Michigan Cops Destroying Drug Cartels With Microscopic Drug Busts, Seizures Of 20-Year-Old Vehicles

from the defeating-a-giant-means-chipping-away-at-random,-possibly-unrelated-toes dept

Crushing drug dealers and criminal cartels: that's the asset forfeiture narrative. The reality is something completely different. It's the government taking property from people with a minimum of due process, urged on by a set of perverse incentives. Law enforcement agencies directly profit from the stuff they take from people, so there's really no reason not to.

When the general public hears forfeiture is being used to target criminal cartels, they tend to think of piles of cash, luxury vehicles, sprawling mansions, and the occasional aircraft. In reality, it's whatever cash cops can find laying around (usually less than $1,000) and vehicles a couple of decades old that are someone's barely-reliable ride.

Whatever statistics can be obtained -- and it isn't much, given the secrecy cloaking these state-ordained seizures -- always tell the same story: 99% of civil asset forfeiture is penny ante bullshit. It's this way for several reasons. First, smaller forfeitures aren't worth fighting in court, so small ball seizures are almost guaranteed to end up in the hands of law enforcement. Second, it all adds up over the year. A bunch of small seizures turns into real money eventually. Third, cops aren't willing to let drug lords walk. But they'll take stuff from anyone they can imagine might be part of a cartel, even when it's someone busted carrying nothing more than a personal stash.

And that's if they even find contraband at all. The absence of criminal evidence seldom deters seizures, and forfeitures have been expanded to cover vehicles driven by impaired or uninsured drivers.

Wayne County, Michigan is no exception to this particularly depressing set of rules. As the Michigan Capitol Confidential reports, local law enforcement has seized millions of dollars worth of property, but a closer examination of the data shows its forfeiture programs prey on the poor and/or drug users who have nothing to do with the supply side of the Drug War.

Altogether, there were 736 asset forfeiture proceedings in Michigan in 2017 during which someone lost property to the government despite never being charged with any crime; this happened 380 times in Wayne County. A state law passed in 2015 requires law enforcement agencies across Michigan to submit data about forfeiture to the Michigan State Police.

Jarrett Skorup of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, who co-authored a recent report on civil forfeiture, said the data shows nearly all of those Wayne County seizures involved vehicles valued at less than $1,000. He said it’s likely that these forfeitures disproportionately affected low-income individuals, who are less able to afford an attorney or navigate the legal system to reclaim their property.

The report [PDF] doesn't break down the total value of vehicles seized, but the numbers bear out Skorup's claim. The state as a whole reported $13 million in net total proceeds from all property forfeited. $11 million of that was cash. There were 7,999 vehicles seized statewide. Simple division says that's only $250 per vehicle. State agencies also seized other property that wasn't vehicles or cash, further lowering the per vehicle estimate.

Now, there are a few unknown factors that may bring that number back up slightly. It's unclear whether this reflects proceeds after auctions, etc. that would result in a lower net total for the state due to differences in expected property value and its actual value after "disposal." This may raise the per vehicle value, but there's still a long way to go from the $250 baseline and a dollar amount that would suggest something other than what appears to be happening here: thousands of seizures of vehicles worth less than the legal costs that would be accrued fighting the forfeiture.

There's more disturbing data in the report beyond the apparent wholesale forfeiture of cars whose value barely exceeds the going rate for scrap. A vast majority of those targeted by forfeiture -- with or without accompanying criminal charges -- were caught with the lowest amounts needed to trigger criminal charges. 88% of cocaine-related seizures involved the less than 50 grams. 83% of marijuana-related seizures also involved the lowest amounts needed to charge someone. And so on down the chart of criminal charges.

The lowest-level busts make up the vast majority of all seizures. It makes sense that officers would encounter users far more often than dealers. What doesn't add up is the narrative: that forfeitures are essential to destroying drug cartels. All it's really doing is depriving people of property and disproportionately punishing the demand side of the drug problem.

Serious crimes barely register. There are thousands of drug-related forfeitures -- with more than 80% of those covering bare minimum possession. The list of serious crimes -- ranging from grand larceny to child molestation to home invasion -- makes up only 95 of the state's ~6,000 seizures. The only other big chunk (984 forfeitures) is related to prostitution charges, showing the state is willing to take away vehicles for engaging in consensual sexual transactions.

This abuse of a law enforcement tool has gotten the county sued. Multiple citizens are seeking to have the program found unconstitutional. Two of the plaintiffs listed in this story by the Detroit News have waited years for a hearing on seized vehicles, one of which is a 1998 Toyota Avalon, to give you some idea what kind of prime drug-dealing vehicles the county targets.

The small bright spot in all this is there's a bill seeking to institute a conviction requirement for forfeitures. If state agencies have to be able to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, they'll be far less likely to engage in specious seizures based on little more than the agency's desire to have more money/stuff. Unfortunately, the bill appears to be waiting for its Senate counterpart to arrive and it's been waiting almost six months at this point.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, drug busts, michigan, theft

Nebraska Drug Warriors Lose Bust Thanks To Jurisdictional Limits On Criminal Conspiracy Charges

from the defendant-screwed-everything-up-but-his-choice-of-representation dept

The legalization of marijuana in a few states has led to some interesting law enforcement problems. To date, most of the "solution" appears to be camping out on the borders and seizing drugs from travelers headed out of the state. The lack of legalization on a federal level inflates drug bust stats but doesn't do much for visitors to pot-friendly states whose purchases are completely legal, but their possession -- once crossing the border into a neighboring state -- suddenly isn't.

The legality of the transaction at the point of purchase also makes for some rather unusual court decisions, like the one highlighted by Noel Erinjeri of Fault Lines. Two Minnesota natives were traveling to Colorado to purchase some weed when they were stopped by Lancaster County (NE) Sheriff's deputies, resulting in their arrest and seizure of the cash they were carrying.

In a Friday stop, the department seized $67,007 from 21-year-old James Milton Atkinson of Mankato, Minnesota, and 22-year-old Erik Joseph Felsheim of Waseca, Minnesota.

Prosecutors charged Atkinson and Felsheim Tuesday, and each posted the $2,500 they needed to get out jail.

Some more details on the arrest:

Deputy Jason Henkel asked if he had any drugs or large amounts of cash in the rental car, and Felsheim said no.

Henkel asked if he could search the car, and Felsheim paused but eventually agreed. In the trunk, deputies found $40,000 in a gym bag and $25,000 more in a duffle bag, according to court records.

Felsheim admitted he was going to Golden, Colorado, to buy 10 pounds of pot to sell in Mankato, where he went to college. He said the rest of the cash belonged to passenger James Atkinson, who planned to buy 7½ pounds.

Seems fairly open-and-shut, what with the pair freely admitting they were going to take legally purchased drugs and sell them in a state where marijuana is illegal. It certainly must have seemed that way to James Atkinson, who pleaded no contest and spent 6 months in jail. However, Felsheim decided to roll the dice on a trial… and won.

Felsheim opted for a bench trial, and was acquitted of both felonies. His lawyer, Tim Sullivan, did a good piece of work, and dug up a case called State v. Karsten, which dealt with conspiracies to commit crimes in other states.

Sullivan kept Felsheim from a jail sentence with this:

It is also a fundamental rule that criminal and penal laws are essentially local in character. Ordinarily, no penalty can be incurred under the law of this state except for transactions occurring within this state, and our state law has no extraterritorial effect. A conspiracy in this state to do something in another state which is lawful in that state is not a crime in this state. A conspiracy in Nebraska to gamble in Nevada is a convenient illustration of that principle.

The pot purchase would be legal, even if the resale in Minnesota wasn't. In between lies the route taken by the pair: the state of Nebraska. If someone says they're headed somewhere to purchase pot legally, Nebraska law enforcement can do nothing about it.

The prosecutor tried to salvage the case by saying it was "logical to infer" the pair planned to bring their marijuana back through Nebraska on their way to Minnesota -- that the conspiracy to commit an illegal act in Minnesota would manifest itself as illegal possession en route to that state. As Fault Line's Erinjeri points out, there's not a ton of logic in that inference.

In the age of Google Maps, it’s a relatively trivial exercise to plot a course from Colorado to Minnesota without going through Nebraska. Apparently Felsheim was either smart enough not to admit to that or (more likely) the police didn’t think to ask that question.

As the court noted, if this "loophole" is going to be closed, it's up to the state's legislature, not the court system. And Felsheim can no more be prosecuted under statutes yet to be created than he can for a conspiracy taking place entirely outside of Nebraska's borders and whose first step involves a completely legal purchase.

Unfortunately for Felsheim, a law the legislature did change arrived far too late to be of any assistance on the cash front. His share of the $67,000 is as good as gone, despite him being cleared by the court. Nebraska became one of the few states to require a conviction to seize assets, but that didn't go into effect until earlier this year. His open admission that the money was going to used to fund illegal drug sales is far, far more than any law enforcement agency would need to stake a claim on the cash, much less justify its seizure in the first place.

Filed Under: colorado, drug busts, jurisdiction, nebraska