BluesStringer
Les Brers
More civil forfeiture abuse in the news. Would've put this in a recent thread except one now-(apparently)-banned poster made it go sideways and it got locked. Now cops in Oklahoma are stealing money from churches and charities (though there is a good-news Update at the end). Read it and weap:
By Link Removed April 25
Eh Wah had been on the road for 12 hours when he saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror.
The 40-year-old Texas man, a refugee from Burma who became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago, was heading home to Dallas to check on his family. He was on a break from touring the country for months as a volunteer manager for the Klo & Kweh Music Team, a Christian rock ensemble from Burma, also known as Myanmar. The group was touring the United States to raise funds for a Christian college in Burma and an orphanage in Thailand.
Eh Wah managed the band's finances, holding on to the cash proceeds it raised from ticket and merchandise sales at concerts. By the time he was stopped in Oklahoma, the band had held concerts in 19 cities across the United States, raising money via Link Removed.
The sheriff's deputies in Muskogee County, Okla., pulled Eh Wah over for Link Removed about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27. The deputies started asking questions — a lot of them. And at some point, they brought out a drug-sniffing dog, which alerted on the car. That's when they found the cash, Link Removed.
There was the roughly $33,000 from ticket sales and donations, much of it earmarked for the religious college back in Burma, according to Eh Wah and the band members.
There was the $1,000 in cash donations to the orphanage in Thailand, small bills bundled in two or three dozen sealed envelopes with the orphanage's name written on them.
There was $8,000 in cash from the band's CD and souvenir sales. A $9,000 cash gift to one of the band's members from his family and friends in Buffalo — cash that Eh Wah says he didn't even know was in the blue and white gift bag he had been asked to hold. And $2,000 in cash for Eh Wah and the band's incidental expenses on the trip: meals and tolls, for example.
All told, the deputies found $53,000 in cash in Eh Wah's car that night. Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson said he couldn't comment on the particulars of Eh Wah's case because of the open investigation, but it is clear from Link Removed that the officers didn't like Eh Wah's explanation for how he got the cash. "Inconsistent stories," the affidavit notes. Despite the positive alert from the drug-sniffing dog, no drugs, paraphernalia or weapons were found. Just the cash.
They took Eh Wah to the police station for more questioning. They let him drive his own car there, with deputies' vehicles in front of and behind him the whole way. They interrogated him for several hours.
"I just couldn't believe it," Eh Wah said in an interview. "An officer was telling me that 'you are going to jail tonight.' And I don’t know what to think. What did I do that would make me go to jail? I didn’t do anything. Why is he saying that?"
Eh Wah tried to explain himself, but he had difficulty because English isn't his first language. He says he had a hard time understanding the officers, and they had a hard time understanding him. He told them about the band and his role with it and how he had been entrusted with the cash. He even had the officers call one of the band's leaders, Saw Marvellous Soe, who had decamped to Miami while the band was on a break.
Marvellous saw Eh Wah's number on his phone, but when he answered, he was surprised to hear someone speaking with a thick Southern drawl that he could barely understand — "like in the movies," Marvellous said in an interview.
"The police officer started asking questions," Marvellous recalled. "I explained: 'We are a music team. We came here for a tour.'" Marvellous tried to explain that the band was from Burma.
"He kept telling me, 'You are wrong, you are wrong,'" Marvellous said. "Everything I said, [he said,] 'You are wrong.' I said: 'We are doing a good thing! And now you are accusing us of being like a drug dealer or something like that.'"
After that phone call, Eh Wah began to realize that no matter what he did or said, he wouldn't be able to satisfy the officers' questions. "I realized that they were seizing all of the money. I was like, 'This can't be happening.' But I didn't know what to do."
The officers ended up taking all of the money — all $53,249 of it. "Possession of drug proceeds," the Link Removed reads. But they let Eh Wah go. They didn't charge him with a crime that night, instead sending him back on the road about 12:30 a.m., with the broken tail light.
What happened to Eh Wah is known as civil asset forfeiture. It comes from a relatively obscure corner of the law that allows authorities to seize cash and property from people they suspect of a crime. In most states, and under federal law, authorities get to keep the proceeds regardless of whether the person is ever convicted, or even charged, with criminal wrongdoing.
Under civil forfeiture, the burden of proof is on the property owner to prove their innocence to get their stuff back. This turns the common criminal-law principle on its head: When it comes to civil forfeiture, you are guilty until proven innocent.
Two years ago Link Removed shined a spotlight on the practice, finding that, since Sept. 11, 2001, more than $2.5 billion in cash seizures had occurredon the nation's highways without either a search warrant or an indictment. Those findings prompted Link Removed at the federal level.
In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, an aggressive brand of policing called "highway interdiction," which involves authorities seizing money and property during traffic stops, has grown in popularity. Thousands of people not charged with crimes are left fighting legal battles to regain their money. (Gabe Silverman/The Washington Post)
But the forfeitures uncovered by The Post investigation, and the reforms taken to limit them, happened under the auspices of federal law. There is a completely different universe of forfeiture activity that happens strictly under state law.
Oklahoma has some of the most permissive forfeiture laws in the nation, according to a 2015 report by the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm. The group gave the state a D-minus on its civil forfeiture laws, citing no conviction required to forfeit, poor protections for innocent property owners and a statute that allows up to 100 percent of forfeiture proceeds to go directly back to law enforcement, creating a possible profit motive.
The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has been investigating the use of civil forfeiture in the state. Brady Henderson, the group's legal director, said in an interview that Oklahoma law enforcement agencies often focus their efforts on the routes where cash from drug transactions typically travels, rather than the routes the drugs themselves travel.
n looking at the data of forfeitures along Interstate 40, which runs east to west through the state, "we definitely see a huge disparity of folks on those interstates focusing on the westbound travel, which tends to be the money here in Oklahoma," Henderson said.
In essence, he says, authorities are letting the drugs get to their destinations and be sold and used so that police can grab the money from the drug sales on the return trip. This mirrors the behavior that watchdog groups and news organizations have observed in other states, such as Tennessee.
"If the whole notion is that drugs are destructive, that they hurt people, why are we letting the drugs hurt people?" he asked. "We are deliberately letting the drugs get to their final destination, get sold, get used, and in some cases letting someone die of an overdose."
The road that Eh Wah was traveling — U.S. Route 69 — often carries traffic from the drug trade, according to Pearson, the Muskogee County sheriff. Pearson said in an interview that although he is aware that other sheriff's departments focus their efforts on the southbound cash side of the highway instead of the northbound side where the drugs travel, that's not the practice in his department. "We work both sides of the highway," he said.
With Route 69 running north-south and Interstate 40 running east-west through the county, drug trafficking is a big problem in the area, he said.
"I'm not in favor of taking away anyone’s civil rights or anything like that," Pearson said. But, he noted, "this is still our community, and when they’re bringing their drugs in, we’re going to do everything in our power to stop it."
In an interview, Eh Wah's attorney, Dan Alban, noted that while the deputies took all of the cash, they left Eh Wah a check written out to him for $300 from a family friend.
"If they really thought these were drug proceeds and they thought he was a drug trafficker, why would they give back a check that they thought was drug proceeds?" Alban asked. But, he said, "if the real purpose of the stop was to increase revenue, there's no point in keeping the check because they can't cash the check."
Muskogee County authorities eventually charged Eh Wah with a crime, five weeks after he was stopped. They issued a warrant for his arrest April 5, for the crime of "acquir[ing] proceeds from drug activity, a felony." For probable cause, Link Removed the positive alert from the drug dog, "inconsistent stories" and said Eh Wah was "unable to confirm the money was his."
Drug-sniffing dogs are notoriously prone to giving false positives. A Chicago Tribune study of three years worth of drug dog data found that the animals' positive alerts led to the discovery of drugs only 44 percent of the time. A controlled study by researchers from the University of California at Davis found that detection dogs gave false positives 85 percent of the time.
(Continued in next post.....)
Link Removed
By Link Removed April 25
Eh Wah had been on the road for 12 hours when he saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror.
The 40-year-old Texas man, a refugee from Burma who became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago, was heading home to Dallas to check on his family. He was on a break from touring the country for months as a volunteer manager for the Klo & Kweh Music Team, a Christian rock ensemble from Burma, also known as Myanmar. The group was touring the United States to raise funds for a Christian college in Burma and an orphanage in Thailand.
Eh Wah managed the band's finances, holding on to the cash proceeds it raised from ticket and merchandise sales at concerts. By the time he was stopped in Oklahoma, the band had held concerts in 19 cities across the United States, raising money via Link Removed.
The sheriff's deputies in Muskogee County, Okla., pulled Eh Wah over for Link Removed about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27. The deputies started asking questions — a lot of them. And at some point, they brought out a drug-sniffing dog, which alerted on the car. That's when they found the cash, Link Removed.
There was the roughly $33,000 from ticket sales and donations, much of it earmarked for the religious college back in Burma, according to Eh Wah and the band members.
There was the $1,000 in cash donations to the orphanage in Thailand, small bills bundled in two or three dozen sealed envelopes with the orphanage's name written on them.
There was $8,000 in cash from the band's CD and souvenir sales. A $9,000 cash gift to one of the band's members from his family and friends in Buffalo — cash that Eh Wah says he didn't even know was in the blue and white gift bag he had been asked to hold. And $2,000 in cash for Eh Wah and the band's incidental expenses on the trip: meals and tolls, for example.
All told, the deputies found $53,000 in cash in Eh Wah's car that night. Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson said he couldn't comment on the particulars of Eh Wah's case because of the open investigation, but it is clear from Link Removed that the officers didn't like Eh Wah's explanation for how he got the cash. "Inconsistent stories," the affidavit notes. Despite the positive alert from the drug-sniffing dog, no drugs, paraphernalia or weapons were found. Just the cash.
They took Eh Wah to the police station for more questioning. They let him drive his own car there, with deputies' vehicles in front of and behind him the whole way. They interrogated him for several hours.
"I just couldn't believe it," Eh Wah said in an interview. "An officer was telling me that 'you are going to jail tonight.' And I don’t know what to think. What did I do that would make me go to jail? I didn’t do anything. Why is he saying that?"
Eh Wah tried to explain himself, but he had difficulty because English isn't his first language. He says he had a hard time understanding the officers, and they had a hard time understanding him. He told them about the band and his role with it and how he had been entrusted with the cash. He even had the officers call one of the band's leaders, Saw Marvellous Soe, who had decamped to Miami while the band was on a break.
Marvellous saw Eh Wah's number on his phone, but when he answered, he was surprised to hear someone speaking with a thick Southern drawl that he could barely understand — "like in the movies," Marvellous said in an interview.
"The police officer started asking questions," Marvellous recalled. "I explained: 'We are a music team. We came here for a tour.'" Marvellous tried to explain that the band was from Burma.
"He kept telling me, 'You are wrong, you are wrong,'" Marvellous said. "Everything I said, [he said,] 'You are wrong.' I said: 'We are doing a good thing! And now you are accusing us of being like a drug dealer or something like that.'"
After that phone call, Eh Wah began to realize that no matter what he did or said, he wouldn't be able to satisfy the officers' questions. "I realized that they were seizing all of the money. I was like, 'This can't be happening.' But I didn't know what to do."
The officers ended up taking all of the money — all $53,249 of it. "Possession of drug proceeds," the Link Removed reads. But they let Eh Wah go. They didn't charge him with a crime that night, instead sending him back on the road about 12:30 a.m., with the broken tail light.
What happened to Eh Wah is known as civil asset forfeiture. It comes from a relatively obscure corner of the law that allows authorities to seize cash and property from people they suspect of a crime. In most states, and under federal law, authorities get to keep the proceeds regardless of whether the person is ever convicted, or even charged, with criminal wrongdoing.
Under civil forfeiture, the burden of proof is on the property owner to prove their innocence to get their stuff back. This turns the common criminal-law principle on its head: When it comes to civil forfeiture, you are guilty until proven innocent.
Two years ago Link Removed shined a spotlight on the practice, finding that, since Sept. 11, 2001, more than $2.5 billion in cash seizures had occurredon the nation's highways without either a search warrant or an indictment. Those findings prompted Link Removed at the federal level.
But the forfeitures uncovered by The Post investigation, and the reforms taken to limit them, happened under the auspices of federal law. There is a completely different universe of forfeiture activity that happens strictly under state law.
Oklahoma has some of the most permissive forfeiture laws in the nation, according to a 2015 report by the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm. The group gave the state a D-minus on its civil forfeiture laws, citing no conviction required to forfeit, poor protections for innocent property owners and a statute that allows up to 100 percent of forfeiture proceeds to go directly back to law enforcement, creating a possible profit motive.
The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has been investigating the use of civil forfeiture in the state. Brady Henderson, the group's legal director, said in an interview that Oklahoma law enforcement agencies often focus their efforts on the routes where cash from drug transactions typically travels, rather than the routes the drugs themselves travel.
n looking at the data of forfeitures along Interstate 40, which runs east to west through the state, "we definitely see a huge disparity of folks on those interstates focusing on the westbound travel, which tends to be the money here in Oklahoma," Henderson said.
In essence, he says, authorities are letting the drugs get to their destinations and be sold and used so that police can grab the money from the drug sales on the return trip. This mirrors the behavior that watchdog groups and news organizations have observed in other states, such as Tennessee.
"If the whole notion is that drugs are destructive, that they hurt people, why are we letting the drugs hurt people?" he asked. "We are deliberately letting the drugs get to their final destination, get sold, get used, and in some cases letting someone die of an overdose."
The road that Eh Wah was traveling — U.S. Route 69 — often carries traffic from the drug trade, according to Pearson, the Muskogee County sheriff. Pearson said in an interview that although he is aware that other sheriff's departments focus their efforts on the southbound cash side of the highway instead of the northbound side where the drugs travel, that's not the practice in his department. "We work both sides of the highway," he said.
With Route 69 running north-south and Interstate 40 running east-west through the county, drug trafficking is a big problem in the area, he said.
"I'm not in favor of taking away anyone’s civil rights or anything like that," Pearson said. But, he noted, "this is still our community, and when they’re bringing their drugs in, we’re going to do everything in our power to stop it."
In an interview, Eh Wah's attorney, Dan Alban, noted that while the deputies took all of the cash, they left Eh Wah a check written out to him for $300 from a family friend.
"If they really thought these were drug proceeds and they thought he was a drug trafficker, why would they give back a check that they thought was drug proceeds?" Alban asked. But, he said, "if the real purpose of the stop was to increase revenue, there's no point in keeping the check because they can't cash the check."
Muskogee County authorities eventually charged Eh Wah with a crime, five weeks after he was stopped. They issued a warrant for his arrest April 5, for the crime of "acquir[ing] proceeds from drug activity, a felony." For probable cause, Link Removed the positive alert from the drug dog, "inconsistent stories" and said Eh Wah was "unable to confirm the money was his."
Drug-sniffing dogs are notoriously prone to giving false positives. A Chicago Tribune study of three years worth of drug dog data found that the animals' positive alerts led to the discovery of drugs only 44 percent of the time. A controlled study by researchers from the University of California at Davis found that detection dogs gave false positives 85 percent of the time.