[HN Gopher] DEA passenger searches halted after watchdog finds s...
___________________________________________________________________
DEA passenger searches halted after watchdog finds signs of rights
violations
Author : perihelions
Score : 157 points
Date : 2024-11-26 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nbcnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nbcnews.com)
| walrus01 wrote:
| As always when this sort of topic comes up, "don't talk to the
| police": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
|
| I wish that American high schools would teach people what their
| actual 4th amendment rights are. There's certain situations you
| cannot avoid being searched, and there's ones where you're fully
| within your rights to refuse.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I agree, but how ridiculous is the overreach of police when we
| start suggesting that schools include it in curriculum
| walrus01 wrote:
| Indeed, though I would also hope that it could be included in
| a more general and varied curriculum about the constitution
| and bill of rights, all other amendments, civil rights act,
| etc.
| bdowling wrote:
| It's a joke because most American schools are run by the
| government.
| vundercind wrote:
| Schools have a lot of local autonomy and are among the
| easiest institutions to influence, for non-rich citizens.
| Getting your local schools to include more coverage of
| rights when encountering the police in the curriculum is
| among the easiest outcomes to pursue as far as changing
| what "the government" is doing.
|
| ... _if_ enough other people in your local community agree
| with you.
| criddell wrote:
| And the government is selected by you and your neighbors.
| logicchains wrote:
| Only if you live in a swing county of a swing state.
| brewdad wrote:
| Sorry but the citizens of Detroit don't select the school
| board in Alpena. Too many Americans focus on a
| Presidential election every four years that gets decided
| by a couple hundred thousand people in 4 or 5 states and
| ignore all of the elections that actually impact their
| day to day lives.
|
| Get involved in your local elections, even if only
| becoming an informed citizen. Those are the elections
| where you can make a difference.
| wk_end wrote:
| It's sort of a foundational principle of the American system
| that power will always overreach, and adversarial checks and
| balances are always required to keep power in line. Saying
| it's ridiculous to teach kids about their rights is, in that
| light, roughly comparable to saying it's ridiculous that the
| government produces documents (i.e. the Bill of Rights)
| asserting what it can't do. Far from being ridiculous it's
| about as fundamentally American as it gets.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Quit the hyperbole. This seems like a basic Civics class
| topic.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Forget schools, we already have to talk to kids about how to
| act around the police like they are some dangerous animal.
| Except if they were some dangerous animal we would have done
| the sensible thing and shot them all already.
| rolph wrote:
| it all starts in preschool, when officers are modeled as
| universal friends that always help.
| barbazoo wrote:
| As a somewhat recent immigrant to Canada, would the consensus
| be that this applies here as well?
| walrus01 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and.
| ..
|
| There is also a whole body of precedents and case law in
| canada specific to charter rights, broadly similar to US
| rights, but with different terminology.
| fusivdh wrote:
| In my experience with both countries, American constitutional
| rights are stronger, but Canadian police are less corrupt
| (but universally unpleasant)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Big difference in Canada is that judges can be fully aware of
| an illegal unconstitutional search but convict you anyway
| from evidence collected from it if they feel like it.
|
| And fewer jury trials (positive or negative depending on your
| point of view), and the prosecutor is free to appeal a not
| guilty ruling.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| As walrus01 said, yes the 4th amendment has a almost word for
| word parallel in the CCRF, specifically section 8:
|
| 8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable
| search or seizure.
|
| However, it's important to know that the Canadian courts have
| interpreted the law differently then American courts.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_of_the_Canadian_Ch.
| ..
| int_19h wrote:
| Note further that Section 8 of CCRF is one of the sections
| that are subject to the "notwithstanding clause" (Section
| 33), meaning that either the federal parliament or the
| provincial legislature can enact laws in direct
| contravention to it, so long as they expressly declare it
| in the text of the law. Such "notwithstanding" declarations
| have a 5-year term, but legislature can renew them
| indefinitely.
|
| So, in practice, the most important parts of CCRF can be
| overridden by simple majority vote of the legislators.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Schools will never teach kids their rights to any useful or
| applicable extent because schools routinely operate in the gray
| area at the limits and creating a bunch of students who'll call
| them out on it would make their jobs harder. Same reason they
| don't do much to teach critical thinking.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Schools aren't really subject to the Fourth Amendment and
| students explicitly have lesser constitutional rights, so
| they don't really need to worry about gray areas or limits.
|
| The main problem with the suggestion is rather that
|
| 1. Schools typically _do_ teach students about their Fourth
| (among other) Amendment rights, usually in a high-school
| civics class at the very latest, many students just aren 't
| particularly interested or don't particularly care about
| paying attention in class.
|
| 2. Every time there's a skill or pool of knowledge many
| adults don't have we default to "They should really teach
| this in school instead of all the other stupid bullshit they
| waste their time on," but it turns out all the stupid
| bullshit they waste their time on is other skills or
| knowledge pools that people have, over the years, agreed that
| they should really teach in school. So either you're
| proposing that schools get more funding and students are kept
| there for more hours to teach all the additional skills you
| want students to come out with, or you need to choose a
| subject to cut, and rest assured that any particular subject
| you choose will have an existing group of advocates leap to
| its defense - if it didn't, it would have already been cut
| after Reaganomics, NCLB, the 2008 GFC, COVID19, or the
| numerous other occasions we've found opportunities to trim
| school budgets.
| indrora wrote:
| I don't know when you went to high school, but my entire
| district cut their civics course for being "irrelevant to
| the educational goals of the district".
|
| I was part of a group of students that did post-school
| discussions off-campus of civics with those interested,
| often discussing how it has become harder and harder for
| students to retain their rights in the public education
| system.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Are there really state standards that don't include the
| bill of rights in any of civics/US Gov/US History?? I
| know US public educational varies a lot based on state
| and locality, but that IS a surprise.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The malcom in the middle episode about the ACLU or Rock and
| roll high school are classic examples of this.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I am of the opinion that "lockdown" is illegal detention, and
| conditioning them from a very young age to accept it.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I do celebrate STFU Friday, every day, but airports are kind of
| a different situation.
|
| If they decide to detain you for a couple hours, you're gonna
| miss the plane and you aren't going to get a refund or a
| transfer or whatever. The is so much incentive to play along
| that doesn't exist at a basic traffic stop.
|
| https://youtu.be/uqo5RYOp4nQ much shorter version of your video
| :)
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| This is yet another insane thing. If you're detained and not
| charged, you should automatically be given a transfer, no
| questions asked - and it should be explicitly mandated so.
| acdha wrote:
| One big problem here is that your ability to insist on your 4th
| amendment rights varies considerably. The further you are from
| all of affluent, straight, white, and male the more likely it
| is that you'll experience pressure or retaliation if you
| persist in not cooperating, and in extreme cases that includes
| illegal detention, violence, or fabrication of evidence.
|
| If your life is a repeating story of having to situationally
| decide where you're likely to fall on that scale, you're
| probably going to acquiesce because it's the least stressful
| option - especially in this case where the easiest retaliation
| is almost unprovable by "accidentally" making you miss your
| flight.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There's also almost no recourse even if your rights are
| violated. If you are lucky any evidence gets excluded from a
| future trial. But what about some remedy? It is outrageously
| difficult to sue individual state police or state police
| departments. Federal agents are even more protected, with
| Bivens being slowly crushed into nothingness.
| bluGill wrote:
| They are targeting people who are already late. You can demand
| your 4th amendment rights, and after some "consultation" we
| will give them to you - but you will miss your flight. Or just
| let them search your bad, hope they don't take anything and you
| have a chance to get there on time.
|
| In short you don't really have the option to stand up for your
| rights.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Why now? These concerns have been being raised for decades.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There's been a few very blatant video-captured interactions
| specifically about the DEA at airports, so has refocused the
| lens on them. And in both cases, the videos are fairly
| thorough, high definition, so there's none of the usual "you
| didn't see the rest of the interaction and context that makes
| it reasonable" - instead blatant abuses of power by the DEA
| agents.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I would like to think that the heat of public perception is
| increasing but I'm not sure that's true. Seems like civil
| asset forfieture was a much more hot button issue 2-4yr ago
| and has kind of waned since. Maybe, hopefully, you're right.
| fn-mote wrote:
| Actually a key question.
|
| I assume there are politics involved that are not covered in
| the article.
|
| I would also be astounded to find that anything so simple as
| unilateral DOJ action, no executive order, no consent decree,
| would be effective in changing this behavior.
| mrandish wrote:
| I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially
| egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which
| were likely to be won.
|
| Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to
| prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can
| always bring back similar measures in different forms or with
| different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond
| their control.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >I suspect the trigger was the realization recent
| especially egregious cases were being prepared for court
| cases, which were likely to be won.
|
| I should've thought of this. Can you reference a specific
| case? I'd like to follow it.
|
| >Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to
| prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can
| always bring back similar measures in different forms or
| with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is
| beyond their control.
|
| I need to review the federal jurisprudence on this. IIRC
| there were some finer points that changed so "don't worry
| we changed the rule" is no longer as good a defense as it
| once was and that's part of what led to Bruen making it
| into court in the first place.
| mrandish wrote:
| > Can you reference a specific case? I'd like to follow
| it.
|
| In addition to the cases cited in the article, I've seen
| some other scary sounding incidents in MSM reporting
| recently but I didn't bookmark any. My thought was
| triggered by the article mentioning the Institute for
| Justice filing a class action which indicates there are a
| lot and that IfJ feels they have strong grounds.
|
| > "The IG report highlighted an incident documented in a
| video released four months ago by the Institute for
| Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm which is
| pursuing a class action lawsuit against the DEA."
|
| I agree that "we changed our policy" doesn't legally
| change their existing liability but it'll at least stop
| more incidents being added and I think it probably does
| influence the media optics as well as a judge's eventual
| corrective order (if it gets that far). Plus IfJ will
| certainly get discovery on all the relevant data
| including searches, confiscations, claims and the actual
| amount of criminal activity discovered (which is probably
| almost none as Justice Dept's own IG cited the lack of
| effectiveness). Now at least those likely shocking
| statistics will have a hard stop date a few years in the
| past by the time it comes out.
|
| Additionally, while this decision was probably being
| deliberated before the election, it may have been
| accelerated and/or influenced by the outcome of the
| election simply because the DEA is now less certain
| they'll have leadership in the Justice Dept, Homeland
| Security, etc willing to circle the wagons and stonewall
| to defend these practices.
| jabart wrote:
| The article clearly states the below along with numerous other
| issues.
|
| "That [airline] employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage
| of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of
| thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is
| problematic, investigators concluded."
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This is the "proximate cause" but anyone who "knows the
| world" knows that arbitrary power leads to corrupt abuse of
| this sort quite directly. IE, sure they stopped cause they
| "found problems" but one would expect such problems existed
| from the start and are inherent to a system of seizing cash
| on suspicion of ... something.
|
| Which is to say it's not that no one read these explanations
| but that such explanations aren't meaningful and the real
| answer is politics as many have mentioned in other comments.
| That is to say, the mystery is what exact politics lead to
| this pull back now.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Screw off with the implication that I didn't read it. The
| stated reason is likely BS. Various parties have been getting
| kickbacks of various types for decades but now it's a
| problem? I'll restate my question, why now?
| brewdad wrote:
| Because no one has a time machine to go back and change the
| past.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Holy cow, "problematic" is an understatement. So the airline
| employee gives a list of people who don't have enough time to
| assert their rights, the DEA confiscated any cash they found,
| and then gave what sounds like a kickback.
|
| 1. The data breach of personal information from the airline
| to the DEA.
|
| 2. The DEA performing any search at all. I can't imagine a
| world in which "Booked a flight on short notice" should be
| considered probable cause.
|
| 3. The DEA confiscating money. The unconstitutionality of
| civil forfeiture has been well discussed.
|
| 4. The DEA paying for the ongoing data breach. With payments
| "over several years", that isn't just a finder's fee, that's
| an ongoing business relationship.
|
| Egads.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, the IG quote in the article acknowledges that. Things like
| this depend on leadership and evidence. For the next couple of
| months, there's a deputy attorney general who's willing to look
| at that evidence and extrapolate the larger trend rather than
| dismissing things as freak one-off occurrences or the
| proverbial few bad apples. I would bet this has a lot to do
| with Biden's political career being over: Democrats tend to run
| from accusations of being "soft on crime", which means waiting
| for evidence to become overwhelming and while the DOJ is
| somewhat independent its senior leadership is generally going
| to be careful around sensitive topics.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| The violation of rights isn't great, the article also mentions
| seizing cash which may be just as bad or worse in some cases. One
| person cited in the article was traveling to purchase a truck and
| the deal fell through ($30k), an elderly man and his daughter had
| $82k siezed (why they were traveling with that much cash wasn't
| mentioned).
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" (why they were traveling with that much cash wasn't
| mentioned)"_
|
| You can read or watch their story here[0,1]. They're not shy
| about what happened to them--they sued the US government to get
| everything back (with the pro bono assistance of the nonprofit
| IJ).
|
| [0] https://ij.org/press-release/pittsburgh-retiree-sues-
| federal... ( _" Pittsburgh Retiree Sues Federal Government to
| Get His Life Savings Back"_ (2020))
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsre7I0UUJA ( _" DEA & TSA
| Take $82,000 Life Savings From Pittsburgh Retiree_")
|
| - _" Terry, 79, is a retired railroad engineer born and raised
| in Pittsburgh. For many years, he followed his parents' habit
| of hiding money in the basement of their home. When Terry moved
| out of his family home and into a smaller apartment, he became
| uncomfortable with keeping a large amount of cash. Last summer,
| when his daughter Rebecca was home for a family event, Terry
| asked her to take the money and open a new joint bank account
| that he could use to pay for dental work and to fix his truck,
| among other needs..."_
| plagiarist wrote:
| In a functioning justice system the government might be able
| to place a temporary hold on the money, but would need to
| promptly return it when declining to press charges or on an
| acquittal. Literal theft.
| Zak wrote:
| A temporary hold like that only seems just to me in a case
| where someone had been charged with a crime and the money
| is alleged too be evidence or proceeds of that crime. Civil
| forfeiture is a way for the government to enforce criminal
| laws with a lower standard of proof and fewer protections
| for the accused. That's a bad thing.
| bsimpson wrote:
| It's called Civil Asset Forfeiture (gov euphemism for said
| literal theft).
|
| I believe John Oliver did a piece on it when he first
| joined HBO.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| A functioning justice system in a free country has no
| legitimate reason to seize property without any prior
| suspicion of wrongdoing and an order from a court.
| julianeon wrote:
| You should be free to travel with 10MM cash if you want. If the
| government wants to claim it, they should file a lawsuit
| against you. Just taking it is Divine Right of Kings nonsense.
| fazeirony wrote:
| this right here. i hate this move to a cashless society and
| hate getting stink-eyed because i buy something with a $20
| bill. these seizures all but codify this.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| While I don't think it should be within the government's right
| to seize cash without reason, i can't imagine why you'd carry
| cash for such transactions and not a cashier's check. It also
| gives you some negotiating power because you can say 'we agreed
| on x, I brought a check for x, the price is x or I'm walking'.
| 1024core wrote:
| Because a cashier's check is for a fixed amount; you can't
| change its value on the spot without going through the whole
| process again.
|
| Suppose you show up to buy a truck with #30K in cash (the
| truck is listed for $30K). You inspect the truck, and find
| that the A/C needs to be fixed, which would cost you, say
| $3K. So you decide to split the repair cost with the seller,
| and now the truck will cost you $28.5K. If you have cash,
| this is simple: you just hand over $28.5K. But if you have a
| cashier's check?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| You walk. In that case, I would walk regardless because I
| would ask if there were any issues with the vehicle and if
| a problem with the A/C wasn't disclosed, what else wasn't
| disclosed?
|
| When I show up to buy a vehicle, the only thing I'm doing
| is taking it to a mechanic for a look over, and completing
| the purchase if it's all clear. _That 's it_. The time for
| disclosure and negotiation is over. Not negotiating things
| in person (as opposed to over email where I have it in
| writing) has saved me countless hours over the years and
| made buying things much more pleasant.
| fragmede wrote:
| Yeah, the smart move is to walk, but we're not all
| perfectly rational spherical car buyers. You've made all
| that time investment, and having cash and being adaptable
| is just easier.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > i can't imagine why you'd carry cash for such transactions
| and not a cashier's check.
|
| because people forge cashier's checks far more easily than
| they forge cash. I certainly wouldn't take one as payment for
| a truck without going to the issuing bank first and
| withdrawing the money (as cash). In which case, there is no
| need for the check.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| For smaller purchases, sure. For large purchases, I refuse
| to do business with anyone who insists I show up with
| thousands in cash. Even taking civil forfeiture out of the
| equation entirely, there's just too much that can go wrong.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| The last time I rented a home in the Bay area I paid
| first, last, damage deposit and pet deposit in cash
| (almost $15k). The reason was that I was changing banks
| after a dispute and didn't want my old bank snagging the
| money.
|
| The owner straight up asked me if I was a drug dealer
| though, so I see your point. I had to show him my tech
| company offer letter for him to believe me.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| No. I don't care why you "can't imagine it". Don't blame the
| victim.
| anonCoffee wrote:
| Do you have a threshold for where it is okay to blame the
| victim? Or is your goal purely to be intellectually
| dishonest?
| itishappy wrote:
| > In a management directive issued on Thursday, the Justice
| Department's Office of the Inspector General said it had been
| hearing complaints about the searches for years -- and had
| recently learned new information that suggested there were
| significant problems with them, including potential
| constitutional violations.
|
| For years... The recent info is (of course) a passenger recording
| their encounter.
|
| > The IG said investigators could not come to any conclusions
| about whether the searches involved racial profiling because the
| DEA does not collect data on all the people it stops -- only on
| the cases in which money is seized.
|
| Data on seizures seems like a solid start. Why don't they have
| data on searches?
|
| > "The Department has long been concerned -- and long received
| complaints -- about potential racial profiling in connection with
| cold consent encounters in transportation setting," the report
| said, adding that the DEA between 2000 and 2003 "collected
| consensual encounter data on every encounter in certain mass
| transportation facilities as part of a Department pilot project
| to examine the use of race in law enforcement operations."
|
| > But neither the DEA nor the Justice Department "drew any
| conclusions from the data collected about whether the consensual
| encounters were being conducted in an unbiased manner, and in
| 2003 the DEA terminated its data collection efforts," the report
| said, and "its consensual encounter activities continued."
|
| Complaints for years, yet decided to stop recording data...
| That's sketchy as hell.
|
| > The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline
| employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased
| flights 48 hours before departure.
|
| > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the
| cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of
| dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic,
| investigators concluded.
|
| "Fight crime with crime" seems to be a fairly widespread attitude
| amongst government agencies (reminded of the TSA article
| yesterday), but this seems particularly egregious.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228795
| ramblenode wrote:
| > Complaints for years, yet decided to stop recording data...
| That's sketchy as hell.
|
| The motivation could also be practical. Studies are canceled
| for a variety of reasons unrelated to the conclusion: flawed
| design, poor data collection process, data doesn't generalize,
| data isn't specific enough, study has run out of budget,
| something significant changed in the middle of the study, etc.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > something significant changed in the middle of the study
|
| "Oh shit! They're right. Our agents are bullies and thugs
| stealing from the citizens. Better stop looking"
| bsimpson wrote:
| I don't know where the government gets off on using "consensual
| encounters" as a euphemism for 4th Amendment violations.
| ericcumbee wrote:
| I watched the institute for justice video about this months
| ago. If that's a "consensual encounter" I don't think that
| word means what the dea thinks it means.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > I don't know where the government gets off...
|
| It's the next stop after "voluntary income tax system".
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I'd really like to know what airline had an employee doing
| this, so I can make sure to never do business with them again.
| rascul wrote:
| My guess is all of them.
| RA2lover wrote:
| The DOJ report on the findings (https://oig.justice.gov/sit
| es/default/files/reports/25-005_3...) mentions multiple
| airline employees were being used as confidential sources,
| so you might be right.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| That would make the most sense :/
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| So the airline sells a last minute ticket and after the
| customer pays, the airline's agent initiates steps to coerce
| the ticket holder from enjoying the travel he just purchased.
| All in the name of profit. Sounds unfair, deceptive and
| damaging to me, exactly the sort of thing that ruins
| reputations and balance sheets.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > That arrangement is problematic
|
| Understatement of the year.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >The Department has long been concerned -- and long received
| complaints -- about potential racial profiling in connection
| with cold consent encounters in transportation setting,"
|
| While it's useful that anything helps stop these grotesquely
| pervasive abortions of legality from happening, it's perverse
| that the main concern was a possibility of racial profiling.
|
| So if minority groups that cause bad political optics aren't
| being visibly targeted, then it's once again okay to
| arbitrarily rob legally innocent people under threat of
| violence, as a fucking government police agency no less?
|
| Also, "cold consent encounters" What a laughable euphemism for
| coercion and theft.
| chatmasta wrote:
| > Data on seizures seems like a solid start. Why don't they
| have data on searches?
|
| I thought the Supreme Court found that search _is_ seizure (of
| your person). Not that I would expect the DEA do categorize
| them equivalently, of course.
|
| (IANAL, but I do watch lot of YouTube videos.)
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Government to temporarily stop robbing people after watchdog
| determines that the way they rob people may be a violation of
| their civil rights as the law says that the police must rob
| people without regard to their membership in protected classes.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| Spider-Man pointing at himself meme.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Given that the war on drugs was such a massive failure (and seems
| to fail harder each year), I consider their continued existence
| to facilitate parallel reconstruction and bypass what protections
| we have from our government.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| From the perspective of preventing people from using drugs, it
| is a failure, but it is clear that was never the goal from the
| start. It is successful in systemically and extra-judiciously
| oppressing a lot of peoples, often to the benefit of the
| prison-industrial complex. The war on drugs has also benefitted
| the military-industrial complex and helped to quell leftist
| insurgencies in foreign countries, like Colombia.
|
| Wars against vague notions, like drugs or terror, let the
| government pinpoint its enemies and deal with them how they see
| fit.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| My brother was robbed of over $80k like this at an Amtrak station
| several years ago. They made up some story about following him
| from Chicago to Portland and it was from heroin sales.
|
| 1. He got on the train 3 states away from Chicago, I know this
| because I gave him a ride to the station.
|
| 2. He never had anything to do with heroin sales.
|
| They were charging him with 3 felonies of 10+ years each and
| eventually got a plea deal for them to keep the money and he had
| like a couple years probation. All for carrying some money on a
| train.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm sure he wasn't a heroin dealer, but why was your brother
| carrying $80k?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| It's a free country and people should be allowed to transport
| money with them. He was on his way back to Northern
| California to pay someone for some stuff that had been
| fronted + re-up
| tptacek wrote:
| _In cash_? Did you tell him "this is a bad idea, you
| should wire the money instead"? What if he had been mugged?
| What if he lost the suitcase? I arranged the transportation
| of $25,000 in cash (I sold a car, it was a gag, I was very
| young, and it was an extraordinarily bad idea that cost me
| thousands of dollars), and just as a physical object that's
| pretty big. Also: where did he get the cash from? I had
| trouble getting it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| At larger banks, there's usually a teller that has their
| own cubicle with a locked door. They buzz you in in and
| you ask for amounts > 1k.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Sure, nobody (here) would disagree that people should be
| able to carry as much cash as they want without fear of
| illegal search but the whole "he plead guilty and had
| multiple years of probation" rightly makes people wonder
| _what did he plead guilty to?_ since it clearly wasn't
| civil asset forfeiture if they charged him with criminal
| charges and then he plead guilty to criminal charges.
| edm0nd wrote:
| so it for was drugs, just not heroin.
| jjulius wrote:
| >He was on his way back to Northern California to pay
| someone for some stuff that had been fronted + re-up.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but this very much sounds like
| "drugs". If that's the case, your point about him never
| being involved in "heroin" sales is now just semantics,
| because he's still engaged, to some degree, in the movement
| of drugs between states.
| coolspot wrote:
| He was a cocaine dealer, not heroin dealer.
| pcl wrote:
| This sort of question should not need to be answered, or
| raised. Carrying a lot of money around should not be grounds
| for suspicion.
| rwmj wrote:
| Should the police take the money without cause? No. Can we
| question what he was up to? Yes. It's risky, as cash can be
| stolen from you with no recourse. It's also a very
| inconvenient way to pay someone, since it's physically
| large and would take a long time to count out.
| lanthade wrote:
| I think you are vastly over estimating the size of 80K
| USD in $100 bills. Each bundle of $10K is about 1/2"
| thick. You can easily carry 80K in 100's without looking
| out of place.
| tptacek wrote:
| It'll fit comfortably in a shoebox.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I think raising the question is just fine: if you _tell
| a story_ about someone carrying more money than most
| Americans ever have in their bank accounts in their entire
| lives, in cash, on their person, you 're describing
| something extraordinarily unusual.
|
| Again: I'm not saying he's a heroin dealer, and I said that
| specific to avoid this pointless preening about how it's
| everyone's right to carry large amounts of cash on them.
| Sure, I'm fine with that; in fact: I think you will find it
| difficult to find anyone to take the other side of that
| argument on HN (and HN is a big, complicated place, giving
| you some idea of just how banal that argument is.) So let's
| assume that's not what I'm talking about.
|
| If it helps, though this isn't really my intent, assume my
| subtextual allegation is that this story is copypasta.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >if you tell a story about someone carrying more money
| than most Americans ever have in their bank accounts in
| their entire lives, in cash, on their person, you're
| describing something extraordinarily unusual.
|
| I used to play poker semi-professionally. Traveling with
| upwards of $50k wasn't an uncommon thing at all among the
| people I knew.
|
| I knew a card counter who was detained at an airport
| carrying well in excess of $100k and, comically, the
| money and the inside of his bag were covered in white
| powder at the time. Because he was a nerdy jewish kid,
| they believed his story that it was powdered caffeine (it
| actually was) and sent him on his way.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There's a rather famous court case about civil asset
| forfeiture involving somebody who had just closed on
| their house for cash. Cops stopped the car, decided the
| money was dirty, stole it.
|
| Carrying a ton of cash is unusual, but does really
| happen.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes: this definitely happens. I'm not making a broader
| argument about the legitimacy of civil asset forfeiture.
| leptons wrote:
| Sure, people carry around cash all the time, there isn't a
| problem with that - but carrying around $80,000 in cash is
| highly unusual. It's not something normally done. I don't
| know anyone who would travel with that kind of cash because
| it could be stolen, _by cops or by anyone_.
|
| When receiving a large amount of cash for a legitimate sale
| of something, or other kind of legit transaction taking
| place, the first thing most people would probably think to
| do is to go to their bank branch in the local area and
| deposit the money ASAP, _and then get on the train_. Large
| deposits are tracked, I think you have to fill out a form,
| so maybe he just didn 't want to have the tax man look at
| what's going on ( _points to possibly shady dealings_ ).
|
| The fact is that walking around with $80,000 in cash is a
| huge risk (unless you're a billionaire - but then you're
| probably not taking a train), it's not something most
| people would typically do. It appears a bit shady without
| OP giving any other details. He claims it wasn't for
| heroin, but what if he's purposely omitting that it was
| actually for cocaine. I'd like to know more about OP's
| story, but I doubt we'll get any answers.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Not sure about that. If he took the money out of a bank,
| there are forms to be filed. If he received it from someone
| in a trade or business, there are forms to be filed. If he
| found it and was on the way to the bank to deposit it,
| there are forms to be filed.
|
| The money didn't magically appear in his pockets.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| This feels like a ragebait comment and the entire story is
| clearly not being told.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Nah that's about all of it
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Why the hell would you ever plead to something you didn't
| do if you had the resources to fight it? I get how they
| might pressure some kid into a plea, but they'd be taking
| my ass to trial, and yes, I'd gladly pay the legal fees if
| it came to it, over basically selling out my good name.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I have no relation to anyone here, but:
|
| Every time I've carried a large amount of money, it was
| essentially all of the money I had in the world.
|
| If I had lost it [for any reason, including theft by
| civil forfeiture], I'd have been essentially broke and
| have nothing to fight with.
|
| If I were _additionally_ charged with crimes, I 'd still
| be broke and still have nothing to fight with.
|
| The money is just...gone.
|
| ---
|
| Now, suppose a DA or prosecuter gives me a binary choice
| and I can select between the following options:
|
| 1. Be broke.
|
| 2. Be broke _and in prison_.
|
| ...then I think I 'll cut my fucking losses and stick
| with option 1.
| namaria wrote:
| It's scary how people immediately side with authorities
| in these situations. You can lose everything in an
| instant by getting charged with something nefarious and
| it just takes a couple of bad cops.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I'm not 'siding with the authorities', I'm advocating
| fighting if you're innocent. Plea'ing out when you're
| innocent just encourages this sort of abuse. If everyone
| that remotely had the resources to fight charges actually
| fought them, this whole system would collapse on itself.
| Civil rights are only upheld when they're exercised.
| namaria wrote:
| You're implying that someone who didn't fight is
| presumably guilty, which is a perverse argument given the
| immense cost and general toll a legal defense can impose
| on a person.
|
| > If everyone that remotely had the resources to fight
| charges actually fought them, this whole system would
| collapse on itself.
|
| Yes, that is precisely why the system is stacked against
| the average person being able to fight the State on
| criminal charges, and it is very out of touch to imply
| that anyone that the State has convicted presumably
| deserved it for not putting up an effective defense.
|
| The system is working as intended on you and I hope you
| never find yourself on the wrong end of a criminal
| prosecution.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > You're implying that someone who didn't fight is
| presumably guilty
|
| I can see how one could get this implication because they
| said "why would you" but that's a common phrase that
| people use to (I guess literally) call some decision into
| question. It's not necessarily about saying that they are
| obviously lying and could be more about wondering why
| someone would make that choice. The reply made a good
| case, which they don't seem to be arguing with.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| _Why would you_ use that kind of phraseology, if not to
| imply something?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Because you're curious for the answer to your question.
| Why would you think there must be some other implication?
| (What did I _imply_ by using that phrase in the previous
| question?)
| fusivdh wrote:
| It's part standard story for civil asset forfeiture.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The "civil" part of Civil Asset Forfeiture precludes
| criminal felony charges..
| qwerpy wrote:
| Reminds me of the "Stripe cut off my account without warning
| and won't talk to me. I've done nothing wrong!" posts that
| used to show up. Upon further digging, it turns out the
| person started off with a legitimate business, then got into
| a gray area, then pushed further to the point that they were
| against the terms of service. The person always becomes
| evasive or non-responsive once the questioning starts to
| unearth some peculiarities.
| rwmj wrote:
| Was there a particular reason he was carrying around nearly 6
| figures in cash? How was he planning to ensure it didn't get
| stolen by robbers of the old fashioned sort?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| He owed someone money. The point is he hadn't been to Chicago
| and he hadn't been involved with the heroin trade. The whole
| point of the stop was fabricated.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The asset seizure part needs no explanation as that was common
| practice for many law enforcement agencies, but if your brother
| was not dealing heroin why did he plea to dealing heroin?
|
| There is no way they'd get a conviction solely on the basis of
| someone carrying a large amount of cash. They'd have needed
| something more than that to even reach the preliminary hearing
| stage.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| He plead to attempted money laundering or something like that
| tptacek wrote:
| What state was this in? We can look up the predicates for
| that charge in the state, and then be talking more
| coherently about what might have happened here. Thanks!
|
| I'm guessing North Dakota? That's 3 states away from
| Chicago on the only Amtrak route from there to Portland.
|
| Were the charges federal? Did North Dakota (or whatever)
| police intercept him, or a DEA TFG?
| perihelions wrote:
| What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? We can
| all see that person's HN comment history, see that fully
| half of it is drugs; and if this HN subthread is quiet
| about it, that is because we are _politely_ avoiding
| confrontation.
| tptacek wrote:
| I have not looked at their comment history, and the
| guidelines ask us not to do that.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| You can read my comment history. It's right out in the
| open. Why would guidelines say not to look at it when
| it's right on the profile? Lol
|
| He got on the train in ND. A drug task force illegally
| searched his bags and arrested him in Portland. I believe
| it was all state charges from a state agency working with
| the DEA. I'd have to ask because I don't remember the
| details. This was like a decade ago
| tptacek wrote:
| We're not supposed to dredge things up from people's
| comment histories to throw at them in discussions.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| If your cousin was actually innocent he should sue his
| lawyer for malpractice.
|
| The facts as you state them don't support any criminal
| charges, and any competent lawyer would be immediately
| aware of that and recommend against pleading.
| fatbird wrote:
| 98% of criminal charges end in plea deals. The justice system
| only works because virtually all charges go through without a
| trial. Prosecutors are strongly incentivized to find an
| acceptable plea deal, and they have the threat of massively
| ruining someone's life who refuses a deal--if nothing else,
| the 6-7 figure cost of defending oneself in court is
| incentive enough to take a plea.
| pseingatl wrote:
| A long time ago, in a nearby galaxy, Broward Detective
| Vicki Cutcliffe grabbed my client's crotch in the Ft.
| Lauderdale airport, hoping to find crack, which she did.
| Judge Roettger was a frequent user of the airport and found
| this behavior unacceptable. He suppressed the evidence.
|
| One of the 2%, I guess.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| 98% of criminal defendants are actually guilty, and are
| just seeking the best deal possible. Prosecutors are
| strongly disincentivized to prosecute cases without
| evidence because they get demoted or fired if their win
| ratio (including pleas) drops below 90%.
|
| Public defenders don't advise their clients to take pleas
| in the absence of any evidence tying them to the crime, as
| claimed in the OP.
|
| _if nothing else, the 6-7 figure cost of defending oneself
| in court is incentive enough to take a plea._
|
| This is false, unless you're convicted of murder and you
| choose the most expensive lawyers, and you proceed to
| trial, meaning that there was sufficient actual evidence of
| guilt that a prosecutor would risk their record and that a
| judge would commit the time and resources of his court to
| have a trial. Pre-trial costs for non-violent felonies are
| in the 4-low 5 figures. Violent felonies top out in the
| mid-5 figures. You don't see 6 figure costs outside of
| murder cases, and 7 figure costs all involve extremely
| wealthy defendants.
|
| The financial cost of pleading guilty is 10x-100x the cost
| of defending oneself in court. If, as the OP claimed, his
| cousin was innocent, no defense attorney (public defender
| or otherwise) would have recommended he plead guilty,
| because based on what the OP said, there was insufficient
| evidence for the case to even make it to the preliminary
| hearing. In many states, the law enforcement agency at
| issue would have also paid his attorneys' fees.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| _Tons_ of innocent people take plea deals.
|
| Courts can and do get convictions based on bullshit. "The cop
| says you did it" convinces loads of juries. There's also
| often further incentive to take a deal if you are stuck in
| jail or are otherwise spending shitloads of time and money on
| a defense.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Here's the watchdog org that first made the video go viral:
|
| https://ij.org/press-release/department-of-justice-suspends-...
| bsimpson wrote:
| We just did holiday donations at work. If I saw this last week,
| I probably would have earmarked some for them.
| AyyEye wrote:
| > The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline
| employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased
| flights 48 hours before departure.
|
| I have bought last-minute airline tickets three times in my life
| -- all to buy a car that was a good deal. All three times I had
| cash to buy said car. Glad I never got snared.
| baxtr wrote:
| 48 hours is not uncommon for business trips.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I purchase most of my tickets last minute simply because I tend
| to procrastinate. And they're usually one way tickets because I
| procrastinate deciding my return date, too. I've never been
| flagged for SSS though. Maybe that's because the behavior isn't
| anomalous for me.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| I'm not certain on this, however it has been implied to me by
| custom officials that declaring excess funds (typically over
| 10k USD) when traveling internationally can protect against
| seizure.
| baxtr wrote:
| I bet this will go viral on X...
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I love watching the feds scramble to stop committing crimes
| whenever someone with a camera happens to walk by. Really makes
| me believe they're behaving when we're not looking.
| hammock wrote:
| _> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline
| employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased
| flights 48 hours before departure. That employee was being paid
| by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had
| received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That
| arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded._
|
| You don't say?
|
| _> USA Today reported in 2016 that, over a decade, the DEA
| seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people
| at 15 busy airports_
|
| Assuming the top 15 airports account for 50MM annual travel, that
| means, on average, 1 in 100K traveler-trips have cash seized: 3
| seizures per airport per month, with a per-seizure haul of $4K
| 1024core wrote:
| > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the
| cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of
| dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic,
| investigators concluded.
|
| What a perverse incentive! Flag every passenger possible; your
| expected payout is positive. You have nothing to lose!!
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > f the agents found cash, they seized it through civil
| forfeiture -- a legal process that places the onus on the
| passenger to prove it was not connected to drugs in order to get
| it back
|
| one of the absolutely most horrible laws that exist in the U.S.
| today that goes totally against the presumption of innocence that
| is (supposedly) the bedrock of our legal framework
| m463 wrote:
| > The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline
| employee who passed on the names of passengers who had
| purchased flights 48 hours before departure.
|
| > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the
| cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands
| of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic,
| investigators concluded.
|
| I think this goes even beyond civil forfeiture (which shares
| revenue with police departments, etc)
|
| I think sharing it with an airline employee is out and out
| corruption.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Civil forfeiture is also out and out corruption. But I agree
| that this goes beyond the usual bounds of that process.
| uoaei wrote:
| Some people just assume that legal == good. Too many of
| them comment on conundrums of morality without making that
| clear.
| beej71 wrote:
| I honestly don't understand how this has been allowed to stand
| all these years.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > USA Today reported in 2016 that, over a decade, the DEA seized
| more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people at 15
| busy airports
|
| Absolutely unacceptable
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