“Sir, Please Step Out of the Car — I Want your Cash”
By Mona
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Radley Balko asks:
Should people who carry large sums of cash just assume that there’s a small chance the government will simply steal it from them at gunpoint?
Why, yes! It’s the asset forfeiture component of the “War” on (people who use some) Drugs. Carry almost $24K in your truck cuz you don’t like banks, and based on nothing more — not a sliver of evidence that one is using or dealing illicit drugs — the DEA can and does filch the bucks. And if you have thousands of dollars in reserve to retain a mouthpiece, you might, after a very long time, get your “guilty property” back.
Comment by Jon H —
August 25, 2007 @ 5:22 pm
“Should people who carry large sums of cash just assume that there’s a small chance the government will simply steal it from them at gunpoint”
Kind of a side point: isn’t it rational to assume that there’s a small chance that *someone* will simply steal it from you at gunpoint?
Comment by Mona —
August 25, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
Kind of a side point: isn’t it rational to assume that there’s a small chance that *someone* will simply steal it from you at gunpoint?
Sure, but others can’t legally detain you at a weigh station; if they steal from you, you are a victim and the cops will pursue the thief.
In this instance, the cops hold a legal use of guns to detain you, and they are the thieves.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
August 25, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
Yeah. I mean, not to get all naïve and stuff, but the government is supposed to serve you, not help themselves.
Comment by Anonymo —
August 25, 2007 @ 9:17 pm
not to get all naïve and stuff, but the government is supposed to serve you, not help themselves.
Since when? “It is not only possible, it is essential!”
Comment by kid bitzer —
August 26, 2007 @ 6:37 am
the government’s behavior here is egregious.
the worst part of it is this: “he’d have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.”
that is in flagrant violation of the innocent until proven guilty standards, and reverses the burden of proof in an unconstitutional fashion.
this is compounded by the unreasonable time-limit of 30 days, given that, as the aclu says, it could take far longer than that to come up with proof of how the money was obtained (proof which the gov’t has no right to ask you to provide: if they think there’s a crime, they should get their prosecutors on the case).
on the other hand:
i don’t have much trouble with an agent’s reaction that a quantity of cash like this is at least a suspicious element. not sufficient grounds for confiscation, not sufficient grounds for arrest, but at least odd enough to justify digging a little deeper.
and i also have serious qualms about calling this whole episode a case of “stealing”.
if the authorities put it in escrow, or simply lock it up in the evidence room and give you a receipt for it, and if there is a simple and timely procedure for recovering it (which i agree in this case there is not), then we just are not talking about ’stealing’, and it is cheap rhetoric to use that word.
Comment by Mona —
August 26, 2007 @ 6:56 am
But since in this case as well in virtually all other asset forfeiture instances, the bolded “if” is not the case, and folks have been bankrupted without ever being accused of a crime, the use of the word “stealing” is most apt. And further, the state no business taking it — even to lock it in escrow — without more evidence than the mere fact of possessing the money.
But it happens every day, and finances nice mahogany desks and office redecoration for DAs, and new, fully loaded fleets of cars for the cops.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
August 26, 2007 @ 9:25 am
Well, it’s better than having some nanny state steal a bunch of money through taxation, and use it to subsidize healthcare for the working poor.
Oh, I guess that’s not fair to some libs, for whom it’s merely just as bad.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
August 26, 2007 @ 9:32 am
Ok, without the snark:
Where were libertarians when Liberalism was being tarred as soft on crime? Tarring Liberalism as being soft on poverty. The term “nanny state” fits perfectly into both lines of argument, and was so used.
I usually use this line with fellow Dems who can’t help engaging in friendly fire: if you draw blood, don’t be surprised if your guy ends up anemic.
Comment by Mona —
August 26, 2007 @ 9:48 am
Well Charely, I don’t know what time frame you allude to, but I realized I was a libertarian in approximately 1980, owing in large part to having discovered Reason magazine at about that moment. Never have I identified with the “law and order” conservatives, and to my knowledge neither have the Reasonoids, who fed me my first libertarian milk.
Comment by kid bitzer —
August 26, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
re 6:
yeah, you’re right, Mona, and i started to think that not long after hitting post.
it’s no good for me to say “if it didn’t have feature x, it wouldn’t be stealing, so we shouldn’t call it stealing now, even when it does have feature x.” that’s clearly fallacious.
but here’s what i do think, and what i should have said earlier.
there are a lot of things about this case that stink. there are a lot of criticisms we can justifiably hurl at it. we certainly can’t excuse it by saying (as in effect i did above) ‘yeah, but if it were different, it would be different!”
however, the reason why i *still* don’t think it helps to call it a case of “stealing” is because that attributes a certain kind of agency to the government that i think the government entirely lacks in this case.
that is: i do not think that the govt, in this case, is engaged in an unjust appropriation of money that is motivated by a desire to enrich itself.
contrast that with some govts, say like a mugabe-regime, which are not only engaged in unjust conversions, but are doing them exactly in order to enrich the govt. they want more money, and this is how they get it.
these drug cases, as troubling and misguided as they are, are not driven by a govt desire to increase the revenue intake. nobody in the treasury department is rubbing his hands gleefully and going ‘ka-ching!’ when the money is put into escrow.
instead, the idea behind the confiscation of the money is a (misguided but speciously) plausible idea that this will fight crime by squeezing the resources of evil-doers. to that end, the govt agencies that take the money do not profit by it–they would be just as happy to burn it, the way they do with crops or drug hauls.
and if the money does wind up going into the federal coffers, then the people who tally it don’t have any sense of where it came from, or any glee in having ripped someone off.
taking someone’s money without any intent to enrich yourself, but only because you falsely believe that it will reduce crime, is an immoral and misguided thing to do. but i wouldn’t call it ’stealing’.
i guess this just goes to one of the basic problems i have with libertarians, who tend to see the govt as more monolithic than i see it. i see a lot of disorganized low-level players, with very little in the way of upper-level coordination. that’s what i mean when i say that calling this ’stealing’ suggests too much agency, makes the state too much like a unified agent.
but i agree that my first stab at this was wrong.
Comment by Mona —
August 26, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
But that just is not so. Despite some perfunctory efforts at asset forfeiture “reform,” the funds appropriated, certainly at most state levels, go to the law enforcement agencies and DAs. As I said, these monies fund nice new offices and fleets of squad cars.
Comment by kid bitzer —
August 26, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
okay; then i need to make another concession.
the bigger the loop is between the agents who do the confiscating and the agents who do the profiting, the less it looks like it deserves the name of ’stealing’.
the smaller the loop is, the more it looks like stealing.
Comment by Mona —
August 26, 2007 @ 4:11 pm
kid bitzer: Henry Hyde — hardly a “soft on crime” kinda guy — caused a bit of ruckus when his anti-forfeiture book came out in the mid-90s. Hyde went so far as to call for an open discussion of the drug “war.”
In his book he documents lower- and middle-class families who have had their homes and vehicles stolen because someone, anyone they knew or who spent any time in their house or vehicle, rendered said homes and vehicles subject to forfeiture because drugs were in any way present therein. Hire a lawyer? Most of these folks haven’t got the $$. The small businessman owning a flight service who is wholly unaware he is transporting guys carrying drug money, is left financially destroyed.
It is an utter and intolerable scam. And in Michigan, per that state’s S. Ct., forfeiture also applies to a hooker blowing you in your car. Even if you are a wife with a joint interest in the vehicle, you lose it to the state, because the car is “guilty” of the blow-job-for-pay.
Because I could not for the life of me embed a link to Hyde’s book, here is the url: http://www.amazon.com/Forfeiting-Our-Property-Rights-Seizure/dp/1882577183
Comment by kid bitzer —
August 26, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
ummm…does it make a difference whether the car swallows or not?
“families who have had their homes and vehicles stolen”
i’m still going to fight you on a case-by-case basis about whether “stolen” is a word that is accurately applied to any given case or not. and i still suspect that, employed as a blanket term for govt-mandated forfeitures, it creates more heat than light.
Comment by Mona —
August 26, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
Let me add/correct: the wife in MI forfeited her interest in her car — due to hubby’s paid-for blow job — per the highest court in the land: the United States Supreme Court.
Comment by Jon H —
August 26, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
“if they steal from you, you are a victim and the cops will pursue the thief.”
Well, ideally yes, but not necessarily true especially if the thief is a corrupt cop in a corrupt police department.
But you’re right that is how things are supposed to work.
I wouldn’t want to bet my life and savings on it, though, especially when there are so many safer ways to move the money.