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This article was forwarded by "concerned Americans". I believe a
student at the U of Kansas typed in the text from an article in the
Pittsburg Press.
The FACTS about the War On Drugs
[...]
Article 14347 of misc.misc:
From: [email protected]
Subject: "War On Drugs" Atrocities: The Forfeiture Laws
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 12 Aug 91 13:00:21 GMT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services
Lines: 640
Not long ago, some folks were speculating that the bad things in the War
on Drugs were just below the attention of the media, and that it might
soon recieve some coverage.
The Pittsburgh Press has just begun a series about the War. I will be
bringing you all the articles, which will come in this week.
Please take the time to read this. I took the time to type it in. Most
of these stories were new to me. They were somewhat wimpy, but at
least its a step in the right direction.
Here is the first articles in the series. All typos are mine. Please
distribute this widely. I have no access to talk.politics.drugs, so
someone may wish to put this there as well.
Shawn
This article appeared in a box on the FRONT PAGE.
The Pittsburgh Press, Sunday, August 11, 1991
- ------------------------
P R E S U M E D G U I L T Y
The law's Victims in the War on Drugs
It's a strange twist of justice in the land of freedom. A law designed
to give cops the right to confiscate and keep the luxurious poseesions
of major drug dealers mostly ensnares the modest homes, cars and cash
of ordinary, law-abiding people. They step off a plane or answer their
front door and suddenly lose everything they've worked for. They are
not arrested or tried for any crime. But there is punishment, and it's
severe.
This six-day series chronicles a frightening turn in the war on drugs.
Ten months of research across the country reveals that seizure and
forfeiture, the legal weapons meant to eradicate the enemy, have done
enormous collateral damage to the innocent. The reporters reviewed
25,000 seizures made by the Drug Enforcement Administration. they
interviewed 1,600 prosecutors, defense lawyers, cops, federal agents,
and victims. They examined court documents from 510 cases. What thyey
found defines a new standard of justice in America: You are presumed
guilty.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
The main article appeared next to the above, also on the front page,
and later pages.
- -----------------------------------------------------
Government seizures victimize innocent
By Andrew Schneider
and Mary Pat Flaherty
Part One: The overview
February 27, 1991.
Willie Jones, a second-generation nursery man in his family's
Nashville business, bundles up money from last year's progits and
heads off to buy floweres and shrubs in Houston. He makes this trip
twice a year using cash, which the small growers prefer.
But this time, as he waits at the american Airlines gate in Nashvill
Metro Airport, he's flanked by two police officers who escort him into
a small office, search him and seize the $9,600 he's carrying. A
ticket agent had alerted the officers that a large black man had paid
for his ticket in bills, unusual these days. Because of the cash, and
the fact that he fit a "profile" of what drug dealers supposedly look
like, they believed he was buying or selling drugs.
He's free to go, he's told. But they keep his money -- his
livelihood -- and give him a receipt in its place.
No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced. No charges were
ever filed. As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither uses drugs,
nor buys or sells them. He is a gardening contractor who bought an
airplane ticket. Who lost his hard-earned money to the cops. And can't
get it back.
That same sday, an ocean away in Hawaii, federal drug agents
arrive at the Maui home of retirees Joseph and Frances Lopes and claim
it for the U.S. government.
For 49 years, Lopes worked on a sugar plantation, living in
its camp housing before buying a modest home for himself, his wife,
and their adult, mentally disturbed son, Thomas.
For a while, Thomas grew marijuana in the back yard -- and
threatened to kill himslef every time his parents tried to cut it
down. In 1987, the police caught Thomas, then 28. He pleaded guilty,
got probation for his first offense and was ordered to see s
psychologist once a week. He has, and never again has grown dope or
been arrested. The family thought this episode was behind them.
But earlier this year, a detective scouring old arrest records
for forfeiture opportunities realized the Lopes house could be taken
away because they had admitted they knew about the marijuana.
The police department stands to make a bundle. If the house is
sold, the police get the proceeds.
Jones and the Lopes family are among the thousands of
Americans each year victimized by the federal seizure law -- a law
meant to curb drugs by causing financial hardship to dealers.
A 10-month study by The Pittsburgh Press shows the law has run
amok. In their zeal to curb drugs and sometimes fill their coffers
with the proceeds of what they take, local cops, federal agents and
the courts have curbed innocent Americans' civil rights. From Maine
to Hawaii, people who are never charged with a crime had cars, boats,
money and homes taken away.
In fact, 80 percent of the people who lost property to the
federal government were never charged. And most of the seized items
weren't the luxurious playthings of drug barons, but modest homes and
simple cars and hard-earned savings of ordinary people.
But those goods generated $2 billion for the police
departments that took them.
The owners' only crimes in many of these cases: They "looked"
like drug dealers. They were black, Hispanic or flashily dressed.
Others, like the Lopeses, have been connected to a crime by
circumstances beyond their control.
Says Eric Sterling, who helped write the law a decade ago as a
lawyer on a congressional committee: "The innocent-until-proven-guilty
concept is gone out the window."
The law: Guilt doesn't matter
Rooted in English common law, forfeiture has surfaced just twice in
the United States since colonial times.
In 1862, Congress permitted the president to seize estates of
Confederate soldiers. Then, in 1970, it resurrected forfeiture for the
civil war on drugs with the passage of racketeering laws that targeted
the assets of criminals.
In 1984 however, the nature of the law was radically changed
to allow government to take posession without first charging, let
alone convicting the owner. That was done in an effort to make it
easier to strike at the heart of the major drug dealers. Cops knew
that drug dealers consider prison time an inevitable cost of doing
business. It rarely deters them. Profits and playthings, though, are
their passions. Losing them hurts.
And there was a bonus in the law. the proceeds would flow back
to law enforcement to finace more investigations. It was to be the
ultimate poetic justice, with criminals financing their own undoing.
But eliminating the necessity of charging or proving a crime
has moved most of the actionm to civil court, where the government
accuses the item -- not the owner -- of being tainted by a crime.
This oddity has court dockets looking like purchase orders:
United States of America vs. 9.6 acres of land and lake; U.S. vs. 667
bottles of wine. But it's more than just a labeling change. Because
money and property are at stake instead of life and liberty, the
constitutional safeguards in criminal proceedings do not apply.
The result is that "jury trials can be refused; illegal
searches condoned; rules of evidence ignored," says Louisville, Ky.
defense lawyer Donald Heavrin. The "frenzied quest for cash," he says,
is "destroyin the judicial system."
Every crime package passed since 1984 has expanded the uses of
forfeiture, and now there are more than 100 statutes in place at the
state and federal level. Not just for drug cases anymore, forfeiture
covers the likes of money laundering, fraud, gambling, importing
tainted meats and carrying intoxicants onto Indian land.
The White House, Justice Department and Drug Enforcement
Administration say they've made the most of the expanded law in
getting the big-time criminals, and they boast of seizing mansions,
planes and millions in cash. But the Pittsburgh Press in just 10
months was able to document 510 current cases that involved innocent
people -- or those possesing a very small amount of drugs -- who lost
their possesions.
And DEA's own database contadicts the official line. It showed
that big-ticket items -- valued at more than $50,000 -- were only 17
percent of the total 25,297 items seized by DEA during the 18 months
that ended last December.
"If you want to use that 'war on drugs' analogy, the
forfeiture is like giving the troops permission to loot," says Thomas
Lorenzi, president-elect of the Louisiana Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers.
The near-obsession with forfeiture continues without any proof
that it curbs drug crime -- its original target.
"The reality is, it's very difficult to tell what the impact
of drug seizure is," says Stanley Morris, deputy director of the
federal drug czar's ofice.
Police forces keep the take
The "loot" that's coming back to police forces all over tha
nation has redefined law-enforcement success. It now has a dollar sign
in front of it.
For nearly eighteen months, undercover Arizona State Troopers
worked as drug couriers driving nearly 13 tons of marijuana from the
Mexican border to stash houses around Tucson. They hoped to catch the
Mexican suppliers and distributors on the American side before the
dope got on the streets.
But they overestimated their ability to control the
distribution. Almost every ounce was sold the minute they droped it at
the houses.
Even though the troopers were responsible for tons of drugs
getting loose in Tucson, the man who supervised the setup still
believes it was worthwhile. It was "a success from a cost-benefit
standpoint," says former assistant attorney-general John Davis. His
reasoning: It netted 20 arrests and at least $3 million for the state
forfeiture fund.
"That kind of thinking is what frightens me," says Steve
Sherick. a Tucson attorney. "The government's thirst for dollars is
overcoming any long-range view of what it is supposed to be doing,
which is fighting crime."
George Terwilliger III, associate deputy attorney general in
charge of the U.S. Justice Department's program emphasizes that
forfeiture does fight crime, and "we're not at all apologetic about
the fact that we do benefit (financially) from it."
In fact, Terwilliger wrote about how the forfeiture program
financially benefits police departments in the 1991 Police Buyer's
Guide of Police Chief Magazine.
Between 1986 and 1990, the U.S. Justice Department genertade
$1.5 billion from forfeiture and estimates that it will take in $500
million this year, five times the maount it collected in 1986.
District attorney's offices throughout Pennsylvania handled
$4.5 million in forfeitures last year; Allegheny County (ED: Pgh is in
Allegheny County) , $218,000, and the city of Pittsburgh, $191,000 --
up from $9,000 four years ago.
Forfeiture pads the smallest towns coffers. In Lexana, Kan, a
Kansas City suburb of 29,000, "we've got about $250,000 moving in
court right now," says narcotice detective Don Crohn.
Despite the huge amounts flowing to police departments, the
are few public accounting procedures. Police who get a cut of the
federal forfeiture funds must sign a form saying merely the will use
it for "law enforcement purposes."
To Philadelphia police that meant new air conditioning. In
Warren County, N.J., it meant use of a forfeited yellow Corvette for
the chief assistant prosecutor.
{At this point nt the article there is a picture of three people in
an empty apartment, with the following caption:
Judy Mulford, 31, and her 13-year old twins, Chris, left, and Jason,
are down to essentials in their Lake Park, Fla., home, which the
government took in 1989 after claiming her husband, Joseph, stored
cocaine there. Neither parent has been criminally charge, but in April
a forfeiture jury said Mrs. Mulford must forfeit the house she bought
herself with an insurance settlement. The Mulfords have divorced, and
she has sold most of her belongings to cover legal bills. She's asked
for a new trial and lives in the near-empty house pending a decision. }
'Looking' like a criminal
Ethel Hylton of New York City has yet to regain her financial
independence after losing $39,110 in a search nearly three years ago
in Hobby Airport in Houston.
Shortly after she arrived from New York, a Houston officer and
Drug Enforcement Administration agent stopped the 46-year-old woman in
the baggage area and told her she was under arrest because a drug dog
had scratched at her luggage. The dog wasn't with them, and when Miss
Hylton asked to see it, the officers refused to bring it out.
The agents searched her bags, and ordered a strip search of
Miss Hylton, but found no contraband.
In her purse they found the cash Miss Hylton carried because
she planned to buy a house to escape the New York winters which
exasperated her diabetes. It was the settlemet from an insurance
claim, and her life's savings, gatherd through more than 20 years of
work as a hotle housekeeper and hospital night janitor.
The police seized all but $10 of the cash and sent Miss Hylton
on her way, keeping the money bacause of its alleged drug connection.
But they never charged her with a crime.
The Pittsburgh Press verified her jobs, reviewed her bank
statements and substantiated her claim she had $18,000 from an
insurance settlement. It also found no criminal record for her in New
York City.
With the mix of outrage and resignation voiced by other
victims of searches, she says: "The money they took was mine. I'm
allowed to have it. I earned it."
Miss Hylton bacame a U.S. citizen six years ago. She asks,
"Why did they stop me? Is it bacause I'm black or bacause I'm
Jamaican?"
Probably, both -- although Houston police haven't said.
Drug teams interviewed in dozens of airports, train stations
and bus terminals and along other major highways repeatedly said they
didn't stop travellers based on race. But a Pittsburgh Press
examination of 121 travellers' cases in which police found no dope,
made no arrest, but seized money anyway showed that 77 percent of the
people stopped were black, Hispanc, or Asian.
In April, 1989, deputies from Jefferson Davis Parish,
Louisiana, seized $23,000 from Johnny Sotello, a Mexican-American
whose truck overheated on a highway.
They offered help, he accepted. They asked to search his
truch. He agreed. They asked if he was carrying cash. He said he was
because he was scouting heavy equipment auctions.
They then pulled a door panel from the truck, said the space
behind it could have hidden drugs, and seized the money and the truck,
court records show. Police did not arrest Sotello but told him he
would have to go to court to recover his property.
Sotello sent auctioneer's receipts to police which showed he
was a licensed buyer. the sherriff offered to settle the case, and
with his legal bills mounting after two years, Sotello accepted. In a
deal cut last March, he got his truck, but only half his money. The
cops kept $11,500.
i was more afraid of the banks than anything -- that's one
reason I carry cash," says Sotello. "But a lot of places won't take
checks, only cash, or cashier's checks for the exact amount. I never
heard of anybody saying you couldn't carry cash."
Affadavits show the same deputy who stopped Sotello routinely
stopped the cars or balck and Hispanic drivers, exacting "donations"
from some.
After another of the deputy's stops, two black men from
Atlanta handed over $1,000 for a "drug fund" after being detained for
hours, according to a hand-written receipt reviewed by the Pittsburgh
Press.
The driver got a ticket for "following to (sic) close." Back
home, they got a lawyer.
Their attorney, in a letter to the Sherrif's department, said
deputies had made the men "fear for their safety, and in direct
exploitation of tha fear a purported donation of $1000 was
extracted..."
If they "were kind enough to give the money to the sherrif's
office," the letter said, "hen you can be kind enough to give it
back." If they gave the money "under other circumstances, then give
the money back so we can avoid litigation."
Six days later, the sherrif's department mailed the men a
$1,000 check.
Last year, the 72 deputies of Jefferson Davis Parish led the
state in forfeitures, gatering $1 million -- more than their
colleagues in New Orleans, a city 17 times larger than the parish.
Like most states, Louisiana returns the money to law
enforcement agencies, but it has one of the more unusual
distributions:60 percent goes to the police bringing a case, 20
percent to the district attorney's office prosecuting it and 20
percent to the court fund of the judge signing the forfeiture order.
"The highway stops aren't much different from a smash-and-grab
ring," says Lorenzi, of the Louisiana Defense Lawyers association.
Paying for your innocence
The Justice Department's Terwilliger says that in some cases
"dumb judgement" may ocaasionally cause problems, but he believes
there is an adequate solution. "That's why we have courts."
But the notion that courts are a safeguard for citizens
wrongly accused "is way off," says Tjomas Kerner, a forfeiture lawyer
in Boston. "Compared to forfeiture, David and Goliath was a fair
fight."
Starting from the moment that the government serves notice
that it intends to take an item, until any court challenge is
completed, "the government gets all the breaks," says Kerner.
The government need only show probable cause for a seizure, a
standard no greater than what is needed to get a search warrant. The
lower standard means the government can take a home without any more
evidence than it normally needs to tkae a look inside.
Clients who challenge the government, says attorney Edward
Hinson of Charlotte, N.C., "have the choice of fighting the full
resources of the U.S. treasury or caving in."
Barry Colin caved in.
Kolin watched Portland, Ore., police padlock the doors of
Harvey's, his bar and restaurant for bookmaking on March 2.
Earlier that day, eight police officers and Amy Holmes Hehn,
the Multnomah County deputy district attorney, had swept into the bar,
shooed out waitresses and customers and arrested Mike Kolin, Barry's
brother and bartender, on suspicion of bookmaking.
Nothing in the police documents mentioned Barry Kolin, and so
the 40-year-old was stunned when authorities took his business, saying
they believe he knew about the betting. He denied it.
Hehn concedes she did not have the evidence to press a
criminal case against Barry Kolin, "so we seized the business
civilly."
During a recess in a hearing on the seizures weeks later, "the
deputy DA says if I paid them $30,000 I could open up again," Kolin
recalls. When the deal dropped to $10,000, Kolin took it.
Kolin's lawyer, Jenny Cooke, calls the seizure "extortion."
She says: "There is no difference between what the police did to Barry
Kolin or what Al Capone did in Chicago when he walked in and said,
'This is a nice little bar and it's mine.' the only difference is
today they call this civil forfeiture."
Minor crimes, major penalties
Forfeiture's tremendous clout helps make it "one of the most
effective tools that we have," says Terwilliger.
the clout, though, puts property owners at risk of losing more
under forfeiture that they would in a criminal case under the same
circumstances.
Criminal charges in federal and many state courts carry
maximum sentences. But there's no dollar cap on forfeiture, leaving
citizens open to punishment that far exceeds the crime.
Robert Brewer of Irwin, Idaho, is dying of prostate cancer,
and uses marijuana to ease the pain and nausea that comes with
radiation treatments.
Last Oct. 10, a dozen deputies and Idaho tax agents walked
into the Brewer's living room with guns drawn and said they had a
warrant to search.
The Brewers, Robert, 61, and Bonita, 44, both retired form the
postal service, moved from Kansas City, Mo., to the tranquil, wooded
valley of Irwin in 1989. Six months later, he was diagnosed.
According to police reports, and informant told authorities
Brewer ran a major marijuana operation.
The drug SWAT team found eight plants in the basement under a
grow light and a half-pound of marijuana. The Brewers were charged
with two felony narcotics counts and two charges for failing to buy
state tax stamps for the dope.
"I didn't like the idea of the marijuana, but it was the only
thing that controlled his pain," Mrs. Brewer says.
The government seized the couples five-year-old Ford van that
allowed him to lie down during his twice-a-month trips for cancer
treatment at a Salt Lake City hospital, 270 miles away.
Now they must go by car.
"That's a long painful ride for him. His testicles would
sometimes swell up to the size of cantaloupes, and he had to lie down
because of the pain. He needed that van, and the government took it,"
Mrs. Brewer says.
"It looks like the government can punish people any way it
sees fit."
The Brewers know nothing about the informant who turned them
in, but informants play a big role in forfeiture. Many of them are
paid, targeting property in return for a cut of anything that is
taken.
The Justice Department's asset forfeiture fund paid $24
million to informants in 1990 and has $22 million allocated this year.
Private citizens who snith for a fee are everywhere. Some
airline counter clerks receive cash awards for alerting drug agents to
"suspicious" travellers. The practice netted Melissa Furtner, a
Continental Airlines clerk in Denver, at least $5,800 between 1989 and
1990, photocopies of checks show.
Increased surveillance, recruitment of citizen-cops, and
expantion of forfeiture sweeps are all part of a take-now,
litigate-later syndrome that builds prosecutors careers, says a former
federal prosecutor.
"Fedreal law enforcement people are the most ambitious I've
ever met, and to get ahead they need visible results. Visible results
are convictions, and, now, forfeitures," says Don Lewis of Meadville,
Crawford County. (ED: a Pa county north of Pgn by two counties.)
Lewis spent 17 years as a prosecutor, serving as an assistant
U.S. attorney in Tampa as recently as 1988. He left the Tampa Job --
and became a defense lawyer -- when "I found myslef tempted to do
things I wouldn't have thought about doing years ago."
Terwilliger insists U.S. attorneys would never be evaluated on
"something as unprofessional as dollars."
Which is not to say Justice doesn't watch the bottom line.
Cary Copeland, director of the department' Executive Office
for Asset Forfeiture, says the tried to "squeeze the pipeline" in 1990
when the amount forfeited lagged behind Justice's budget projections.
He said this was done by speeding up the process, not by doing
"whole lot of seizures."
Ending the Abuse
While defense lawyers talk of reforming the law, agencies that
initiate forfeiture scarcely talk at all.
DEA headquarters makes a spectacle of busts like the seizure
of fraternity houses at the University of Virginia in March. But it
refuses to supply detailed information on the small cases that account
for most of its activity.
Local prosecutors are just as tight-lipped.
Thomas Corbett, U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, seals
court documents on forfeitures because "there are just some things I
don't want to publicize. the person whose assets we seize will
eventually know, and who else has to?"
Although some investigations need to be protected, there is an
"inappropriate secrecy" spreading throughout the country, says Jeffrey
Weiner, president-elcet of the 25,000 member National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"The Justice Department boasts of the few big fish they catch.
But they throw a cloak of secrecy over the information on how many
innocent people are getting swept up in the same seizure net, so no
one can see the enormity of the atrocity."
Terwilliger says the net catches the right people: "bad guys"
as he calls them.
But a 1990 Justice report on drug task forces in 15 states
found they stayed away from the in-depth financial investigations
needed to cripple major traffickers. Instead, "they're going for the
easy stuff," says James "Chip" Coldren, Jr., executive director of the
Bereau of Justice Assistance, a research arm of the federal Justice
Department.
Lawyers who say the law needs to be changed start with the
basics: The government shouldn't be allowed to take property untial
after it proves the owner guilty of a crime.
But they go on to list other improvements, including having
police abide by their state laws, which often don't give police as
much lattitude as the federal law. Now they can use federal courts to
circumvent the state.
Tracy Thomas is caught in that very bind.
A jurisprudence ersion of the shell game hides roughly $13,000
taken from Thomas, a resident of Chester, near Philadelphia.
Thomas was visiting in his godson's home on Memorial Day,
1990, when local police entered looking for drugs allegedly sold by
the godson. They found none and didn't file a criminal charge in the
incident. But they seized $13,000 from Thomas, who works as a
$70,000-a-year engineer, says his attorney, Clinton Johnson.
The cash was left over from a Sherrif's sale he'd attended a
few days before, court records show. the sale required cash -- much
like the government's own auctions.
Duting a hearing over the seized money, Thomas presented a
withdrawal slip showing he'd removed money from his credit union
shortly before the trip and a receipt showing how much he had paid for
the property he'd bought at the sale. The balance was $13,000.
On June 22, 1990, a state judge ordered Chester police to
return Thomas' cash.
They haven't.
Just before the court order was issued, the police turned over
the cash to the DEA for prcessing as a federal case, forcing Thomas to
fight another level of government. Thomas isd now suing the Chester
police, the arresting officer, and the DEA.
"When DEA took over that money, what they in effect told a
local police department is that it's OK to break the law," says
Clinton Johnson, attorney for Thomas.
Police manipulate the courts not only to make it harder on
owners to recover property, but to make it easier for police to get a
hefty share of any fofeited goods. In federal court, local police are
guaranteed up to 80 percent of the take -- a percentage that may be
more than they'd recieve under state law.
Pennsylvania's leading police agency -- the state police --
and the state's lead prosecutor -- the Attorney General -- bickered
for two years over state police taking cases to federal court, an
arrangement that cut the Attorney General out of the sharing.
The two state agencies now have a written agreement on how to
divy the take.
The same debate is heard around the nation.
The hallways outside Cleveland courtrooms ring with arguments
over who will get what, says Jay Milano, a Cleveland criminal defense
attorney.
"It's causing a feeding frenzy."
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
- --
Shawn Valentine Hernan |Wizard-wanna-be | STOP
Computing and Information Services|Systems & Networks |the war on drugs!
University of Pittsburgh |[email protected]| It is a
(412) 624-6425 |[email protected] | WITCHHUNT!
|
|
More articles in the series from the Pittburg Press
>From: [email protected] (Shawn V. Hernan)
>Subject: The Pittsburgh Press coverage of the War on Drugs, Part II
>Date: 13 Aug 91 09:41:57 GMT
>Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Computing & Information Services
>Lines: 449
>
>
>
>The Pittsburgh Press is a major newspaper, I believe the largest is
>Allegheny County. It is not a special interest tabloid. I can't find
>any circulation numbers, strangely, but I imagine it is well into the
>hundreds of thousands. it was established June 23, 1884. That's 1884,
>not 1984. The authors of this series Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat
>Flaherty have won pulitzer's for something unspecified.
>
>Finally, for those of you who can buy the paper, please do. There are
>some good pictures, and peripheral articles, which I don't have time
>to type in.
>
>I apologize for the numerous typos. Dammit, Jim, I'm a programmer, not
>a typist.
>
>
>Please read this.
>
>Just when you think that you can no longer be surprised by the WoD,
>you get this article. I was amazed.
>
>And now, the article....
>
>This article appeared on the FRONT PAGE; in fact, it was the
>HEADLINE!!!
>
>
>--------------------------
>The Pittsburgh Press
>Monday, August 12, 1991
>
> P R E S U M E D G U I L T Y
> The Law's Victims in the War on Drugs
>
> Drug agents far more likely to stop minorities
>
>By Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
>
>Part Two: The way you look
>
> Look around you carefully the next time you're at any of the nations
>big airports, bus stations, train terminals, or on a major highway
>because there may be a government agent watching you. If you're black,
>Hispanic, Asian or look like a "hippie," you can almost count on it.
>
> The men and women doing the spying are drug agents, the
>frontline troops in the governments war on narcotics. They count their
>victories in the number of people they stop because they suspect
>they're carrying drugs or drug money.
>
> But each year in the hunt for suspects, thousands of guiltless
>citizens are stopped, most often because of their skin color.
>
> A 10-month Pittsburgh Press investigation of drug seizure and
>forfeiture included an examination of court records on 121 "drug
>courier" stops where money was seized and no drugs were discovered.
>The Pittsburgh Press found that black, Hispanic and Asian people
>accounted for 77 percent of the cases.
>
> In making stops, drug agents use a profile, a set of
>speculative behavioral traits that gauge the suspect's appearance,
>demeanor and willingness to look a police officer in the eye.
>
> For years, the drug courier profile counted race as a
>principal indicator of the likelihood of a person's carrying drugs.
>
> But today the word "profile" isn't officially mentioned by
>police. Seeing the word scrawled in a police report or hearing it from
>a witness chair instantly unnerves prosecutors and makes defense
>lawyers giddy. Both sides know the racial implications can raise
>constitutional challenges.
>
> Even so, ar away from the courtrooms, the practice persists.
>
> In Memphis, Tenn., in 1989, drug officers have testified,
>about 75 percent of the people they stopped in the airport were black.
>The latest figures available from the Air Transport Association show
>that for that year only 4 percent of the flying public was black.
>
> In Eagle County, Colo., the 60-mile-long strip on Interstate
>70 that winds and dips past Vail and other ski areas is the setting of
>a class-action suit that charges race was the main element of the
>profile used in drug stops.
>
> According to court documents in one of the cases that led to
>the suit, the sheriff and two deputies testified that "being black or
>Hispanic was and is a factor" in their drug courier profile.
>
> Lawyer David Lane says that 500 people -- primarilty Hispanic
>and black motorists -- were stopped and searched by Eagle County's
>High Country (ED: What an appropriate name :-)) Drug Task Force during
>1989 and 1990. Each time, Lane charged, the task force used an
>inconstitutional profile based on race, ethnicity and out-of-state
>license plates.
>
> Byron Boudreaux was one of those stopped.
>
> Boudreaux was driving from Oklahoma to a new job in Canada
>when Sgt. James Perry and three other task force officers pulled him
>over.
>
> "Sgt. Perry told me that I was stopped because my car fit the
>description of someone trafficking drugs in the area," Boudreaux says.
>He let the officers search his car.
>
> "Listen, I was a black man travelling alone up in the
>mountains of Eagle County and surrounded by four police officers. I
>was going to be as cooperative as I could," he recalls.
>
> For almost an hour the officers unloaded and searched the
>suitcases, laundry baskets, and boxes that were wedged into Bodreaux's
>car. Nothing was found.
>
> "I was stopped because I was black, and that's not a great
>testament to our law enforcement system," says Boudreaux, who is now
>an assistant basketball coach at Queens College in Charlotte, N.C.
>
> In a federal trial stemming from another stop Perry made on
>the same road a few months later, he testfied that because of
>"astigmatism and color blindness" he was unable to distinguish among
>black, Hispanic and white people.
>
> U.S. District Court Judge Jim Carrigan didn't buy it and
>called the seargeant's testimony "incredible.
>
> "If this nation were to win its war on drugs at the cost of
>sacrificing its citizens' constitutional rights, it would be a Pyrrhic
>victory indeed," Carrigan wrote in a court opinion. "If the rule of
>law rather than the rule of man is to prevail, there cannot be one set
>of search and seizure rules applicable to some and a different set
>applicable to others."
>
>Livelihood in jeopardy
>
> In Nashville, Tenn., Willie Jones has no doubt that police
>still use a profile based on race.
>
> Jones, owner of a landscaping service, thought the ticket
>agent at the American Airlines counter in Nashville Metro Airport
>reacted strangely when he paid for his round-trip ticket to Houston.
>
> "She said no one ever paid in cash anymore and she'd have to
>go in the back and check on what to do," Jones says.
>
> What Jones didn't know is that in Nashville -- as in other
>airports -- many airline employees double as piad informers for the
>police.
>
> The Drug Enforcement Administration usually pays them 10
>percent of any money seized, says Capt, Judy Bawcum, head of the
>Nashville police division that runs the airport unit.
>
> Jones got his ticket. Ten minutes later, as he waited for his
>plane, two drug team members stopped him.
>
> "They flashed their badges and asked if I was carrying drugs
>or a large amount of money. I told them I didn't have any drugs, but I
>had money on me to go buy some plants for my business," Jones says.
>
> They searched his overnight bag and found nothing. They patted
>him down and felt a bulge. Jones pulled out a black plastic wallet
>hidden under his shirt. It held $9,600.
>
> "I explained that I was going to Houston to order some
>shrubbery for my nursery. I do it twice a year and pay cash because
>that's the way the growers want it," says the father of three girls.
>
> The drug agents took his money.
>
> "They said I was going to buy drugs with it, and the dogs
>sniffed it and said it had drugs on it," Jones says. He never saw the
>dog.
>
> The officers didn't arrest Jones, but they kept the money.
>They gave him a DEA receipt for cash. But under the heading of amount
>and desription, Sgt. Claude Byrum wrote, "Unspecified amount of U.S.
>currency."
>
> Jones says losing the money almost put him out of business.
>
> "That was to buy my stock. I'm known for having a good
>selection fo unusual plants. That's why I go South twice a year to buy
>them. Now, I've got to do it piecemeal, run out after I'm paid for a
>job and buy plants for the next one," he says.
>
> Jones has receipts for three years showing that each fall and
>spring he buys plants from nurseries in other states.
>
> "I just don't understand the government. I don't smoke. I
>don't drink. I don't wear gold chains and jewelry, and I don't get
>into trouble with the police," he says. "I didn't know it was against
>the law for a 42-year-old black man to have money in his pocket."
>
> Tennessee police records confirm that the only charge ever
>filed against Jones was for drag racing 15 years ago.
>
> "DEA says I have to pay $900, 10 percent of the money they
>took from me, just to have the right to try to get it back," Jones
>says.
>
> His lawyer, E.E. "Bo" Edwards filled out government forms
>documenting that his client couldn't afford the $900 bond.
>
> "If I'm going to feed my children, I need my truck, and the
>only way I can get that $900 is to sell it," Jones says.
>
> It's been more than five months, and the only thing Jones has
>recieved for DEA are letters saying that his application to proceed
>without paying the $900 bond was deficient. "But they never told us
>what those deficiencies were," says Edwards.
>
> Jones is nearly resigned to losing the money. "I don't think
>I'll ever get it back. But I think the only reason they thought I was
>a drug dealer was because I'm black, and that bothers me."
>
> It also bothers his lawyer.
>
> "Of course he was stopped because he was black. No cop in his
>right mind would try that with a white businessman. Those seizure laws
>give law enforcement a license to hunt, and the target of choice for
>many cops is those they believe are least capable of protecting
>themselves: blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites," Edwards says.
>
>Money still held
>
> In Buffalo, N.Y., on Oct. 9, Juana Lopez, a dark-skinned
>Dominican, had just gotten off a bus from New York City when she was
>stopped in the terminal by drug agents who wanted to search her
>luggage.
>
> They found no drugs, but DEA Agent Bruce Johnson found $4,750
>in cash wrapped with rubber bands in her purse. the money, the
>28-year-old womand said, was to pay legal fees or bail for her
>common-law husband. After he began questioning her, Johnson realized
>that he had arrested the husband for drugs two months earlier in the
>same bus station.
>
> Johnson called the office of attorney Mark Mahoney, where Ms.
>Lopez said she was heading, and verified her appointment.
>
> Johnson then told the woman she was free to go, but her money
>would stay with him because a drug dog had reacted to it.
>
> Ms. Lopez has receipts showing the money was obtained legally
>-- a third of it was borrowed, another third came from the sale of
>jewelry that belonged to her and her husband, and the rest from her
>savings as a hair stylist in the Bronx.
>
> It has been more than nine months since the money was taken,
>and Assistant U.S. atorney Richard Kaufman says that the investigation
>is continuing.
>
> Robert Clark, a Mobile, Ala., lawyer who has defended many
>travellers, says profile stops are the new form of racism.
>
> "In the South in the 30's, we used to hang black folks. Now,
>given any excuse at all, even legal money in their pockets, we just
>seize them to death," he says.
>
>Trivial pursuit
>
> "If you took all the racial elements out of profiles," you'd
>be left with nothing, says Nashville lawyer Edwards, who heads a new
>National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers task force to
>investigate forfeiture law abuses.
>
> "It would outrage the public to learn the trivial indicators
>that police use as the basis for interfering with the roght of the
>innocent."
>
> Examination of more than 310 affadavits for seizure and
>profiles used by 28 different agencies reveals a conflicting colection
>or traits that agents say they use to hunt down traffickers.
>
> Guidlines for DEA drug task force agents in three adjacent
>states give conflicting advice on when officers are supposed to become
>suspicios.
>
> Agents in Illinois are told its suspicious if their subjects
>are among the first people off a plane, because it shows they're in a
>hurry.
>
> In Michigan, the DEA says that being thje last off a plane is
>suspicios because the subject is trying to appear unconcerned.
>
> And in Ohio, agents are told suspicion should surface when
>suspects deplane in the middle of a group they may be trying to lose
>themsleves in the crowd.
>
> One of the most mentioned indicators is that suspects were
>travelling to or from a source city for drugs.
>
> But a list of cities favored by drug couriers gleaned from the
>DEA affadavits amounts to a compendium of every major community in the
>United States.
>
> Seeming to be nervous, looking around, pacing, looking at a
>watch, making a phone call -- all things that business travellers
>routinely do, especially those who are late or don't like to fly --
>sound alarms to waiting drug agents.
>
> Some agents cahnge their mind about what makes them suspicios.
>
> In Tennessee, an agent told a judge he was leery of a man
>because he "walked quickly through the airport." Six weeks later, in
>another affadavit, the same agent said his suspicions were aroused
>because the suspect "walked with intentional slowness after getting
>off the bus."
>
> In Albequerque, N.M., people have been stopped because they
>were standing on the train platform watching people.
>
> Whether you look at a police officer can be construed to be a
>suspicios sign. One Maryland said he was wary because the subject
>"deliberately did not look at me when he drove by my position." Yet
>another Maryland trooper testified that he stopped a man because the
>"driver stared at me when he passed."
>
> Too much baggage, or not enough will draw the attention of the
>law.
>
> You could be in trouble with drug agents if you're sitting in
>first class and don't look as if you belong there.
>
> DEA agent Paul Markonni, who is considered the "father" of the
>drug courier profile, testified in a Florida court about why he
>stopped a man.
>
> "We do see some real slimeballs, you know, some real dirtbags,
>that obviously could not afford, unless they were doing something, to
>fly first class," he told the court.
>
> The newest extention of drug courier profiles are pagers and
>cellular telephones.
>
> Based on the few cases that have reached the courts, the
>communication devices -- which are carried by business people, nervous
>parents and patients waiting for a transplant as well as drug couriers
>-- are primarily suspicios when they are found on the belts or in the
>suitcases of minorities or long-haired whites.
>
> for police intent on stopping someone, any reason will do.
>
> "If they're black, Hispanic, Asian or look like a hippie,
>that's a stereotype, and the police will find some way to stop them if
>that's their intent," says San Antonio lawyer Gerald Goldstein.
>
>The perfect profile
>
> A DEA agent thought that former New York Giants center Kevin
>Belcher matched his profile. When Belcher got off a flight from
>Detroit on March 2, he was stopped by DEA's Dallas/Fort Worth Airport
>Narcotics Task Force.
>
> The Texas officers had been called a short while earlier by a
>DEA agent at Detroit's Metro Airport. A security screener had spotted
>a big, black man carrying a large amount of money in his jacket
>pocket, the Detroit agent reported to his southern colleagues.
>
> Belcher was questioned about the purpose of the trip and was
>asked whether he had any money. He gave the agents $18,265.
>
> Belcher explained that he was going to El Past to buy some
>classic old cars -- "1968 or '69 Camaros are what I'm looking for."
>Belcher, whose professional football career ended after a near-fatal
>traffic accident in New Jersey, told the agents he owned four Victory
>Lane Quick Oil Change outlets in Michigan. The money came from sales,
>he said, and cash was what auctioneers demanded.
>
> A drug-sniffing dog was called, it reacted, and the money was
>seized.
>
> Agent Rick Watson to Belcher he was free to go "but that I was
>going to detain the monies to determine the origin of them."
>
> In his seizure affadavit, Watson listed the matches he made
>between Belcher and the profile of "other narcotic currency couriers
>encountered af DFW airport."
>
> Included in Watson's profile was that Belcher had bought a
>one-way ticket on the date of travel; was traveling to a "source"
>city, El Paso, "where drug dealers have long been known to be
>exporting large amounts of marijuana to other parts of the country";
>and was carrying $100, $50, $20, $10, and $5 bills, "which is
>consistent with drug asset seizures."
>
> Watson made no mention as to what denomination other than $1
>bills was left for non-drug traffickers to carry.
>
> "The drug courier profile can be absolutely anything that the
>police officer decides it is at that moment," says Albequerque defense
>lawyer Nancy Hollander, one of the nation's leading authorities on
>drug profile stops.
>
>Wide net cast
>
> Officials are reluctant to reveal how many inncocent people
>are ensnared each day by profile stops. Most police departments say
>they don't keep that information. Those that do are reluctant to
>discuss it.
>
> "We don't like to talk much about what we seize at the
>(Nashville) airport because it might stir up the public and make the
>airport officials unhappy because we are somehow harrassing people. It
>would be great if we could keep the whole operation secret," says
>Capt. Bawcum, in charge of the Airport's drug team.
>
> Capt. Rudy Sandoval, commander of Denver's vice bereau, says
>he doesn't keep the airport numbers but estimated his police searched
>more than 2,000 people in 1990, but arrested on 49 and seized money
>from fewer than 50.
>
> At Pittsburgh's airport, numbers are kept. The team searched
>527 people last year, and arrested 49.
>
> A fedral court judge in Buffalo, N.Y., says police stop to
>mant innocent people to catch to few crooks.
>
> Judge George Pratt said he was shocked that police charged on
>10 of the 600 people stopped in 1989 in the Buffalo airport and
>decried encroaching on the constitutional rights of 590 innocent
>people.
>
> In his opinion in the case, Pratt said that by conducting
>unreasonable searches: "It appears that they have sacrificed the
>Fourth Amendment by detaining 590 innocent people in order to arrest
>10 who are not -- all in the name of the 'war on drugs.' When, pray
>tell, will it end? Where are we going?"--
>-------
>Shawn Valentine Hernan |Wizard-wanna-be
>Computing and Information Services|Systems & Networks
>University of Pittsburgh |[email protected]
>(412) 624-6425 |[email protected]
% ====== Internet headers and postmarks (see DECWRL::GATEWAY.DOC) ======
Received: by mts-gw.pa.dec.com; id AA09989; Sun, 25 Aug 91 13:54:10 -0700
To: gonzalez%[email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Pittsburgh Press Series - Article #2
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 16:53:46 -0400
From: [email protected]
>From: [email protected] (Shawn V. Hernan)
>Subject: The Pittsburgh Press coverage of the War on Drugs, Part III
>Date: 15 Aug 91 10:02:24 GMT
>Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Computing & Information Services
>
>[...]
>The timing of this series is especially cool. The national Fraternal
>Order of Police is having a convention here in town, with visits by
>Bob Martinez, and King Bush.
>
>The thing about this article that surprized me the most was the utter
>calousness shown by some of the agents. Read on....
>
>
>Shawn
>-------------------------------------------
>
>The Pittsburgh Press, Tuesday, August 13, 1991
>
>The following article appeared as the HEADLINE on the FRONT PAGE
>
> P R E S U M E D G U I L T Y
> The Law's Victims in the War on Drugs
>
> Police profit by seizing homes of innocent
>
>by Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
>
>Part Three: Innocent owners
>
> The second time police came to the Hawaii home of Joseph and
>Frances Lopes, they came to take it.
>
> "They were in a car and a van. I was in the garage. They said,
>'Mrs. Lopes, let's go into the house, and we will explain things to
>you.' They sat in the dining room and told me they were taking the
>house. It made my heart beat very fast."
>
> For the rest of the day, 60-year-old Frances and her
>65-year-old husband, Joseph, trailed federal agents as they walked
>through every room of the Maui house, the agents recording the
>position of every piece of furniture on a video-tape that serves as
>the government's inventory.
>
> Four years after their mentally unstable adult son pleaded
>guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard for his own use, the
>Lopeses face the loss of their home. A Maui detective trolling for
>missed forfeiture opportunities spotted the old case. He recognized
>that the law allowed him to take away their property because they knew
>their son had committed a crime on it.
>
> A forfeiture law intended to strip drug traffickers of
>ill-gotten gains often is turned on people, like the Lopeses, who have
>not committed a crime. The incentive for police to do that is
>financial, since the federal government and most states let the police
>departments keep the proceeds from what they take.
>
> The law tries to temper maoney-making temptations with
>protections for innocent owners, including lien-holders, landlords
>whose tennants misuse property, or people unaware of their spouse's
>misdeeds. The protection is supposed to cover anyone with an interest
>in a property who can prove he did not know about the alleged illegal
>activity, did not consent to it, or took all reasonable steps to
>prevent it.
>
> But a Pittsburgh Press investigation found that those supposed
>safeguards do not come into play until after the government takes an
>asset, forcing innocent owners to hire attorneys to get their property
>back -- if they ever do.
>
> "As if the law weren't bad enough, they just clobber you
>financially," says Wayne Davis, an attorney from Little Rock, Ark.
>
>Feared for their son
>
> In 1987, Thomas Lopes, who was then 28 and living in his
>parents' home, pleaded guilty to growing marijuana in their back yard.
>Officers spotted it from a helicopter.
>
> Because it was his first offense, Thomas recieved probation
>and an order to see a psychologist. From the time he was young, mental
>problems tormented Thomas, and though he visited a psychologist as a
>tenn, he had refused to continue as he grew older, his parents say.
>
> Instead, he cloistered himself in his bedroom, leaving only to
>tend the garden.
>
> "We did ask him to stop, and he would say, 'Don't touch it',
>of he would do something to himself," says the elder Lopes, who worked
>on a sugar plantation and lived in its rented camp housing for 30
>years while he saved to buy his own home.
>
> Given Thomas' history, and a family history of mental problems
>that caused a grandparent and an uncle to be committed to
>institutions, the threats stymied his parents.
>
> The Lopeses, says their attorney Matthew Metnzer, "were under
>duress. Everyone who has been diagnosed in this family ended up being
>taken away. They could not conceive of any way of getting rid of the
>dope, without getting rid of their son, or losing him forever."
>
> When police arrived to arrest Thomas, "I was so happy because
>I knew he would get care," says his mother. He did, and he continues
>weekly doctor visits. His mood is better, Mrs. Lopes says, and he had
>never again grown marijuana or been arrested.
>
> But his guilty plea haunts his family.
>
> Because his parents admitted they knew what he was doing,
>their home was vulnerable to forfeiture.
>
> Back when Thomas was arrested, police rarely took homes. But
>since, agencies have learned how to use the law, and have seen the
>financial payoff, says Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Silverberg, of
>Honolulu.
>
> The also carefully review old cases for overlooked forfeiture
>possibilities, he says. The detective who uncovered the LLopes case
>started a forfeiture action in February -- just under the five-year
>deadline for staking such a claim.
>
> "I concede the time lapse on this case is longer than most,
>but there was a violation of the law, and that makes this appropriate,
>not money-grubbing," says Silverberg. "The other way to look at this,
>you know, is that the Lopeses could be happy we let them live there
>as long as we did."
>
> They don't see it that way.
>
> Neither does their attorney, who says his firm now has about
>eight similar forfeiture cases, all of them stemming from small-time
>crimes that occured years ago but were resurected. "Digging these
>cases out now is a business proposition, not law enforcement," Menzer
>says.
>
> "We thought it was all behind us," says Lopes. Now, "there
>isn't a day I don't think about what will happen to us."
>
> They remain in the house, paying taxes and mortgage, until the
>forfeiture case is resolved. Given court backlogs, that won't likely
>be until the middle of next year, Menzer says.
>
> They've been warned to leave everything as it was when the
>videotape was shot.
>
> "When they were going out the door," Mrs. Lopes says of the
>police, "they told me to take good care of the yard. They said they
>would be coming back one day."
>
>'Dumb judgement'
>
>
>Protections for innocent owners are "a neglected issue in federal and
>state forfeiture law," concluded the Police Executive Research Forum
>in its March bulletin.
>
> But a chief policy maker on forfeiture maintains that the
>system is actively interested in protecting the rights of the
>innocent.
>
> George J. Terwilliger III, associate deputy general in the
>Justice Department, admits that there may be instances of 'dumb
>judgement.' And says if there's a 'systemic' problem, he'd like to
>know about it.
>
> But attorneys who battle forfeiture cases say dumb judgement
>is the systemic problem. And they point to some of Terwilliger's own
>decisions as examples.
>
> The forfeiture policy that Terwilliger crafts in the nation's
>capital he puts to use in his other federal job: U.S. attorney for
>Vermont.
>
> A coalition of Vermont residents, outraged by Terwilliger's
>forfeitures of homes in which small children live, launched a
>grass-roots movement called "Stop Forfeiture of Children's Homes."
>Three months old, the group has about 70 members from school
>principals to local medical societies.
>
> Forfeitures are a particularly sensitive issue in Vermont
>where state law forbids taking a person's primary home. That
>restriction appears nowhere in federal law, which means Vermont police
>departments can circumvent the state constraint by taking forfeiture
>cases through federal courts.
>
> The playmaker for that end-run: Terwilliger.
>
> "It's government sponsored child abuse that's destroying the
>future of children all over this state in the name of fighting the
>drug war," says Dr. Kathleen DePierro, a family practitioner who works
>at Vermont State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Waterbury.
>
> The children of Karen and Reggie Lavallee, ages 6, 9 and 11,
>are precisely the type of victims over which the Vermonters agonize.
>Reggie Lavalle is serving a 10-year sentence in a federal prison in
>Minnesota for cocaine possesion.
>
> Because police said he had been involved in drug trafficking,
>his conviction cost his family their ranch house on 2 acres in a small
>village 20 miles east of Burlington. For the first time, the family is
>on welfare, in a rented duplex.
>
> "I don't condone what my husband did, but why victimize my
>children because of his actions? That house wasn't much, but it was
>ours. It was a home for the children, with rabbits, chicken, turkeys
>and a vegetable garden. Their friends were their and they liked the
>school," says Mrs. Lavallee, 29.
>
> After the eviction, "every night for months, Amber cried
>because she couldn't see her friends. I'd like to see the government
>tell this 9-year-old that this isn't cruel and unusual punishment."
>
> Terwilliger's dual role particularly troubles DePierro. "It's
>horrifying to know he's setting policy that could expand this type of
>terror and abuse to kids in every state in the nation."
>
> Terwilliger calls the groups allegations absurd. "If there was
>someone to blame, it would be the parents and not the government."
>
> Lawyers like John MacFadyen, a defense attorney in Providence,
>R.I., find it harder to fix blame.
>
> "The flaw with the innocent owner thing is that life doesn't
>paint itself in black and white. It's oftentimes gray, and there is no
>room for gray in these laws," MacFadyen says. As a consequence,
>prosecutors presume everyone guilty and leave it to them to show
>otherwise. "That's not good judgement. In fact, if defies common
>sense."
>
>Proving innocence
>
>Innocent owners who defend their interests expose themselves to
>questioning that bores deep into their private affairs. Because the
>forfeiture law is civil, they also have no protection against self
>incrimination, which means they risk having anything they say used
>against them later.
>
> The documentation required of innocent owner Loretta Stearns
>illustrates how deeply the government plumbs.
>
> The Connecticut woman lent her adult son $40,000 in 1988 to
>but a home in Tequesta, Fla., court documents show.
>
> Unlike many parents who treat such transactions informally,
>she had the foresight to record the loan as a mortgage with Palm Beach
>County. Her action ultimately protected her interest in the house
>after the federal government seized it, claiming her son stored
>cocaine there. He has not been charged criminally.
>
> The seizure occured in November, and it took until last May
>before Mrs. Stearns convinced the government she had a legitimate
>interest in the house.
>
> To prove herself an innocent owner, Mrs. Stearns met 14
>requests for information, including providing "all documents of any
>kind whatsoever pertaining to your mortgage, including but not limited
>to, loan application, credit reports, record of mortgage and mortgage
>payments, title reports, appraisal reports, closing documents, records
>of any liens, attachments on the defendant's property, records of
>payments, cancelled checks, internal correspondence or notes
>(handwritten or typed) relating to any of the above and opinion letter
>from borrower's or lender's counsel relating to any of the above."
>
> And that was just question No. 1.
>
>Landlord as cop
>
> Innocent owners are supposed to be sheilded in forfeitures,
>but at times they've been expected to become virtual cops in order to
>protect their property from seizure.
>
> T.T. Masonry Inc. owns a 36-unit apartment building in
>Milwaukee, Wis. that's plauged by dope dealing. Between January, 1990,
>when it bought the building, and July 1990, when the city formally
>warned it about problems, the landlord evicted 10 tenants suspected of
>drug use, gave a master key to local beat and vice cops, forwarded
>tips to police, and hired two security firms -- including an off-duty
>police officer -- to patrol the building.
>
> Despite that effort, the city seized the property.
>
> Assistant City Attorney David Stanosz says "oce a property
>develops a reputation as a place to buy drugs, the only way to fix
>that is to leave it totally vacant for a number of months. This
>landlord doesn't want to do that."
>
> Correct, says Jerome Buting, attorney for Tom Torp of Masonry.
>
> "If this building is such a atarget for dealers, use that
>fact," says Buting. "Let undercover people go in. But when I raised
>that, the answer was they were short of officers and resources."
>
>It looks like coke
>
> Grady McClendon, 53, his wife, two of their adult children and
>two grandchildren -- 7 and 8 -- were in a rented car headed to their
>Florida home in August 1989. They were returning from a family reunion
>in Dublin, Ga.
>
> In Fitzgerald, Ga., McClendon made a wrong turn on a one-way
>street. Local police stopped him, checked his identification, and
>asked his permission to search the car. He agreed.
>
> Within minutes, police pulled open suitcases and purses,
>emptying-out jewelry and about 10 Florida state lottery tickets. They
>also found a registered handgun.
>
> Then, says McClendon, the police "started waving a little
>stick they said was cocaine. They told me to put on my glasses and
>take a good look. I told them I'd never seen cocaine for real, but
>that didn't look like TV."
>
> For about six hours, police detained the McClendon family at
>the police station where officers seized $2,300 in cash and other
>items as "instruments of drug activity and gambling paraphernalia" --
>a reference to the lottery tickets.
>
> Finally, the gave the McClendon's a traffic ticket and
>released them, but kept the family possessions.
>
> For 11 months, McClendon's attorney argued with the state,
>finally forcing it to produce lab test results on the "cocaine."
>
> James E. Turk, the prosecutor who handled the case, will say
>only "it came back negative."
>
> "That's because it was bubble gum," says Jerry Froelich,
>McClendon's attorney. A judge returned the McClendon's items.
>
> Turk considers the search "a good stop. They had no proof of
>where they lived beyond drivers' licenses. They had jewelry that could
>have been contraband, but we couldn't prove it was stolen. And they
>had more cash than I would expect them to carry."
>
> McClendon says, "I didn't see anything wrong with them assking
>to search me. That's their job. But the rest of it was wrong, wrong,
>wrong."
>
>Seller, beware
>
> Owners who press the government for damages are rare. Those
>who do are often helped by attorneys who forgo their usual fees
>because of their own indignation over the law.
>
> For nearly a decade, the lives of Carl and Mary Shelden of
>Moraga, Calif., have been intertwined with the life of a convicted
>criminal who happened to buy their house.
>
> The complex litigation began when the Shelden's sold their
>home in 1979, but took back a deed of trust from the buyer -- an
>arrangement that made the Shelden's a mortgage holder on the house.
>
> Four years later the buyer was arrested and convicted of
>running an interstate prostitution ring. His property, including the
>home on which the Shelden's held the mortgage, was forfeited. The
>criminal, pending his appeal, went to jail, but the government allowed
>his family to live in the home rent-free.
>
> Panicked when they read about the arrest in the newspaper, the
>Shelden's discovered they couldn't forclose against the government and
>couldn't collect mortgage payments from the criminal.
>
> After tortuous court appearances, the Shelden's got back the
>home in 1987, but discovered it was so severelt damaged while in
>government control that they can now stick their hands between the
>bricks near the front door.
>
> The home the Shelden's sold in 1979 for $289,000 was valued at
>$115,500 in 1987 and now needs nearly $500,000 in repairs, the
>Sheldens say, chiefly from uncorrected drainage problems that caused a
>retaining wall to let loose and twist apart the main house.
>
> Disgusted, they returned to court, saying their Fifth
>Amaendment rights had been violated. The amendment prohibits the
>taking of private property for public use without just compensation.
>Their attorney, Brenda Grantland of Washington, D.C., argues that when
>the government seized the property but failed to sell it promptly and
>pay off the Sheldens, it violated their rights.
>
> Between 1983 and today, the Sheldens have defended their
>mortgage through every type of court: forclosures, U.S. District
>Court, Bankruptcy, U.S. Claims.
>
> In January, 1990, a federal judge issued an opinion agreeing
>the Sheldens rights had been violated. The government asked the judge
>to reconsider, and he agreed. A final opinion has not been issued.
>
> "It's been a roller coaster," says Mrs. Shelden, 46. A
>secretary, she is the family's breadwinner. Shelden, 50, was
>permanently disbaledwhen he broke his back in 1976 while repairing
>his home. Because he was unable to work, the couple couldn't afford
>the house, so they sold it -- the act that pitched them into their
>decade-long legal quagmire.
>
> They've tried to rent the damaged home to a family -- a real
>estate agent showed it 27 times with no takers -- then resorted to
>rewnting to college students, then room-by-room boarders. Finally,
>they and their children, ages 21 and 16, moved back in.
>
> "We owe Brenda (Grantland) thousands at this point, but she's
>really been a doll," says Shelden. "Without people like her, people
>like us wouldn't stand a chance."--
>---------
>Shawn Valentine Hernan |Wizard-wanna-be
>Computing and Information Services|Systems & Networks
>University of Pittsburgh |[email protected]
>(412) 624-6425 |[email protected]
% ====== Internet headers and postmarks (see DECWRL::GATEWAY.DOC) ======
Received: by mts-gw.pa.dec.com; id AA10086; Sun, 25 Aug 91 14:04:16 -0700
To: gonzalez%[email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Pittsburgh Press Series - Article 3
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 16:54:27 -0400
From: [email protected]
>From: [email protected] (Shawn V. Hernan)
>Subject: The Pittsburgh Press Coverage of the War on Drugs, part IV
>Date: 16 Aug 91 10:10:01 GMT
>Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Computing & Information Services
>
>[...]
>This article was the HEADLINE on the FRONT PAGE of the Wednesday, Aug
>14, 1991, Pittsburgh Press.
>
>- -----------------------------------------------
>
> P R E S U M E D G U I L T Y
> The law's victims in the war on drugs
>
> Crime pays big for informats in forfeitures
>
>By Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
>The Pittsburgh Press
>
>Part Four: The informants
>
>They snitch at all levels, from the Hell's Angel whose
>testimony across the country has made him into a millionaire, to the
>Kirksville, Mo., informant who worked for the equivalent of a
>fast-food joint's hourly wage.
>
>The snitch for al reasons, from criminals who do it in return
>for lighter sentences to private citizens motivated by
>civic-mindedness.
>
>But it's only with the recent boom in forfeiture that paid
>informants began snithching for a hefty cut of the take.
>
>With the spread of forfeiture actions has come a new, and some
>say problematic, practice: guaranteeing police informats that if their
>tips result in a forfeiture, the informants will get a percentage of
>the proceeds.
>
>And that makes crime pay. Big.
>
>The Asset Forfeiture Fund of the U.S. Justice Department last
>year gave $24 million to informats as their share of forfeited items.
>It has $22 million earmarked this year.
>
>while plenty of those payments go to informats who match the
>stereotype of a shady, sinister opportunist, many are average people
>you could meet on any given day in an airport, bus terminal or train
>station.
>
>In fact, if you travel often, you have likeley met them --
>whether you knew it or not.
>
>Counter clerks notice how people buy tickets. Cash? A one-way
>trip?
>
>Operators of X-ray machines watch for "suspicios" shadows and
>not only for outlines of weapons, which is what signs at checkpoints
>say they're scanning. They look for money, "suspicios" amounts that
>can be called to the attention of law enforcement -- and maybe net a
>reward for the operator.
>
>Police affadavits and court testimony in several cities show
>clerks for large package handlers, including United Parcel Service and
>Continental Airlines Quick Pak, open "suspicious" packages and alert
>police to what they find. To do the same thing, police would need a
>search warrant.
>
>At 16 major airports, drug agents, counter and baggage
>personnel, and management reveal an underground economy running off
>seizures and forfeitures.
>
>All but one of the airports' drug interdiction teams reward
>private employees who pass along reports about suspicios activity.
>Typically, they get 10% of the value of whatever is found.
>
>The Greater Pittsburgh International Airport team does not and
>questions the propriety of the practice.
>
>Under federal and most states' laws. forfeiture proceeds return
>to the law enforcement agency that builds the case. Those agencies
>also control the rewards of informants.
>
>The arrangement means both police and the informants on whom
>they rely now have a financial incentive to seize a person's goods --
>a mix that may be too intoxicating, says Lt. Norbert Kowalski.
>
>He runs Greater Pitt's joint 11-person Allegheny County
>Police-Pennsylvania State Police interdiction team.
>
>"Obviously, we want all the help we can get in stopping these
>drug traffickers. But having a publicized program that pays airport or
>airline employees to in effect, be whistle-blowers, may be pushing
>what's proper law enforcement to the limit," he says.
>
>He worries that the system might encourage unnecessary random
>searches.
>
>His team checked passengers arriving from 4,230 flights last
>year. Yet even with it's avowed cautious approach, the team stopped
>527 people but netted only 49 arrests.
>
>At Denver's Stapleton Airport -- where most of the drug team's
>cases start with informant tips -- officers also made 49 arrests last
>year. But they stopped about 2,000 people for questioning, estimates
>Capt. Rudy Sandoval, commander of the city's Vice and Drug Control
>Bureau.
>
>As Kowalski sees it, the public vests authority in police with
>the expectation that they will use it legally and judiciously. The
>public can't get those same assurances from police designees, like
>counter clerks, says Kowalski.
>
>With money as an inducement, "you run the risk of distorting
>the system, and that can infringe on the rights of travellers. If
>someone knows they can get a good bit of money by turning someone in,
>then they may imagine seeing or hearing things that aren't there. What
>happens when you get to court?"
>
>In Nashville, that's not much of an issue. Juries rarely get
>to hear from informants.
>
>Police who work the airports deliberately delay paying
>informants until a case has been resolved "because we don't want these
>tipsters to have to testify. If we don't pay them until the case is
>closed they don't have to risk going to court," says Capt. Judy
>Bawcum, commander of the vice division for the Nashville Police
>Department.
>
>That means their motivation can't be questioned.
>
>Bawcum says it may appear the airport informats are working
>solely for the money, but she believes there's more to it. "I admit
>these (X-ray) guards are getting paid less than burger flippers at
>McDonalds and the promise of 10 percent of $50,000 or whatever is
>attractive. But to refuse to help us is not a progressive way of
>thinking," says Bawcum. "This is a public service."
>
>But not all companies share the view that their employees
>should be public servants. Package handling companies and Wackenhut,
>the X-ray checkpoint security firm, refuse to allow Nashville police
>to use their employees as informants.
>
>"They're so fearful a promise of a reward will prompt their
>people to concentrate on looking for drugs instead of looking for
>weapons," says Bawcum.
>
>Far from being uncomfortable with the notion of citizen-cops,
>Bawcum says her department relies on them. "We need airport employees
>working for us because we've only got a very small handful of officers,"
>at the airport, she says.
>
>For her, the challenge comes in sustaining enthusiasm,
>especially when federal agencies like the DEA are "way too slow paying
>out." Civic duty carries only so far. "It's hard to keep them watching
>when they have to wait for those rewards. We can't lose that
>incentive."
>
>Most drug teams hold tight the details of how their system
>works and how much individual informats earn, preferring to keep their
>public service private.
>
>But in a Denver court case, attorney Alexander DeSalvo
>obtained photocopies of poice affadavits about tipsters and copies of
>three checks payable to a Continental airline clerk, Melissa Furtner.
>The checks, from the U.S. Treasury and Denver County, total $5,834 for
>the period from September 1989 to August 1990.
>
>Ms. Furtner, reached by phone at her home, was flustered by
>questions about the checks.
>
>"What do you want to know about the rewards? I can't talk
>about any of it. It's not something I'm supposed to talk about. I
>don't feel comfortable with this at all." She then hung up.
>
>As hefty as the payments to private citizens can be, the are
>pin money caompared to the paychecks drawn by professional informants.
>
>
>Among the best paid of all: convicted drug dealers, and
>self-confessed users.
>
>Anthony Tait, a Hell's Angel and admitted drug user who has
>been a cooperating witness for the FBI since 1985, earned nerly $1
>million for information he provided between 1985 and 1988, according
>to a copy of Trait's payment schedule and FBI contract obtained by the
>Pittsburgh Press.
>
>Of his $1 million, $250,000 was his share of the value of
>assets forfeited as a result of his cooperation. His money came from
>four sources. FBI officers in Anchorage and San Francisco; the State
>of California, and the federal forfeiture fund.
>
>Likewise, in a November 1990 case in Pittsburgh, the
>government paid a former drug kingpin handsomely.
>
>Testimony shows that Edward Vaughn of suburban San Francisco
>earned $40,000 in salary and expenses between August 1989 and October
>1990 working for DEA, drew an additional $500 a month from the U.S.
>Marshall Service and was promised a 25% cut of any forfeited goods.
>
>Vaughn had run a multi-million dollar international drug
>smuggling ring, been a federal fugitive, and twice served prison time
>before aranging an early parole and paid informant deal with the
>government, he said in court.
>
>As an informant, he said, he preferred arranging deals for
>drug agents that are known as reverse stings: the law enforcement
>agents pose as sellers and the targets bring cash for a buy. Those
>deals take cash, but not dope, directly off the streets. In those
>stings, he said, the cash would be forfeited and Vaught would get his
>pre-arranged quarter-share.
>
>His testimony in Pittsburgh resulted in one man being found
>guilty of conspiracy to distrubute marijuana. The jury acquited the
>other defendant saying they believed Vaughn had entrapped him by
>persuing him so aggresively to make a dope deal.
>
>The practice of giving informats a share of forfeited proceeds
>goes on so discreetly that Richard Wintory, an Oklahoma prosecutor and
>forfeiture proponent who until recently headed the National Drug
>Prosecution Center in Alexandria, Va., says, "I'm not aware of any
>agency that pays commissions on forfeited items to informants."
>
>
>Although the federal forfeiture program funnels millions of
>dollars to informants, it does not set policy at the top about how --
>or how much -- to pay.
>
>"Decisions about how to persue investigations within the
>guidlines of appropriate and legal behavior are best left to the
>people in the field," says George Terwilliger III, the deputy attorney
>general who heads the Justice department's forfeiture program.
>
>That hands-off approach filters to local offices, such as
>Pittsburgh, where U.S. Attorney Thomas Corbett says the discussion of
>whether to give informants a cut of any take "is a philisophical
>argument. I won't put myself in the middle of it."
>
>The abscence of regulations spawns "privateers and junior
>G-men," says Steven Sherick, a defense attorney in Tucson, Ariz., who
>recently recovered $9,000 for John P. Gray of Rutland, Vt., after a
>UPS employee found it in a package and called police.
>
>Gray, says Sherick, is "an ececentric older guy who doesn't
>use anything but cash." In March, 1990, Gray mailed a friend
>hand-money for a piece of Arizona retirement property Gray had scouted
>during an earlier trip West, says court records. The court ordered the
>money returned because the state couldn't prove the cash was gained
>illegaly.
>
>Expanding payments to private citizens, particularly on a
>sliding scale rather than a fixed fee, raises unsavory possibilities,
>says Eric E. Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation,
>a think tank in Washington, D.C.
>
>Major racketeers and criminal enterprises were the initioal
>targets of forfeiture, but its use has steadily expanded until it now
>catches people who have never been accused of crime but lose their
>property anyway.
>
>"You can win a forfeiture case without charging someone," says
>Sterling. "You can win even after they've been acquited. And now, on
>top of that, you can have informants tailoring their tips to the
>quality of the thing that will be seized.
>
>"What paid informant in their right mind is going to turn over
>a crack house -- which may be destroying an inner city neighborhood --
>when he can turn over information about a nice, suburban spread that
>will pay off big when it comes time to get his share?" asks Sterling.
>
>- -----------
>
>
>- --
>Shawn Valentine Hernan |Wizard-wanna-be
>Computing and Information Services|Systems & Networks
>University of Pittsburgh |[email protected]
>(412) 624-6425 |[email protected]
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
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Received: by mts-gw.pa.dec.com; id AA10094; Sun, 25 Aug 91 14:04:19 -0700
To: gonzalez%[email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Pittsburgh Press Series - Article 4
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 91 16:55:18 -0400
From: [email protected]
|