Missouri Law Enforcement Is Dodging State Forfeiture Laws To Screw Schools And Keep Drugs Flowing Into The State
from the to-serve-and-protect-their-own-interests dept
The journalists at St. Louis Public Radio are the latest to dig into their state's asset forfeiture programs. Despite the state receiving a decent grade from the Institute of Justice for the controls it places on state-level forfeitures, the station found plenty of abuse thanks to the federal loophole, which allows law enforcement to bypass all the built-in protections legislators have enacted.
Missouri law around asset forfeiture contains some fairly strong protections. Civil asset forfeiture can only take place after a conviction or a guilty plea in a criminal case. In addition, the money is set aside for schools. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning legal advocacy group, gave Missouri a grade of B+, among the best in the country. In the federal system, however, no criminal conviction is required, and police departments can keep up to 80 percent of the money they seize.
Prosecutors like Tim Lohmar in St. Charles County make the decision whether to handle potential asset-forfeiture cases with state charges, or at the federal level. The vast majority of the time, Lohmar chooses the federal process.
This has resulted in a windfall of over $1 million for local law enforcement agencies. Thanks to federal adoption, the money train never stops, no matter what state laws require. If the forfeiture is tied to criminal charges, the money goes to local schools. Cops aren't fond of sharing, so only three of the 36 forfeiture cases processed by Lohmar last year included criminal charges for the person the cash was taken from.
The preference to grab cash, rather than drugs, has led to some completely nonsensical defenses of civil asset forfeiture.
“When you seize a thousand pounds of marijuana in the St. Louis area, you’re really not hurting the operations of a drug cartel in Mexico, because the cost to produce that thousand pounds is negligible in the grand scheme of things,” [State Rep. Justin] Hill said.
We're expected to believe cultivating and processing drugs is a zero cost effort but lost cash can never be replaced. It stands to reason that the production and sales of drugs aren't going to stop, so the seizure of a few thousand dollars from a random driver is also pretty "negligible in the grand scheme of things."
And we know cops don't actually care about stopping the drug flow. They allow the drugs to make their way into St. Louis and camp out on the roads leading away from the city to seize cash they believe resulted from the drug sales they can't be bothered to stop.
[Sgt. Carmello] Crivello, like most highway interdictors, focuses on the westbound lanes of the interstate, targeting cash, rather than drugs, that comes through Missouri in the eastbound lanes.
“The westbound, generally speaking, are the profits from the drug sales,” said Crivello in an interview, “... so stopping westbound (is) more likely to hurt drugs … (You) hurt the cartels more than you hit the pocketbooks.”
Repeating the same fallacy doesn't make it true. Law enforcement agencies like cash and the federal loophole that allows them to keep 80% of what they seize. What they don't like is the work that comes with actually dismantling drug cartels which, at some point, has to involve drug seizures and arrests, rather than pocketing cash and sending drivers on their way.
The state's law enforcement agencies have a chance to do some truly great things with forfeiture money. As was noted earlier, adding arrests to seizures routes funds to the state's public school system. Rather than be an active contributor to their communities -- both by funding schools and actually taking drug runners off the street -- cops are seizing cash and asking the feds to launder the proceeds so they can bypass local schools and any pretense of stopping the flow of drugs into the state.
Of the $19 million collected in asset forfeitures over the past three years, $340,000 has gone to schools. That’s less than 2 cents on the dollar. Most of the rest of the money went to law-enforcement agencies for new equipment, squad cars, weapons, ammunition and jail cells.
Legislators enacted reforms almost two decades ago. Law enforcement immediately found a way to circumvent these restrictions. For a brief moment a few years ago, the federal government closed the escape hatch. That has been reopened and it certainly won't be closing again while Trump is in office. Fortunately, state legislators are aware of what's happening and are attempting to close this loophole.
Missouri State Rep. Shamed Dogan, R-Ballwin, has tried unsuccessfully during recent legislative sessions to pass a reform measure that would reduce the number of forfeitures that go the federal Equitable Sharing route and thus circumvent state law. Opposition from law-enforcement groups has kept the proposal bottled up in committee.
Dogan is considering two forms of the bill. One would bar officers from sending forfeitures of less than $100,000 to the federal program. An alternative, more palatable to law enforcement, would set the cap at $50,000. In other words, the small seizures would have to comply with state law, while the big seizures could go the federal route.
Doing this would force state cops to play by the rules set up in 1991 -- the ones that gave the state residents some of the best protections in the country. It would make them focus on actually stopping the drug trade, rather than directly profiting from it.
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Filed Under: asset forfeiture, forfeiture, missouri, schools
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Police hate Kids
In other words, the police of Missouri hate children and following state laws. Good to know who they actually support.
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Re: Police hate Kids
"Hate" is too strong a word. The police are just self-centered, interested in their own pocket books, and are indifferent to the kids.
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Had to do a triple take
In case anyone else hits the same stumbling block that I did: His name really is Shamed Dogan. He was not made to feel inferior by a Missouri State Representative. He is the Missouri State Representative, and hopefully he shall be the one doing the shaming, to police officers, by getting that reform passed.
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This happened with the Holy Inquisition too.
When the Vatican realized the inquisition was creating cases from whole cloth (heh!) to justify land grabs and other seizures, the Holy See passed a bull to stop that nonsense. Actually they passed several.
When they couldn't slow down the torture (even by abolishing it entirely) they decreed that all seized assets go directly to the church to be assessed. But that only reduced the number of seized assets declared by the Inquisitors. They just learned to account like privateers and Hollywood.
Then a pope passed a bull saying the Church was not allowed to seize stuff at all, and it took decades for that memo to disseminate out to the Inquisitors on the field. I think it was like a century later, stuff was still getting seized.
This is not to be confused with land seized by communities due to witchcraft, which is its own story.
I like the idea of directing all gains from assets seized by law enforcement to the public defense fund. That should slow it down a bit.
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Blurring the lines between drug addicts and police
They don't mind(and in fact probably like) drugs coming into the state and being sold, but they sure as hell aren't going to allow good drug money to leave the state.
I have to wonder if they've bought into their own lies about how they're totally doing this to stop the drug trade, rather than profit from it, or if they've simply become so corrupt that drugs coming into the state is seen as a good thing, since once they've been sold they've now got another opportunity for a quick and easy profit.
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Re: Blurring the lines between drug addicts and police
Fixed it for you.
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Re: Blurring the lines between drug addicts and police
The next step is to realize it's much easier to just have the drug dealers swing by the station and drop off a percentage of their profits. Then the police can just sit around and eat donuts while the money keeps coming in.
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Wait, I know this story.
The next step is to realize it's much easier to just have the drug dealers swing by the station and drop off a percentage of their profits. Then the police can just sit around and eat donuts while the money keeps coming in.
Then someone in the community decides they've had enough with these robbers-with-a-badge and their drug buddies. And forms a vigilante squad.
Then the local businesses start paying money under the table to the vigilante squad, to keep them in business cleaning the town.
Soon, it becomes just generally understood that if you do business in this town, you pay your squad dues. Cleaning fees
Soon the squad has all sorts of extra drugs and police gear which they start offloading for cheap on the sly.
At some point someone can't (or won't) pay their protection. Something unfortunate happens to them. The Squad is really sorry about it to the next of kin and makes them an offer they don't refuse...
Cue mandolins
Wine-colored days warmed by the sun
Deep velvet nights when we are one
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Why not..
just show a Federal law was broken..
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No person acquainted with what happens in other countries will be surprised at this circumstance. In so opulent a nation as that of Britain, where direct taxes from superior wealth must be much more tolerable, and, from the vigor of the government, much more practicable, than in America, far the greatest part of the national revenue is derived from taxes of the indirect kind, from imposts, and from excises. Duties on imported articles form a large branch of this latter description.
In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it, excises must be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses and lands; and personal property is too precarious and invisible a fund to be laid hold of in any other way than by the inperceptible agency of taxes on consumption.
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Re:
I'm not certain about what purpose an excerpt from Alexander Hamilton serves here.
"Impost" is another term for what we call a "tariff" these days. An "excise", on the other hand, is essentially the same thing as a "sales tax" except it's applied when the item is made rather than sold.
Neither of these practices are in any way relatable to asset forfeiture, which has nothing to do with an item crossing a border, or being created, or being sold.
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Re: Re:
I'm not certain about what purpose an excerpt from Alexander Hamilton serves here.
I can think of one, stress-testing the report system, as both 'trolling' and 'spam' are report-worthy categories, and simply copy/pasting quotes with no relevance repeatedly would fall under both.
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“When you seize a thousand pounds of marijuana in the St. Louis area, you’re really not hurting the operations of a drug cartel in Mexico, because the cost to produce that thousand pounds is negligible in the grand scheme of things,” [State Rep. Justin] Hill said.
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Re:
"Now what if the seized Marijuana was sold on to the legal medical marijuana businesses?"
Many states have strict regulations on the processing and sale, but I suppose rules are made to be broken.
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What states need is their own versions of the Anti-Deficiency Act. No authorization from the legislature, no spending.
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Cartels
Actually dismantling a cartel is difficult and involves sending a Ghost Recon fireteam down to Bolivia.
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Dismantling a cartel
In the real world the CIA or state department sends an envoy to the largest player in the cartel and convinces that guy that the other players are cheating him and he should undercut them.
If the envoy can perpetuate the paranoia for long enough (it's not too hard) then the cartel falls apart from distrust.
In the enlightenment the Jesuits had specialists for doing this very thing, all in the guise of light dinner conversation.
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