'm not saying there are no modern equivalents to many of those. There are. I'm not particulary happy with a variety of things our government does, as a search of my posts here and back on TFL will show. I just realize that King George was worse. Lots of folks are worse. Castro is worse. So is that Mugabe character. That megalomaniacal North Korean dude comes to mind. Does saying that those rulers are worse than our government mean I'm perfectly content with our government? Where did that idea come from.

King George was worse. That's all.
 
Not wanting to go OT but was George worse of were the founding father's better at understanding human physce? Read this very carefully, slowly, and think about it...

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Thought?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top