We have previously discussed “policing for dollars” or “churning” where they seize cash, particularly on highways, as suspected drug money even without actually arresting or charging the drivers. It raises a huge amount of money for police departments and has been widely criticized as abusive. The latest victim of churning appears to be Charles Clarke, 24, who was on his way to take classes at the University of Central Florida. He was stopped at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron, Ky. with his life savings that he was taking with him for safe keeping and to support his education. Since he could not “prove” the source of the money, agents seized the $11,000 and, despite dropping all charges against him, has thus far refused to return the money despite Clarke’s efforts.
The stop at the airport occurred after an airline employee reported that Clarke’s luggage smelled of marijuana. Police told him that he was free to go but asked to search him and his bags. Rather than walk away, Clarke consented and immediately told them that he had the cash on him. They found no drugs and he admitted that he had smoked marijuana before going to the airport.
DEA agent William Conrad, a Cincinnati-based officer with a DEA task force,and Detective Christopher Boyd said that when they grabbed the money, Clarke grabbed approached Boyd’s wrist. They responded by criminally charging him with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct — charges later dropped after they took the money.
Conrad’s affidavit insisted that the seizure was perfectly justified “based on probable cause that it was proceeds of drug trafficking or was intended to be used in an illegal transaction.” The “Mitigating factors” cited by Conrad was the purchase of a one-way ticket, inability to provide documentation noting where the money came from, a positive hit by a drug dog and the strong smell of marijuana on his checked luggage. Yet Clarke admitted to smoking pot and there was a perfectly good reason for a one-way ticket for a college student. Finally, if Conrad was asked to prove the source of the money in his wallet, I expect he would have had the same difficulty in producing receipts or a financial statement.
The United States attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky appears to have no comment on the arrest, dropped charges, or money seizure. There is a presumption of guilt until proven otherwise. It is simply thrown on the pile of $6.8 billion in cash and property has been seized through the “Equitable Sharing Program.” While only two agencies were involved in stripping Clarke of his life savings, some 11 agencies across Kentucky and Ohio claim cuts in such proceeds.
@ Jim22
It is hard to say. I would not have very large sums of money in any one bank, especially a large or internationally connected bank. Spread your money around for banking purposes. Use regional banks (instead of those too big to fail banks) . Regionals are not as likely to be so deeply involved in derivative trading or so highly leveraged. They are ALL involved in derivatives, which are usually CMO’s or other types of mortgage back securities which have been bundled and sole as bonds or mutual fund investments.
http://www.stockbroker-fraud.com/derivative-securities-derivatives-mortgage-backed-securities-mbs.html
If you do invest in derivatives, know the composition of the instrument and where you are in the tranche levels. Look carefully at the credit quality of each company, municipality and bond issuer.
Hold hard assets. Gold bullion and currency. Silver, ditto. Real estate. Collectibles that have market value Tangible things. If you keep cash outside of the banks I would suggest smaller bills. All hundreds may be difficult to negotiate at some point and the Government is already looking suspiciously at people who pay in cash. On the other hand maybe not. When Argentina was going through one its periodic deflationary melt downs….a bottle of coke cost the equivalent of 500 Argentine dollars or pesos. Prices in the grocery store changed from moment to moment. My Father and Mother were there visiting with my Aunt’s family (she is from Argentina) and it was chaotic and dangerous. Very dangerous. So your $100 might buy you a soda and a bag of chips.
Examine your portfolio for companies that have high leverage and significant exposure to overseas economic troubles.
Pay down your debt!!!!!
It doesn’t hurt to have a stock of supplies at hand to help defray rising costs. 🙂
Inflation is bad for the individual….deflation is worse for the world economy.
Economists generally believe that deflation is a problem in a modern economy because it increases the real value of debt, and may aggravate recessions and lead to a deflationary spiral
A deflationary spiral is a situation where decreases in price lead to lower production, which in turn leads to lower wages and demand, which leads to further decreases in price.[28] Since reductions in general price level are called deflation, a deflationary spiral is when reductions in price lead to a vicious circle, where a problem exacerbates its own cause. The Great Depression was regarded by some as a deflationary spiral.[29] A deflationary spiral is the modern macroeconomic version of the general glut controversy of the 19th century. Another related idea is Irving Fisher’s theory that excess debt can cause a continuing deflation.
These things don’t last forever…..although for those involved, like the Great Depression, it surely seems like it.
Squeeky – the Royal Navy was allowed to capture any enemy vessel and make of her a prize, distributing the proceeds among the crew. It was considered a benefit of warfare, and supplemented their meager pay.
Letters of Marque were disdained by the Navy as barely legalized pirates, as they were private citizens allowed to act just like the Navy against His Majesties’s enemies.
This was a great plot in one of Patrick O’Brian’s “Master and Commander” series set in the early 1800s, in which our hero, Captain Jack Aubrey, was temporarily broken and stripped of command. He was forced to lower himself to sailing under a Letter of Marque until he was exonerated. It was a great blow for him.
Cops do not routinely taser grandmothers or shoot kids. That is a completely false statement.
There are many thousands of police interactions every single day, and only a very small percentage of them involve even the allegation of misconduct, let alone a proven case.
Taking the leap from civil forfeiture is a bad system that needs to be removed to cops routinely taser grandmothers is not a rational leap. If cops routinely taser grandmothers, then there would be thousands of grandmothers tasered every single day.
Someone paints the entire police force with such a bigoted, prejudiced brush. If the police really do routinely shoot kids and taser grandmothers, then we would be experiencing complete anarchy and need to disband the police force immediately.
The abuses of the civil and criminal forfeiture system are truly scandalous. It’s another symptom of government running amuck and unanswerable to the people. We need to check them and stop being so jaded.
DBQ – your post reminds me of when the government seized people’s life savings in Cypress banks.
This is sickening. Nothing but legalized theft!!!
No Cachet???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There once was a fellow named Clarke,
Who got scammed of his cash, like a “mark.”
Way to go, DEA!
Who says “Crime doesn’t pay”???
You’re just pirates, with Letters of Marque!!!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Note: Letter of Marque: Wiki says, “In the days of fighting sail, a letter of marque and reprisal was a government license authorizing a person (known as a privateer) to attack and capture enemy vessels and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale. Cruising for prizes with a letter of marque was considered an honorable calling combining patriotism and profit, in contrast to unlicensed piracy, which was universally reviled.
i suppose mr. clarke can count himself lucky in the land of the free… he made it out alive… if that’s any consolation. 🙁
DBQ, What’s the best way to protect ourselves then?
Let’s just say that the student was going to use part of the money or all the money to buy pot and sell it, to support his education. But, he didn’t. The Gestapo can say anything they want. There are far more serious drug problems in the US. There are far more serious problems in the US. If Americans want a Gestapo then at least apply them to the serious problems. Mugging students and others who pose no serious threat to society is not even worthy of the Gestapo.
issac – I had a friend who used his school money to buy weed which he then sold for enough profit to both pay for school and had lots of spending money for the year. That was in the days when you got all the money up front. Now you get half at the beginning of the semester and the other half at mid semester.
The first problem is admitting that America has this problem, the same problem the average American recognizes only in third world countries. These thugs, dressed in police clothing, are nothing more than Gestapo. In Hitler’s Germany the Gestapo could override the justice system. In the US these thugs override the justice system. That is to say, just like in Hitler’s Germany the courts will find a way, no matter how convoluted and ludicrous, to support their tactics. They can break down your door, bust up your house, take any cash, computers, or whatever they deem ‘necessary’, and you have to go to the same perverse judges in order to get your stuff back.
The scum and thugs that find their way into the various police departments would not be tolerated if the justice system, courts, and judges were not so perverse. The overwhelming majority of police are decent, honorable, and righteous people who risk their lives every day so we can breath easily and not be forced to arm to the teeth. There needs to be a system of accountability of the same standard as that overwhelming majority of police. They degrade themselves protecting this behavior of thuggery and theft.
If not for alternative media, and blogs like this one, we’d never hear about these things. It seems like state sanctioned police committing highway robbery ought to be the stuff of giant headlines and universal uproar. The war on cash is a war on the people. How would our forebears have reacted to this kind of flagrant abuse?
Washington Post’s Investigation of Civil Asset Forfeiture Abuses
“Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.
“ABOVE: In Douglasville, Ga, population 32,000, an armored personnel carrier costing $227,000 was bought using money taken from Americans under civil forfeiture laws.
“The details are contained in thousands of annual reports submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, an initiative that allows local and state police to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize. The Washington Post obtained 43,000 of the reports dating from 2008 through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“Stop and Seize: In recent years, thousands of people have had cash confiscated by police without being charged with crimes. The Post looks at the police culture behind the seizures and the people who were forced to fight the government to get their money back.
“Part 1: After Sept. 11, 2001, a cottage industry of private police trainers emerged to teach aggressive techniques of highway interdiction to thousands of local and state police.
Part 2: One training firm started a private intelligence-sharing network and helped shape law enforcement nationwide.
Part 3: Motorists caught up in the seizures talk about the experience and the legal battles that could take over a year.
Part 5: Highway seizure in Iowa fuels debate about asset-forfeiture laws.
Part 6: D.C. police plan for future seizure proceeds years in advance in city budget documents.
“The documents offer a sweeping look at how police departments and drug task forces across the country are benefiting from laws that allow them to take cash and property without proving a crime has occurred. The law was meant to decimate drug organizations, but The Post found that it has been used as a routine source of funding for law enforcement at every level. [emphasis added]
“The practice has been controversial since its inception at the height of the drug war more than three decades ago, and its abuses have been the subject of journalistic exposés and congressional hearings.
“But unexplored until now is the role of the federal government and the private police trainers in encouraging officers to target cash on the nation’s highways since 9/11. [emphasis added]
“ ‘Those laws were meant to take a guy out for selling $1 million in cocaine or who was trying to launder large amounts of money,’ said Mark Overton, the police chief in Bal Harbour, Fla., who once oversaw a federal drug task force in South Florida. ‘It was never meant for a street cop to take a few thousand dollars from a driver by the side of the road.’ [emphasis added]
“To examine the scope of asset forfeiture since the terror attacks, The Post analyzed a database of hundreds of thousands of seizure records at the Justice Department, reviewed hundreds of federal court cases, obtained internal records from training firms and interviewed scores of police officers, prosecutors and motorists.
“Civil forfeiture cash seizures
Under the federal Equitable Sharing Program, police have seized $2.5 billion since 2001 from people who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued. Police reasoned that the money was crime-related. About $1.7 billion was sent back to law enforcement agencies for their use.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/
Our pluralism continued…
With July 4th right around the corner, it’s dishonest, deplorable, disingenuous actions like these that make me proud to be an American……… living in a police state.
Thieves in cops clothing.
If these don’t look familiar they should. We are progressing in the wrong direction.
– He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
– For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
– For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
– For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
Annie,
When you enable government to pick and choose which of your rights are defensible then you have no business objecting to “their” choice. You either defend LIFE, LIBERTY and PROPERTY equally for all or you get the capricious will of your “democratic” choice.
Bail In Defined. http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=bail_in
The US has already put in place bail-in-like powers as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act passed last year. The law includes a resolution scheme that gives regulators the ability to impose losses on bondholders while ensuring the critical parts of the bank can keep running.
Frank Dodd debacle coming http://www.examiner.com/article/does-dodd-frank-set-up-bail-for-u-s-banks-to-follow-cyprus
This is what happened in Cyprus To stave off financial collapse, Cyprus bank deposits exceeding 100,000 Euros were seized by the government. Customers lost roughly half of those overage amounts and were issued non-tradable stock for the remainder.
“Essentially you’re looking at an international bail-in regime to conduct a cross-border bail-in,” she said, outlining one hypothetical scenario:
“The United States has large exposure to banks in the United Kingdom. If the bail-in mechanism were to be triggered in the United Kingdom, that would directly affect us. If they were to trigger that, as opposed to the United States triggering that, then we would be sucked into bail-in, under the provisions of Dodd-Frank, at the behest of the triggering of the bail-in mechanism by the United Kingdom.”
YOU may not have that much money in a Bank, but companies stocks that are in your Mutual Funds, Bond investments in your accounts, your Pension Plans, your IRA investments, the companies that provide you with food, oil, gasoline, electricity, medical supplies….they DO and it will affect you directly whether you think it won’t. When the governments and banks seize/steal their money they WILL pass it on to you. Like dominoes tipping over the fallout will be much larger than imagined.
Once again proving Gruber correct. The people are economic idiots.
Some celebrate the fact that the Police are are above the law. Police are the uniformed heroes of any fascist society. I guess it’s ok with some folks that cops routinely steal money, shoot people in the back, tase grandmothers, shoot a 12 year old boy with a toy gun in two seconds flat, and manhandle 14 year old girls…until it happens to them, or their loved one.
@ JT
Training in Government-Sanctioned Highway Robbery
“It isn’t often that honest people receive detailed intelligence about a planned gathering of violent men who steal for a living and kill with impunity. An event of that kind will occur from August 10-12th here in Idaho. In fact, I can provide the specific address of the armed robbers’ summit — 700 South Stratford Drive in Meridian. The location is conspicuously marked and easy to find: It is the Idaho Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) Academy, which will host a two-day session of Desert Snow’s ‘Phase 2015’ asset forfeiture workshop.
“ ‘Civil asset forfeiture,’ for the mercifully uninitiated, is a procedure in which police officers and the agencies that employ them steal money and property from people who have never been convicted of a crime, and quite often never face criminal charges. The agency designates the desired property as ‘proceeds’ of illicit activity and then files an “in rem” civil lawsuit against it – not the owner of the property, but the property itself. In this process, the burden of proof is placed on the victim, rather than the perpetrator.
“Fighting an act of state-licensed larceny of this kind is prohibitively expensive and frequently futile, which means that the privileged plunderers generally make out like the bandits they unfailingly prove themselves to be.
“Desert Snow was founded in 1989 by Joe David, a former California Highway Patrol Officer who — rather than doing penance for his career as an armed tax-feeder — devoted himself to the full-time promotion of undisguised road piracy. For more than a quarter-century, David has made a lucrative living as a prohibition profiteer.
“According to a Washington Post profile, David – who owns a yacht and a vacation condo in Cabo San Lucas — enjoys a lifestyle many private sector crime lords would envy.
“This year, Desert Snow and its companion program, Black Asphalt (a proprietary intelligence-sharing service) will conduct at least 30 regional road piracy training seminars nation-wide. The courses include recognition of ‘Indicators of Criminal Activity’ – or, more honestly, the art of pretending that inconsequential facts, such as the presence of an energy drink in a vehicle, are such ‘indicators’;
“ ‘Developing Roadside Conversational Skills’ – or, more accurately, how to manipulate intimidated people into submitting to an unconstitutional search; ‘How and When to Seize Currency’ – a course that could be digested into a single phrase, ‘Whenever you find it’; and ‘Court Testimony Instruction,’ a euphemism for ‘How to commit perjury with composure.’
“Each event will attract scores or hundreds of officers eager to develop or enhance such deplorable skills, each of whom will pay $590 to attend the highway robbers’ in-service course.
“When asked if the event would be accessible to the media, Desert Snow CEO Jeff David informed me that ‘the class is closed [except to] Law Enforcement Officers’ – thereby validating the principle that squalid undertakings cannot withstand exposure to daylight.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/06/william-norman-grigg/highway-robbers-assemble/
The governments of the world, not just the US are trying to eliminate actual cash. If you can use actual cash then the potential to not have your money seized by those governments is less. They can’t tax you if you do not report it. The goal is to have all transactions done electronically and have a central control of your money. The world economy is in a tailspin caused by governments overspending, over borrowing and refusing to cut back on entitlements that are unsustainable.
http://www.enterprisenews.com/article/ZZ/20150521/NEWS/305219989
They want to have all money in a location where THEY can control it. Banks like this because they can
“bail in” depositors funds. Basically take your money to use when they are losing money. Greece is the canary in the coal mine on this. http://www.cnbc.com/id/102770390 People are acting rationally in removing cash from banks and stashing funds to be available when the inevitable happens.
So far the US is using the excuse of criminal activity, money laundering or drug trafficking to seize/steal money. Structuring cash deposits or withdrawals as illegal even when there is NO evidence of any illegal activity.
Expect this to expand into the general economy.
It will still not deter the people who are working under the table, Illegal Aliens sending billions of dollars in cash to relatives outside the country, people buying and selling items in cash, yard sales even….drug deals and other criminal activities. Who it WILL hurt are the upstanding and trusting citizens who work, use banks, credit cards and don’t deal in cash or cash alternatives.
When the crash comes (watch Greece) get a feel for what the future holds for the rest of the world. It is a very scary one and one that has been seen before when cash collapses….Argentina, Weirmar Republic. Some day you will be unable to get your money for anything because the banks and the government will decide if you can at all…… and decide how much of your own funds you will be allowed to use.
Right now it is a convenient way for the police agencies to pad their coffers and make up for the deficits that are systemic all though government. Soon it will be MORE than that.