from the no-due-process-if-your-assets-are-liquid dept

I’m always heartened to see another local news team start digging into asset forfeiture. Especially the ones that don’t sugarcoat the findings with headlines that read like they were crafted by law enforcement officials.

Charlotte, North Carolina’s NBC affiliate, WCNC, tells it like it is. Although it puts quotes around a couple of phrases, it at least uses those phrases in the headline and subhead. “It is like highway robbery” says the headline. In the subhead: “policing for profit.”

Here’s how it starts:

As Congress considers ending a controversial program that allows police to seize people’s money without ever charging them with a crime, a WCNC Charlotte investigation found Charlotte-area police and sheriff’s departments have collected more than $20 million since 2018 through the Equitable Sharing Program. They get to keep that money.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD is the entity profiting the most from forfeiture. It took in more than $10 million of the $20 million seized by area law enforcement agencies. Most of the CMPD’s action doesn’t come from pretextual traffic stops, which tend to be the preferred option for cash-hungry road pirates. Nope, the CMPD makes most of its bank by hanging around the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.

International airports are big business for cops with a hankering for cash but limited desire to actually arrest and prosecute people. Cash amounts above $10,000 must be declared if the person possessing it is leaving the country. But don’t let that figure fool you into thinking cops won’t seize any amount of cash discovered on someone at an airport. And they don’t limit their searches to people flying internationally. They’re just as happy to relieve domestic travelers (who are not subject to the international reporting requirement) of any cash they have on them under the pre-supposition that the existence of cash is, in and of itself, indicative of criminal behavior.

And that is how cops view cash: as something so inherently suspicious it must be taken away from suspected criminals. The supposed criminals, however, are almost always free to go.

The National Sheriffs’ Association is busy trying to fight the reforms being discussed in Congress. In the opinion of the Sheriffs’ Association’s Executive Director, Jonathan Thompson, taking cash from people is essential to fighting crime and, apparently, is better at fighting crime than arresting and jailing criminals.

“Criminals are taking this money from victims and using it to organize their criminal enterprises,” he said. “We want to protect the community.”

It’s difficult to see how this protects communities. If we take this statement at face value, criminals who’ve had their cash seized are now roaming the streets in desperate need of immediate funds. That kind of desperation tends to lead to more criminal acts and more taking of money from victims.

But that’s not the stupidest thing said by the Association’s rep. This is:

“You want to assume everybody’s innocent of a crime that’s carrying $1 million in cash?” Thompson asked.

“Isn’t that the way the law works? You’re innocent until proven guilty?” WCNC Charlotte responded.

“You are innocent until proven guilty, but you are not just carrying around $1 million or $10,000 in cash without some level of notification and legitimacy,” he replied. “You’ve got to be able to demonstrate some level of legitimacy.”

It’s not just stupid because it makes it clear law enforcement officers consider everyone guilty until proven otherwise. It’s stupid because the numbers used by Thompson are straw men. Even if you’re inclined to believe there’s something inherently criminal about walking around with $10,000-$1 million in cash, the fact is that any amount is considered the proceeds of criminal activity if the cop wants to take the cash.

Very few forfeitures clear the $10,000 mark (and that amount likely comes from the reporting requirements for international travel). Even fewer approach $1 million. The largest percentage of forfeitures are below $1,000. In some places, the average forfeiture is under $500. And yet, people like Thompson still believe the cash is guilty and, by extension, so is the person carrying it. That presumption allows cops to walk away with whatever cash people are carrying. And then they pretend this government-blessed theft is making the streets safer, rather than just making more people miserable and more prone to engage in criminal acts.

And they don’t care about actual crime victims either.

WCNC Charlotte previously exposed the case of a child sex crime victim. She is fighting the Mint Hill Police Department for money investigators seized from her abuser and then quietly shared with the federal government. Police suspected the cash was drug money, but never pursued actual drug charges.

In that case, the abuser’s house was searched and $63,000 was found in the home, along with “suspected marijuana” and “drug paraphernalia.” In other words, the sex offender’s personal stash and the stuff he used to smoke it with. The cash was forfeited by the Mint Hill PD with the assistance of the CBP under the theory it was drug money. But, as that report by WCNC shows, the most likely origin story for the cash was this:

A simple Google search of the suspect’s name identifies a news release showing he won the lottery in 2018, roughly a year before his arrest, and took home $70,507 in winnings after taxes.

So, the restitution order handed down by the judge (something common in sex abuse cases) was unable to be fulfilled because, by the time that happened, the Mint Hill PD had already shoved it through the forfeiture process, shared whatever it needed to with the DHS and CBP, and converted it to a ledger line in its forfeiture books.

And here’s why these forfeitures are performed with the assistance of federal agencies. The state of North Carolina actually has pretty solid forfeiture laws. Civil asset forfeiture doesn’t really exist in this state without the federal loophole. Anything that does manage to meet the high evidentiary standard needed to move forward with the forfeiture is put into a fund for the state’s schools. For North Carolina agencies to directly profit from forfeitures, they have to engage in federal “adoption” of the forfeiture, after which they receive their cut from the federal agencies they’ve partnered with.

Despite this hurtle, North Carolina agencies are still finding ways to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone carrying cash they come in contact with. The only way to fix this is to close the federal loophole and force the state’s law enforcement agencies to play by the state’s rules. Anything less than that will lead to nothing but more of the same for years to come.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, charlotte-mecklenburg pd, civil asset forfeiture, cmpd, north carolina