Drugs

Texas State Police Made $33,000,000 Worth of Asset Forfeitures From Just 219 Traffic Stops

Evgen — Tue, 12 May 2015 08:48:40 +0000

We’ve all seen the pictures; one bust after the other. Drugs like meth and marijuana all piled up and seized by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

After a court order, all of these drugs get incinerated and disposed of forever, but there are other things found in these busts that don’t go to waste.

“We’re collecting stolen vehicles, cash, credit cards,” said Trooper Chris Ray with DPS.

Just last year, DPS seized more than $33,000,000 in drugs and money during 219 traffic stops in the panhandle. $1,500,000 of that was in pure cash. There were also numerous weapons and vehicles were confiscated. But when all of this property and money comes in, what happens to it?

DPS says it’s put to good use.

“We’ve purchased some ballistic vests so that our guys are safer on the road,” said Ray. “Then, we’ve purchased in car cameras and you see those in court.”

Vehicles, body armor, vehicle cameras and even artillery can be bought by Texas law enforcement off of these collections. It’s utilized by not just DPS, but local Amarillo agencies as well.

Some of the most recent purchases include a mobile command center bought by potter county just last year.

“It’s an office on wheels,” said Potter County Sheriff Brian Thomas. “I’ve been out on several instances since I’ve been here where we were trying to work off a steering wheel in a car and it just doesn’t work very well.”

The same type of purchase has come in for Amarillo Police.

“It’s a $700,000 vehicle that we would not have had access to had it not been those seized funds,” said Sgt. Brent Barbee with Amarillo Police. “It’s a very valuable vehicle. It allows command staff and representatives from other agencies to all sit at the same table.”

Also, a bearcat armored vehicle is on the way Randall county.

The big question that lingers though is ‘how can these agencies just take property and buy their own? It’s called asset forfeiture. And there are laws in place that govern the practice.

“It’s to deprive the criminal of the profit of the crime,” said Randall County District Attorney James Farren.

The case and your confiscated assets go to a courtroom for a civil case. If the state proves the property was used in a crime, it’s handed over. It’s then repurposed in certain cases or disposed of because of debt that may be attached. It can also go to auction and money can sometimes supplement officer or prosecutor salaries.

Randall county district attorney James Farren deals with forfeit asset cases all of the time and he says the laws are in place for good.

“If the burglar loses property as a result of participating in a burglary, it discourages burglaries,” said Farren. “Asset forfeiture laws have developed over the last few decades and that’s the idea.”

While farren calls the practice beneficial, the idea to the public can sometimes be that law enforcement “Polices for Profit” or taking advantage of the forfeited assets for personal gain. But local agencies say that’s not the case.<

“When you take into account the number of hours and expenditure for equipment, said Barbee. “I’m not sure there’s a lot of profit in every case.”

“We’re very careful to make sure the people we go after are people we have plenty of evidence that they were involved in criminal activity,” Farren said. “And we have plenty of evidence that what we’re taking back from them is either profit gained in the criminal activity or things that belong to them that they use to facilitate participating in that criminal activity.”

Over the past year, DPS says it found its most seized assets off of I-40, one of the busiest roadways in the panhandle. Ray said while he hopes enforcement cuts down on crime, he also wants to make sure people know the reasoning behind it.

”We don’t just seize it. We actually do a pretty good background and a pretty good check on it to see if it will benefit the state of Texas,” said Ray.

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Rand Paul Re-Assures Evangelicals That he Will Not End The War on Drugs

Evgen — Mon, 11 May 2015 08:45:13 +0000

FAIRFAX, VA – OCTOBER 28: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul listens speaks at a “Get out the Vote” rally for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for Governor of Virginia, October 28, 2013 in Fairfax, Virginia. Cuccinelli is running against Democratic candidate Terry McAullife in a very close race. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Gage SkidmoreIn preparation for a 2016 presidential run, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is courting evangelical leaders. And we all know what that means! It’s time to throw those hedonistic, libertine, drug-obsessed libertarians under the bus. The Washington Post reports on how that’s going:

At a lunch Friday with about a dozen evangelical pastors in a Cedar Rapids hotel, the younger Paul assured the group that he disagrees with libertarians who support legalizing drugs. When one pastor inquired about ideological ties between Paul and his father, the senator asked that he be judged as his own man.

Paul said he believes in freedom and wants a “virtuous society” where people practice “self-restraint.” Yet he believes in laws and limits as well. Instead of advocating for legalized drugs, for example, he pushes for reduced penalties for many drug offenses.

“I’m not advocating everyone go out and run around with no clothes on and smoke pot,” [Rand] said. “I’m not a libertarian. I’m a libertarian Republican. I’m a constitutional conservative.”

“He made it very clear that he does not support legalization of drugs like marijuana and that he supports traditional marriage,” [said Brad Sherman of the Solid Rock Christian Church in Coralville, Iowa].

Just to hammer home what’s been said already: Paul isn’t a libertarian on drugs. He wants to keep everything illegal, but institute gentler penalties. That’s not remotely libertarian. (Is it politically practical? Sure. So are farm subsidies.)

As for “traditional marriage,” here’s how Paul is selling his position to evangelicals:

He said he’s not ready to “give up on” the traditional family unit. But he added that it is a mistake for conservatives to support a federal ban on same-sex marriage, saying, “We’re going to lose that battle because the country is going the other way right now.”

“If we’re to say each state can decide, I think a good 25 or 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe we allow that debate to go on for another couple of decades and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people,” he said.

“Win back the hearts and minds of people”? What does that even mean? That if we give the country enough time, a majority of voters will change their minds about extending equal protection to same-sex couples, and revoke it? And that would be a good thing?

Considering just how “radical” candidate Obama was, I can’t help but wonder how Paul would be different from any other Republican president.

Published on reason.com by Mike Riggs

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Colorado Sheriffs Say Marijuana Legalization Should Be Overturned Because It Makes Them Uncomfortable

Evgen — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 11:23:23 +0000

Today six Colorado sheriffs filed a federal lawsuit that seeks to reverse marijuana legalization in their state, which they say should be overturned because it makes them uncomfortable. Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith and his counterparts in five other counties say Amendment 64, the marijuana legalization measure that is now part of Colorado’s constitution, has made their jobs harder by creating a conflict between state and federal law.

“When these Colorado Sheriffs encounter marijuana while performing their duties,” their complaint says, “each is placed in the position of having to choose between violating his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and violating his oath to uphold the Colorado Constitution.” This supposed dilemma arises from Smith et al.’s mistaken assumption that they have an obligation to help the federal government enforce its ban on marijuana.

According to the Supreme Court’s extremely generous reading of the power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress has the authority to ban cultivation, possession, and distribution of marijuana, even when those activities are permitted under state law and do not cross state lines (in fact, even when they are confined entirely to the privacy of someone’s home). The federal government therefore may continue to enforce marijuana prohibition in Colorado.

But contrary to what the sheriffs seem to think, that does not mean they are required to lend a hand, notwithstanding the Supremacy Clause, which makes valid acts of Congress “the supreme law of the land.” Under our federalist system, Congress has no authority to dragoon state and local officials into enforcing its laws—a point the Court made clear in Printz v. United States, a 1997 case involving federally mandated background checks for gun buyers.

Under the “anti-commandeering principle” that the Court applied in Printz, requiring local cops to enforce the federal ban on marijuana would be clearly unconstitutional. So when a Colorado cop encounters someone 21 or older with an ounce or less of marijuana (the limit set by state law) and does not confiscate it as contraband under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), he is not violating his oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.

Likewise if he finds six or fewer plants in someone’s home and leaves them there or if he passes a state-licensed pot shop and does not try to shut it down.

Similarly, the U.S. Constitution does not require state legislators to mimic federal law by punishing everything Congress decides to treat as a crime. Yet Smith et al. argue that eliminating state penalties for marijuana-related activities violates the CSA and therefore the Supremacy Clause. They are asking the U.S. District Court in Colorado to overturn all the sections of Amendment 64 that say specified activities involving marijuana—including possession and home cultivation as well as commercial production and distribution by state-licensed businesses—”are not unlawful and shall not be an offense under Colorado law.”

To put it another way, the sheriffs want a federal court order requiring Colorado to recriminalize these activities and start busting cannabis consumers, growers, and retailers again. They say the U.S. Constitution requires Colorado to treat those people as criminals, regardless of what Colorado voters or legislators want.

That position cannot be reconciled with the 10th Amendment, which says “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Writing state criminal laws is not a power that the Constitution delegates to the federal government.

Smith et al., whose lawsuit is joined by four sheriffs from Nebraska and Kansas who also were offended by Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana, concede that the CSA does not override all state drug policy choices. “Under 21 U.S.C. § 903,” they note, “the CSA shall not ‘be construed’ to ‘occupy the field’ in which the CSA operates ‘to the exclusion of any [s]tate law on the same subject matter which would otherwise be within’ the state’s authority.

Rather, Section 903 provides that state laws are preempted only when ‘a positive conflict’ exists between a provision of the CSA and a state law’ so that the two cannot consistently stand together.” But the sheriffs claim Amendment 64 creates such a conflict. “The enforcement of the CSA violates Colorado law,” they say, “and conversely adherence to Colorado law violates the CSA.”

That is clearly not true for most of the provisions that Smith et al. are challenging. If Colorado cops stop arresting pot smokers, the pot smokers are violating the CSA, but the cops are not. Likewise with people who grow and transfer marijuana, whether money changes hands or not. They are violating federal law, but the police officers who refrain from dragging them away in handcuffs are not. Conversely, a federal agent who arrests a cannabis grower, seller, or consumer for violating the CSA is not doing anything forbidden by Colorado law.

The sheriffs say Amendment 64 “in some cases” not only allows but “requir[es]” the cultivation and distribution of marijuana. That would indeed be a positive conflict, since it would be impossible to obey both state and federal law. But unless I missed it, the complaint do not cite any actual examples of state-mandated CSA violations.

The sheriffs’ strongest argument echoes the central claim of Nebraska and Oklahoma’s anti-legalization lawsuit: that Colorado’s marijuana regulations “embed state and local government actors with private actors in a state-sanctioned and state-supervised industry which is intended to, and does, cultivate, package, and distribute marijuana for commercial and private possession and use in violation of the CSA.” In other words, the state’s stamp of approval for cannabusinesses goes beyond declining to punish marijuana offenses by actively promoting them.

That is one way of looking at it. Alternatively, you could say a marijuana license merely certifies that the holder has met the criteria for escaping punishment under state law. It does not make him immune to punishment under the CSA, and it does not require him to violate that statute.

Suppose Colorado took this criticism to heart and stopped regulating the marijuana industry. Anyone would be free to grow or sell marijuana without having to seek the state’s blessing. Libertarians might welcome that outcome, but I doubt the sheriffs would. In any case, the existence of state regulations does nothing to strengthen the sheriffs’ argument that they have suffered a personal injury justifying a lawsuit because they are not allowed to bust pot smokers anymore.

From: http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/05/colorado-sheriffs-say-marijuana-legaliza

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