A small-town police department in Milton, West Virginia, is facing more scrutiny after another troubling video surfaced of a questionable arrest. The newly obtained video contradicts the sworn statement of a Milton police officer who said the man who was arrested resisted arrest and tried to escape. PAR investigates the case and delves deeper into the finances of the town, which has nearly doubled its collections of court fines and fees over the past decade.
Read the transcript of this video: https://therealnews.com/west-virginia…
Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture
Introduction
In 2019, nursing student and single mother Stephanie Wilson had not one, but two cars seized by the Detroit Police Department, losing the first one forever. 1 That same year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Transportation Security Administration seized retiree Terry Rolin’s life savings of $82,373 from his daughter as she passed through Pittsburgh International Airport on her way to open a joint bank account for him. 2 Three years earlier and about 1,000 miles away, a sheriff’s deputy in rural Muskogee, Oklahoma, seized more than $53,000 from Eh Wah, the tour manager for a Burmese Christian musical act, during a routine traffic stop; the funds were concert proceeds and donations intended to support Burmese Christian refugees and Thai orphans. 3 None of these victims were convicted of any crime.
Their stories illustrate a nationwide problem: civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize property on the mere suspicion that it is involved in criminal activity. Prosecutors can then forfeit, or permanently keep, the property without ever charging its owner with a crime. By contrast, criminal forfeiture requires prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an owner is guilty of a crime and then, in the same proceeding, prove the property is connected to the crime.
As this report demonstrates, the cases of Stephanie Wilson, Terry Rolin and Eh Wah are not isolated incidents: Local, state and federal agencies use civil forfeiture to collectively forfeit billions of dollars each year.
Civil forfeiture laws generally make it easy for governments to forfeit property—and hard for people to fight. As this report documents, these laws typically set low standards of proof, which is the evidentiary burden prosecutors must meet to connect property to a crime. And they provide weak protections for innocent owners whose property is caught up in forfeiture but who have done nothing wrong.
Most forfeiture laws also make seizing and forfeiting people’s property lucrative for law enforcement. In most states and under federal law, some or all of the proceeds from forfeiture go to law enforcement coffers. Thus, Wayne County law enforcement, federal law enforcement and Muskogee County law enforcement stood to benefit financially from forfeiting Stephanie’s cars and Terry’s and Eh Wah’s cash. Giving law enforcement this financial stake in forfeiture can distort priorities, encouraging agencies to pursue financial gain over public safety or justice, cash over crime or contraband. 4 Together, civil forfeiture’s ease and financial rewards drive its use nationwide.
Despite the billions generated, our data indicate the typical individual cash forfeiture is relatively small—only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. This suggests that, aside from a few high-profile cases, forfeiture often does not target drug kingpins or big-time financial fraudsters. More than that, the data show why it often makes little economic sense for property owners to fight. The cost of hiring an attorney—a virtual necessity in navigating complex civil forfeiture processes, where there is generally no right to counsel—often outweighs the value of seized property. This is why Stephanie abandoned her first car. 5 Still, many small forfeitures such as hers can make a great deal of economic sense for law enforcement. In just two years, the Wayne County forfeiture program that claimed Stephanie’s car generated $1.2 million in revenue from 2,600 cars. 6
In these and other ways, civil forfeiture threatens not only property rights but also due process rights. Indeed, in 2017, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned whether modern civil forfeiture laws “can be squared with the Due Process Clause and our Nation’s history.” 7 Civil forfeiture is not only a civil process, it is an “in rem” proceeding, meaning it is a lawsuit against the property, not the person. (Hence, odd case names like Richardson v. $20,771.00 U.S. Currency and In re: U.S. Currency $31,780; 2012 Volkswagen Jetta, VIN 3VW3L7AJ0CM366141. 8 ) As a result, Justice Thomas noted, owners can lose property even when innocent, and procedural protections common to criminal proceedings usually do not apply.
Justice Thomas also observed that today’s civil forfeiture laws have expanded far beyond their once-narrow historical purposes—specifically, taking property in piracy and customs cases when the owner was overseas and outside U.S. jurisdiction. 9 Now forfeiture attaches to hundreds of crimes, many if not most of which are purely domestic. The U.S. Department of Justice’s forfeiture database, for example, contains over 377 unique statutes authorizing forfeiture. 10
Forfeiture also poses a separation of powers concern. In allowing agencies to self-fund outside the normal appropriations process and with little oversight, it undermines legislatures’ power of the purse and invites questionable expenditures, such as $70,000 for a muscle car in Georgia, 11 $250,000 for lavish travel and meals in New York, 12 and $300,000 for an armored vehicle in Iowa. 13
Recent rulings from the U.S. and Indiana Supreme Courts highlight another constitutional problem with forfeiture: If disproportionate to the alleged crime, a forfeiture can violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines. 14 And forfeiting an innocent person’s property is always disproportionate.
Beyond its constitutional problems, forfeiture poses policy concerns. For example, forfeiture’s financial incentive may promote negative interactions between police and the public, a particular risk to communities of color. 15 Indeed, there is evidence forfeiture disproportionately affects Black men. 16 And recent research finds increases in arrest rates for Blacks and Hispanics during times of fiscal stress and when law enforcement can benefit financially from forfeiture under state law. 17 Not only may forfeiture target communities least equipped to fight back, it may further burden lower-income and other disadvantaged communities by depriving them of needed resources. 18
This third edition of Policing for Profit presents the largest collection of state and federal forfeiture data yet assembled and provides newly updated grades of state and federal civil forfeiture laws. It also draws on a growing body of evidence regarding whether forfeiture works to fight crime. 19 The conclusion: Civil forfeiture overpromises and underdelivers.
Continue Reading: Executive Summary
Gang Leader for a Day: Don’t Call the Police
From television shows and movies, we know housing projects are rife with crime: women raped, children shot, men beaten.
But no matter how bad it gets, if you live in the projects, you don’t call the cops. Why?
For one, a 911 call from the projects is seldom answered. Emergency calls from housing estates known for trouble are not handled like calls from other neighborhoods; that is, they’re ignored.
This means that if you live in the projects, you learn to handle emergencies yourself, and dial 911 only in the most extreme emergencies.
In one example that the author witnessed, a man was physically assaulting a woman. Residents got together and beat up the man, instead of calling the police. And because a call for an ambulance probably wouldn’t be answered either, residents drove the woman to the hospital themselves.
That said, even if the police did show up, they probably wouldn’t be welcomed in the projects.
Residents often throw bottles at cops when they respond to a call; worse, they can be shot at, too.
The police aren’t entirely innocent, either. Some officers of the law have been seen abusing residents, as part of a blackmail scheme.
“Officer Jerry,” for example, runs a protection racket. The author once witnessed him and three other police officers enter an apartment, handcuff a teenager and then brutally beat the teen’s father while demanding money.
Once the father revealed the location of his cash, the officers stopped, uncuffed the teen, grabbed a paper bag the father pointed out and left.
The author was even warned against writing about corrupt cops by other honest police officers, who were concerned about his safety. They even told him that some of the corrupt officers broke into the author’s car, intending to steal his notebook.
How the Most Dangerous Place on Earth Got Safer
Programs funded by the United States are helping transform Honduras. Who says American power is dead?
Three years ago, Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world. The city of San Pedro Sula had the highest homicide rate in the country. And the Rivera Hernández neighborhood, where 194 people were killed or hacked to death in 2013, had the highest homicide rate in the city. Tens of thousands of young Hondurans traveled to the United States to plead for asylum from the drug gangs’ violence.This summer I returned to Rivera Hernández to find a remarkable reduction in violence, much of it thanks to programs funded by the United States that have helped community leaders tackle crime. By treating violence as if it were a communicable disease and changing the environment in which it propagates, the United States has not only helped to make these places safer, but has also reduced the strain on our own country.
.. Honduras has dropped from first place to third among Central American countries sending unaccompanied children to the United States illegally.
.. most Americans think the United States should “deal with its own problems” while others deal with theirs “as best they can,” a sentiment that’s at the core of Donald J. Trump’s “America First” slogan and “build a wall” campaign. Many seem to have lost their faith in American power.
.. The funding for violence prevention in Honduras — which this year cost between $95 million and $110 million — has also come under attack from the left.
.. This summer, a bill was introduced in Congress to suspend security aid to Honduras because of corruption and human rights violations. These concerns are legitimate, but cutting our support would be a mistake.
.. What is working in Honduras may offer hope to Guatemala, El Salvador and other countries in crisis.
.. The gangs enforced a 6 p.m. curfew. Bodies littered the dirt streets in the morning. The 18th Street Gang set up a checkpoint
.. gangsters playing soccer with the decapitated head of someone they had executed.
.. In two years, homicides have plummeted 62 percent.
.. America’s support is “getting results,” said James D. Nealon, the United States ambassador to Honduras. We are, he said, reducing migration. But we are also repairing harms the United States inflicted — first by deporting tens of thousands of gangsters to Honduras over the past two decades, a decision that fueled much of the recent mayhem, and second by our continuing demand for drugs, which are shipped from Colombia and Venezuela through Honduras. If the United States sustains its anti-violence work in Honduras, Ambassador Nealon says, “in five years they will get their country back.”
.. the Ponce gang grabbed 13-year-old Andrea Abigail Argeñal Martínez because her family couldn’t afford the “war tax” the gang imposed on its tiny store. They raped Andrea for several days in that house, and called her mother so she could hear the girl’s screams as they cut her to death.
.. When he hears about a gangster cornered by the police, he will stand in the line of fire yelling, “Stop shooting!” until the officers allow the gangster to surrender. In this way he has gained the trust of all six gangs. He does the same when he hears that someone is about to be murdered by one of the gangs
.. The United States modeled its prevention strategy on what had worked in Boston in the 1990s, and later in Los Angeles: Concentrate efforts on the most violent hot spots.
.. One of the most effective tactics is the creation of neighborhood outreach centers
.. “The U.S. government has been a bigger partner in change than the Honduran government.”
.. One stocky player wearing a No. 11 jersey told me he had killed 121 people, charging $220 or more per hit... “If they play each other, they see each other less as the enemy... focuses on children who are identified by trained counselors as having a number of risk factors for joining gangs, like substance abuse, unsupervised time and a “negative life event” — having been the victim of a violent crime, having a family member killed... In recent years, 96 percent of homicides did not end in a conviction. Everyone in Rivera Hernández knew what happened to witnesses who stepped forward: Their bodies were dumped with a dead frog next to them. The message: Frogs talk too much... The A.J.S. assigns teams of psychologists, investigators and lawyers to look into all homicides and to coax witnesses to give testimony. More than half of completed homicide cases in seven pilot neighborhoods now result in guilty verdicts... “It’s not like before — kill someone and there are no consequences,”.. Half the family members usually know the killer; one in four witnessed the murder. They say it takes four to 15 visits to persuade a witness to testify... Witnesses can testify anonymously, as they do in Italian Mafia cases.
.. She had witnessed three murders, but this was the first time she had told anyone. Afterward, in the car, she beamed. “I feel liberated!”
.. One afternoon several months ago, a Mara Salvatrucha gangster was caught by the police in Rivera Hernández with a hacked up body in the front basket of his bicycle, casually on his way to dispose of it.
.. 174,000 Hondurans, 4 percent of the country’s households, had abandoned their homes because of violence.
.. Gangsters stripped their houses of anything they could sell — window frames, doors, roofs — leaving whole blocks in rubble.
.. It will take much more than this project to change the reputation of the United States in this part of the world, where we are famous for exploiting workers and resources and helping to keep despots in power.
.. A 2016 study commissioned by U.S.A.I.D. found that working with people within the gangs — those who are active participants and those who want to leave — produced the biggest drops in violence. And yet the United States does hardly any of this, for fear of being seen as working with or paying off gang members.
.. The next priority must be to clean up the police.
.. I asked if any would go to the police station to report a crime. Not one hand went up. “No one with their five senses would report a crime,”
.. up to one in five of his cops was dirty, but community leaders say the number is closer to half.
.. two families who reported a crime to the police. Officers ratted them out, and three family members were killed that very day.
.. Mara Salvatrucha gangsters in Rivera Hernández say they receive warnings from the police of impending sweeps and are handed captured rivals to execute
.. Police officers also engage in extrajudicial killings.
.. Community leaders say the United States must find a better way to punish bad cops without withholding programs that help children.
.. half of the funds Congress budgets for Honduras go to the State Department bureaucracy or American companies paid to administer programs, so-called beltway bandits, rather than directly to local nonprofits or Hondurans.
.. The United States will also need to pressure Honduras to ante up more of its own money for violence prevention;
.. Fourteen-year-old Carlos Manuel Escobar Gómez told me things were so bad two years ago that he was ready to hop freight trains through Mexico to the United States. Both his parents and a brother were dead, and he was sure he wouldn’t survive his 11th year
.. he said with awe, “I haven’t seen a dead body in a year.”