Police in Edinburg are being sued after 40 officers raided a “gentlemen’s club” called Jaguars Gold Club in search of drugs. They found none, but handcuffed the owners and employees and allegedly left with $1,500 in cash and another $8,000 worth of club “tokens.”
The lawsuit claims that when the owner asked for the police to keep a record of seized items, the police refused.
The Complaint states:
Prior to entry, one of the officers disconnected the water supply to the building, which was not authorized by the warrant. After the police turned off the water supply to the building, three of Plaintiff’s employees went outside to determine what had transpired. They were confronted by a number of marked and unmarked police vehicles, including an “RV”(recreational vehicle) that had been converted for police use. The RV had blocked the driveway preventing ingress and egress from Jaguars’ parking lot.
Approximately 40 uniformed officers, many in “SWAT” paraphernalia and with automatic weapons, then entered Jaguars; three officers remained outside, prohibiting the three of Plaintiff’s employees from re-entering Jaguars.
The nearly 40 officers who entered Jaguars immediately “zip tied” thehands of each individual in Jaguars, meaning to restrain their hands comparable towhat would occur by placing individuals in handcuffs, except using locking plasticstrips rather than handcuffs.
One of the three individuals who was kept outside of Jaguars, Tony Hadaway (“Hadaway”), was the on-duty manager. Upon learning that fact, severalof the officers present ordered Hadaway, who was handcuffed, to accompany themto Jaguars’ office, whereupon they ordered him to unlock but not open the safe thatwas located in the office. The officers then ordered Hadaway to face the wall of theoffice that was opposite the safe so that he could not observe what the officers weredoing with the safe.
The officers removed approximately $1,500 in currency from the safe(which consisted of all of the currency therein except single bills), along with approximately $8,000 in club “tokens;” they also removed an additional but unknown amount of currency from Jaguars’ cash registers, estimated to be between $500 and $1,500.
Source: Monitor
Puzzling,
I strongly agree with you. I’ve been highly dubious about forfeiture laws and the RICO Act in general. Although it’s been held otherwise I believe they are not Constitutional and a violation of the principle of “presumed
innocence”.
And then the police can send the subjects of their raids to private prisons.
Theft by police through asset forfeiture laws is rampant.
I wrote about this a few weeks ago with some interesting links, here: