How a Dog Named Brutus Was Used to Steal $36,000

Via The Daily Bell

For the egregious crime of being in the right lane at the wrong time, a driver was pulled over in Lowndes County, Georgia. Thanks to the heroic efforts of one Georgia State Police dog, and his faithful officer, a major threat to the people of Georgia is off the streets.

The responding police dog, Brutus, made a major bust. The vehicle was transporting $36,000 of cash; an imminent danger to Georgians across the state.

The cash may have eluded officers if not for the quick thinking of Brutus. He sat down next to the car to let officers know the money was being stored in a speaker inside the vehicle. The officer was quick to confiscate the cash, take a picture of it for social media, and let the driver go. 

Wait, the police let the driver get away? Yes, they did. The driver was not charged an actual crime, and no one was arrested during the “major bust” that took place. The driver’s only crime was carrying cash.

Under Georgia’s criminal code officers can take property from any citizen they suspect may be part of a criminal enterprise. In this case, the only hunch officers had of criminal activity was Brutus the dog taking a seat.

The police took more than half of the state’s median yearly income from someone because a dog sat next to their car. If you think this is a horrific injustice, you should feel relieved to know the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with you. 

Civil asset forfeiture is the formal name for this form of state sanctioned theft. It has become a hot topic in the last few years for Americans concerned about their fundamental rights. The practice is troublingly common among law enforcement agencies at all levels of government.

Its history of abuse has resulted in BILLIONS of dollars taken from Americans who were never charged with a crime. While marginalized groups are the most likely victims, anyone can be targeted. From entrepreneurs and small business owners to Christian music groups, law enforcement agencies only see dollar signs. 

A growing number of states have implemented forfeiture reforms aimed at holding police agencies accountable. They aim to protect citizen’s right to due process supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. Unfortunately for this driver, and the rest of the country, state laws may soon be futile. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced a federal policy to ignore state statutes prohibiting civil asset forfeiture.

To be clear, the Attorney General is the top official appointed to keep the rule of law alive in America. Instead, he is encouraging law enforcement agencies to seize property from law-abiding citizens. We’re supposed to be assumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Sessions’ reversal of justice reform raises serious civil rights concerns.

The government can take your money simply because a dog gets tired of standing. But you may find it a relief that some elected officials are making it a priority to end this archaic and evil practice once and for all. States may lead the way, but Jeff Sessions’ actions make it clear that there needs to be real reform at the federal level.

In reality, impactful reforms are nowhere near the horizon. If you are concerned with protecting your assets from government seizures you are best taking matters into your own hands. Of course, the state doesn’t make that easy.

Officials have gone out of their way to ensure any legal protections you thought you had go out the window when stopped by police on the road. As the example in Georgia shows, the victim looked to store his money in a speaker system to keep it out of plain sight. But Brutus made short work of that tactic. 

Others have gone further by making alterations to the interior of their vehicles. But in a case that went to the Supreme Court, the state gave itself the right to physically tear your car apart in search of anything valuable (Carroll v. United States U.S. 132, 1925). The state also deemed it appropriate for officers to search any containers, including locked safes, inside a stopped vehicle (California v. Acevedo 500 U.S. 565, 1991).

To recap, imagine you are traveling in a vehicle and are pulled over, for even the most minor traffic violation, like looking nervous. Suppose the responding officer can establish probable cause, like having his dog sit. They can then destroy anything inside your car, including the seats. They can take anything they find without charging you with a crime.

What can you do in the face of this draconian action by the state? Digitize your assets.

As the law currently stands going digital is the best way to get around forfeiture. Using decentralized online currencies, you can side step efforts to police for profit.

Luckily officials have not yet devised a way to completely gut the Fifth Amendment. Federal courts have ruled that law enforcement cannot coerce you into revealing passwords to your electronic devices. To keep your wealth safe from state led highway robbery, keep your money online with hefty encryption.

The law allows, and incentivizes, law enforcement agencies to use asset forfeiture. Citizens can live with the fear of their money being taken on a whim. Or, individuals can stand up, en masse, to challenge this egregious and open aggression against innocent citizens.

Until then, the best bet to keep the greedy hands of government out of your pockets is to seek refuge in blockchain technology. If you need to move lots of cash, digitize your wealth.

Colombia Produces Record Cocaine Crop For 2nd Straight Year

We didn’t need any more data to definitively expose the many shortcomings of the US-led global prohibition on narcotics – but we got one today, courtesy of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

New figures show that cocaine production in Colombia reached an all-time high for the second straight year in 2016, as coca cultivation in the South American country surged 52 percent, spanning 146,000 hectares, compared with 96,000 in 2015. The 2016 crops produced an estimated 866 metric tons of cocaine, an increase of 35 percent compared to 2015. Meanwhile, cocaine use appears to be increasing in the two largest markets, North America and Europe.

While the UNODC said the survey results were “disappointing,” it noted that there were “some positives” in the report, including an increase of 49 per cent in seizures of cocaine - from 253 tons confiscated in 2015 to 378 tons in 2016. Of course, each seizure inevitably means some low-level trafficker – possibly working under the threat of violence – is being jailed, at an enormous cost to the public, while the seizure has little impact on the larger organization.

The rise in production comes as FARC, a communist insurgency that controlled patches of the Colombian countryside for more than 50 years, renounced drug trafficking under the terms of a peace agreement that was ratified by Colombia’s Congress in November. The group started disarming in March, but doubts remain: Can the group’s members will be able to work regular jobs. Meanwhile, FARC, which  once supported itself mainly through selling drugs and kidnapping wealthy individuals, is transforming into a political party.

In any event, one Colombian law enforcement official who spoke with the Guardian sounded optimistic about the country’s ability to work with FARC to reduce coca production.

“José Ángel Mendoza, the head of Colombia’s counter-narcotics police, said Colombia faced “a difficult historical moment”, but stressed that the figures reflected the state of the country on 31 December 2016.

Since then, the government has put in place an ambitious plan to eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca by the year’s end. Half of that amount is to be forcibly eradicated, and the other half removed through crop substitution agreements with coca farmers.

The substitution program is part of a peace deal with Farc rebels, who renounced drug trafficking as part of their demobilization deal. During much of the group’s 53 years as an armed insurgency, it financed its fight through the drug trade.

Former combatants have committed to work with the government to convince farmers to replace coca crops with another way to make a living.”

This forced eradication program is already yielding results, the Colombians say.

“Already 40% of the goal of forced eradication has been met, and 86,000 families – who account for as much as 76,000 hectares of coca – have signed on to crop substitution programs in exchange for subsidies of about $11,000 per farmer over the course of two years, according to the government.”

As VICE noted, at a joint press conference in May, President Trump pushed for Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos to increase eradication efforts. Santos won the Nobel peace prize late last year for his work on the FARC deal.

Trump said Colombia is one of the US’s closest allies “in the hemisphere,” before reaffirming US support for destroying cocaine crops and refineries by providing DEA personnel and resources to augment localized eradication efforts.

“We have a problem with drugs and you have a very big problem with drugs,” Trump reminded Santos.

“Recently, we have seen an alarmed — and I mean really a very highly alarmed and alarming trend,” Trump said. “Last year, Colombia coca cultivation and cocaine production reached a record high, which, hopefully, will be remedied very quickly by the President.  We must confront this dangerous threat to our societies together.”

Trump has said he believes his wall will help keep drugs out of the US ("walls work, just ask Israel"). Unfortunately, Trump and the Republicans" plans for reducing the flow of illegal narcotics are no different from their predecessors. Once FARC has left the countryside, a new criminal group will take its place – an organization possibly more violent and unpredictable than the one that preceded it. Indeed, as long is there is demand, somebody will find a way to meet it. Maybe it"s time for governments to acknowledge that prohibition has failed, and that regulation could be a more productive strategy.

To be fair, if Santos does manage to engineer a sharp drop in Colombia’s cocaine exports with his voluntary crop-rotation plan, he might earn a Nobel Prize in economics, too.  
 

Has The Drug War Incentivized Police To Treat Citizens Like Terrorists?

Authored by Duane Norman via Free Market Shooter blog,

A video of a Florida Sheriff making a promo video to scare has been making the rounds recently.  Casey Research recently covered the affair, noting the following quote from Sheriff Grinnell:

“Enjoy looking over your shoulder, constantly wondering if today’s the day we come for you. Enjoy trying to sleep tonight, wondering if tonight’s the night our SWAT team blows your front door off the hinges. We are coming for you.”

The video (reproduced below, with commentary from Casey Research) is as surreal as the above picture implies…

Sheriff Grinnell delivered this message last month while flanked by four combat-ready officers wearing ski masks. It looks like someone from ISIS directed it.

Grinnell’s message was aimed at local drug dealers. You see, Lake County has a serious opioid problem. And like many other places in the US, it’s fighting its drug problem as if it were a war.

…but this is hardly the first time a video like this has been produced, and it likely won’t be the last.  Last year, former Sheriff Clay Higgins, known as the “Cajun John Wayne” in Louisiana, released the below video calling out the “Gremlins” gang, and before his resignation, was known for making many similar videos:

Some notable quotes from Sheriff Higgins:

• You won’t walk away.  Look at you. Men like us, son, we do Dumbbell presses with weights bigger than you.


• Young man, I’ll meet you on solid ground, anytime, anywhere. Light or heavy, it makes no difference to me.


• You will be hunted, you will be tracked. And if you raise your weapon to a man like me, we’ll return fire with superior fire.


• You don’t like the things I’ve told you tonight?  I’ve got one thing to say – I’m easy to find.

This guy certainly has enough one-liners to be worthy of the “Cajun John Wayne” moniker, but it seems none of the police or community leaders behind him bothered to ask why criminals engage in such violent behavior; they are trying to profit from the obscenely high price of illegal drugs.  And when it comes to profit, the criminals are hardly alone.

Free Market Shooter has covered the problems with Civil Asset Forfeiture in the past…

Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics explains how police have every reason to seize assets, largely because these civil asset forfeitures are literally funding police departments:

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

…but if you take a closer look at the forfeitures themselves, you’ll realize just how many of them are related to the war on drugs:

“Thirty-six percent of all local police departments received money, property, or goods from a drug asset forfeiture program during 2002 (table 32). These departments employed 78% of all local police officers. At least 80% of the departments in each population category of 25,000 or more had drug asset forfeiture receipts.”

“There can be few components of law enforcement programmes which actually cost nothing. The asset forfeiture provision of the federal law for crop suppression (relating mainly to cannabis in the State of Kentucky), proved to be such a case, costing the United States Government $13.7 million, but yielding a return of $53 million in 1991, or almost $4 in assets seized for every $1 invested by the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

“The advent of a now common police tactic, called the “reverse sting,” illustrates the shift in priorities from crime control to funding raids. In a reverse sting, an officer attempts to sell drugs to an unsuspecting buyer. The method permits the police to seize the buyer’s cash rather than a seller’s drugs, which have no value to the agency.

“During the past decade, law enforcement agencies increasingly have turned to asset seizures and drug enforcement grants to compensate for budgetary shortfalls, at the expense of other criminal justice goals. We believe the strange shape of the criminal justice system today—the law enforcement agenda that targets assets rather than crime, the 80 percent of seizures that are unaccompanied by any criminal prosecution, the plea bargains that favor drug kingpins and penalize the “mules” without assets to trade, the reverse stings that target drug buyers rather than drug sellers, the overkill in agencies involved even in minor arrests, the massive shift towards federal jurisdiction over local law enforcement ^- is largely the unplanned by-product of this economic incentive structure.”

So the drug war has created a massive financial incentive for police to seize property from individuals, one that many departments could require to stay afloat.  What do you think happens next?

As Free Market Shooter has covered previously for Single Dude Travel, raids from SWAT teams have become commonplace, with police becoming better armed by the day:

Our nation’s policing system has become profit-driven instead of crime-driven, largely due to the failure of the war on drugs, and the fact that cops have been given surplus military hardware from the armed forces at bargain basement prices. SWAT team raids have gone from a few hundred per year in the 1970s to 50,000 annually, largely because they call SWAT in when “Special Weapons And Tactics” aren’t really needed, such as when apprehending a credit card scammer or raiding an organic farm for the filmiest of reasons. When a SWAT team nearly kills a 19-month old baby with a flashbang grenade, in a raid without the suspect present, how are there no charges filed?

And now that police are all armed to the teeth looking for property to seize, what happens next?  The practice is applied everywhere.  If you look at a report on the “most outlandish SWAT team raids” across the country, you’ll see just how common it is to have a SWAT team called in:

• Armed agents raid animal shelter in search of baby deer—and kill it.


• Girl’s home wrongfully raided with flashbangs despite door being open.


• SWAT team raids DJ’s studio to enforce copyright law.


• SWAT squad invades private poker game.


• SWAT team raids man’s home in search of stolen koi fish.


• Sex toys, condoms and pajamas seized in drug/prostitution SWAT team raid.


• Peaceful monks arrested in SWAT team action.


• Feds raid Amish dairy farm—twice—for selling unpasteurized milk.


• Police unlawfully invade a series of barbershops without warrants.


• Police forcibly search and detain 19 patrons in gay bar.


• SWAT team confiscates wood used to make instruments during illegal raid.

So, how do you stop police from treating civilians like they would treat terrorists?  The best place to start is removing the incentive structure that has been created by the war on drugs, which brings us back to Casey Research’s commentary:

Illegalizing something does nothing but create a black market and give people a reason to induce other people to get high. I mean, people have been drinking alcohol for about the last 10,000 years. But it didn’t become a real problem until the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act passed in 1920. At that point, it financed the mafia.

Laws turn simple bad habits into massive and profitable criminal enterprises.

The government learned absolutely nothing from the failure of alcohol prohibition. What they’re doing with drugs makes an occasional, trivial problem into a national catastrophe…

However, do not expect that to happen anytime soon; again, as Free Market Shooter has covered in the past, new Attorney General Jeff Sessions is adamant about expanding the war on drugs:

And, in case you weren’t aware, this is the same Jeff Sessions who is on the record as being not only against medicinal marijuana, it is the same Jeff Sessions that has stated that marijuana is only slightly less awful than heroin:

     And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana – so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.

Then again… it’s not like the prior ten attorney generals did anything but continue the war on drugs.  Remember what Casey said about “massive profitable criminal enterprises”?