This kind of thing happens all the time in small town USA. Usually they target out of state plates because it is that much more painful to come get your money back. Common offence is changing lanes without signaling.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/08/they-fought-the-law-who-won/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5273140319f7


This is the first case I have seen of customs doing it. But usually customs is very suspicious of anyone carrying around large amounts of cash.

According to the article, it sounds like the guy is a citizen.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Does the family know any celebrities so they can get Trump's attention?

I would support an organization that posted photos, home address and contact information for any LEO who made these types of seizures. As far as I'm concerned, it is criminal behavior and the people who do it in cases like these are jack-booted thugs.

Good catch. I missed that.

They should grab the agents, and their chain of command, and prosecute them all for grand theft. Sure, we need laws, we need folks watching our borders, and we need enforcement. But with the authority of "law enforcement" comes also the obligation to a) "serve" and b) "set a standard for behavior for others to look up to". When law enforcement becomes "jackbooted thugs", it's 10x as bad as a normal civilian committing the same offense because, to quote Spiderman and Voltaire, "with great power, comes great responsibility". It's a betrayal of the public's trust.

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Only "some times"?

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I miss YaHey

Am I the only one who is amazed that $58,100 can buy you a vacation home on the water and a 6 month vacation, with enough left over to financially help family and friends?

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

Emery's Third Coast Triathlon | Tri Wisconsin Triathlon Team | Push Endurance | GLWR

Am I the only one who is amazed that $58,100 can buy you a vacation home on the water and a 6 month vacation, with enough left over to financially help family and friends?


I travelled through Albania and it is one of the cheapest countries I've ever been in, outside of Tirana. The Adriatic Sea however is not that cheap so there is no way you could buy a vacation home there for $58,100, maybe they were going in with partners or they are taking out a mortgage.

Do you object to the seizure itself or that fact that the money was not returned after 90 days with no charges filed? I think it is outrageous that they have not returned the money. I can see a situation where they may suspect money is involved in crime and it would be reasonable to hold it until those things can be investigated. Although in this case it seems they didn't try much to interview the guy effectively at the time. Not sure how hard it is to get an Albanian interpreter in the Cleveland airport.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

This excuse doesn't cut it anymore. We have these new things like cell phones, Skype, and Google Translate. If you've got someone who you think is a smuggler, and you've got time to pull him aside for an interview, then you have time to get on the line with an interpreter somewhere. Local language schools, linguists in DC or New York, something.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Better yet a celebuttie.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

Civil asset forfeiture and its abuses has been discussed in the LR before - one of the rare times when The Forge and my opinions were relatively aligned.

Recent article in The New Yorker on the “constitutional sheriff” movement was an interesting and somewhat disconcerting read - Very much in line with your concern that “otherwise the sheriff starts getting the idea that it's he that runs the town and we are there at his sufferance.”
https://www.newyorker.com/...enegade-sheriffs/amp

Yeah, we but didn't we just have a discussion about how crazy Albanian women are?

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I miss YaHey

I'm sympathetic to that Constitutional Sheriff idea. But I seem to interpret the idea very differently than you. The New Yorker is outraged that the Sheriff "does whatever he wants" and then likens that to "the sheriff running the town". But that's a mischaracterization coming from their bias. The Sheriff is locally elected. Far from him running the town, he is the embodiment of how the locals want their town (county actually) run.

The New Yorker's reference to the Constitution's Supremacy Clause is disingenuous. That was intended to ensure that the feds reigned supreme in those narrow areas where the Constitution explicitly gave them authority. Note the 10th Amendment's (paraphrasing) "those powers not delegated to the Federal belong to the states. So there wasn't supposed to be much overlap between federal and state authority. The Supremacy Clause gave the feds supremacy where their was overlap. The Constitution has since been, decade by decade, re-imagined to allow the feds to involve themselves in any issue they want. In our world of broken Constitutional fetters, one can't reasonably point to the Supremacy Clause and say "see, federal law reigns supreme in everything".

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

I'm with you. Only "sometimes?" I work around government security folks (CBP, ICE, DHS, TSA) all the time. Most are fine people and aren't out to give anyone a hard time. They're there to do a job. But there are a few bad apples who have obviously let their government civil servant and government LEO status go right to their heads and egos. It's a shame.

I tend to make allowances for these people, usually, because they often see the worst behaviors of the citizenry and the traveling public and I can't help but feel they become jaded and dehumanized by the experience. But this story is about flat-out "seizure" that certainly seems to be theft, from what I can see. And their attitude? "We're the government. So tough sh*t if you don't like it."

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

 I guess I’m not surprised that you find sympathy for the constitutional sheriff proposition, since I’ve seen you write about your position on the 10th amendment before in this forum.

I’m out with my kid and my dog, so responses in this post will be a little off the cuff and without the article right in front of me.

The sheriff who is reported to have said “I am fucking God in this county” is not defending the Constitution against federal encroachment, he is on a power trip. Especially when his denial of that quote is based on an assertion that as a Christian he would never compare himself to God, rather than the substantive response which should be no one individual member of government holds absolute power.

any sheriff that thinks it is solely up to him or her to decide whether something is constitutional or not is ignoring the basic concept of separation of powers. The Authority to determine the parameters of what is constitutional and what is not is something that is left to the judiciary, and/or Congress, not to a member of the executive branch. It doesn’t matter whether or not that sheriff is doing what his constituents want him to do.

Lastly, for this post at least, most civil asset forfeiture abuses seem to be committed by local law-enforcement – people like the sheriff and sheriffs deputies. Is your primary complaint in the original article you posted that it was the feds who took this action? Would you be OK with a civil asset forfeiture of someone from out of town driving through a county where a sheriff effected the seizure, and the local constituents wanted him to do so ?

Fair points.

Sheriff might certainly be on a power trip. But the intent of the article was to show this movement as Sheriff's on power trips. Hard to know how much tar was painted on the sheriff by the writer. Sheriffs that are asshole meglomaniacs probably can't hide those attributes from their voters for long.

Re. Sheriff deciding what is Constitutional isn't the sheriff's purview. Sure, but that's a pretty broader scope than the average sheriff operates. We should separate words from deeds by ignoring the rhetoric. If a sheriff, and by extension the locals, doesn't want to enforce some law in his county, the state will either let it go, or the wheels of change will come to the county and crush him. I can imagine scenarios where there's a lot of sympathy for the county's stand on the matter and the state lets it go. But hot button issues that would stoke national outrage would get fixed real quick in that county.

It does matter what the constituents want in that county, as long as it doesn't conflict with the state or federal constitutions + amendments. If there is conflict with a SCOTUS decision, then the issue needs to go back to SCOTUS, right after they reread the Constitution.

The outrage re. ignoring federal law is all BS. We are only outraged when federal laws we like are ignored. We're perfectly happy when the president or regulatory agencies ignore federal laws in ways that appeal to us. We have no values, no "rule of law". We have only interest groups. And the will twist, spindle, mutilate the Constitution and Federal law all day long to suit their whims.

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

The article certainly has a liberal bias - it’s a New Yorker article after all :) The underlying facts are basically correct though as far as I understand them – there is a so-called constitutional sheriff movement, there are hundreds Of sheriffs who seem to be on board with it, and the basic premise of that movement is that sheriffs think ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution resides with them. I have a problem with that.

Regarding your point that sheriffs who do something that stokes national out rage getting replaced right quick, I note that the article says the average sheriffs tenure is 24 years. Coincidentally, that is how long Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff who never met a civil right he didn’t like to violate, remained in his position. I guess I’m just less sanguine about the ability to remove bad actors quickly.

I do agree that we as a nation are getting more and more willing to ignore overreaches that suit our personal preferences - I think that’s happening with overreaches at all levels of government, local, state and federal. It’s worrying.

I failed to reply to your point re. civil seizure. I'd argue that the evil is the seizure w/o due process, not the level of government that executed it.

Back to the article. County sheriff's, because of their relative autonomy and long service, are a fiercely independent lot. I don't think there's anything to be gained wringing our hands over this abstract "Constitutional Sheriff" idea. Sheriff's are so fiercely independent that any org claiming to represent them is kidding themselves. But, if we want a boogyman, then all the sudden the org becomes useful. I love how the writer is able to tie in so many liberal hot buttons to the county sheriff tradition.

"The idea of a constitutional sheriff emerged in the nineteen-seventies, in California. It was first proposed by William Potter Gale, who had been an aide to General Douglas MacArthur. According to Daniel Levitas’s book, “The Terrorist Next Door,” Gale embraced a belief system called Christian Identity, and, as a self-styled minister, preached that the Constitution was a divinely inspired document intended to elevate whites above Jews and racial minorities. From his Ministry of Christ Church, outside Yosemite National Park, where he sermonized in front of a giant Confederate flag, Gale produced a newsletter, “identity,” its name reflecting his ideology and his fondness for unnecessary capitalization. In 1971, he mailed Vol. 6, No. 1, to his flock. Its featured story, written by Gale, appeared under the byline of Colonel Ben Cameron, a character in the film “The Birth of a Nation” who helps found the Ku Klux Klan."

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

that's a dream ride of mine for sho! Fly into Frankfurt, rent a BMW and then ride thru Austria and on down the Adriatic Coast. I see RR's on ADV Rider of guys who've done this and the scenery and sense of riding thru history is just so spectacular.


/r

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Steve

that's a dream ride of mine for sho! Fly into Frankfurt, rent a BMW and then ride thru Austria and on down the Adriatic Coast. I see RR's on ADV Rider of guys who've done this and the scenery and sense of riding thru history is just so spectacular.

It would be an incredible trip to go from the "heel" of Italy all the way around the Adriatic taking in Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania. I crossed from Italy (and didn't go on the Adriatic coast at all there) then landed in Split then sent down the eastern sea including Croatia, B & H, Montenegro and Albania. I was there in the fall (September) so all the tourists left and campgrounds were empty, the perfect time of year and it would incredible doing it on a motorbike. It would be my pick for the top spot in Europe.

So your solution is vigilante justice?

Seems like the primary issue here was that due process was not provided by law. The secondary issue is whether there were grounds to seize the cash initially. With regard to the latter, I suspect it's a close call, as it seems to revolve around whether the money should have been declared initially. The family claims that that they were going to declare eventually, before the final flight leaving the country. While that seems plausible, it also seems like an after-the-fact explanation. I can see why the feds might be suspicious when finding undeclared money of that amount in a suitcase.

With regard to the first issue, federal law, governing federal seizures like this one, requires that the money be returned within 90 days unless criminal charges are filed or a civil forfeiture proceeding is initiated. So at least some due process is required. If it wasn't, it should be an open and shut case. The fact that it got to the point where a lawsuit was filed makes be suspect there's something more going on. But you never know. Maybe it was incompetence.

The final issue, assuming you think there are circumstances where civil forfeiture is appropriate, is whether federal law provides sufficient due process. And that's not just a constitutional issue. The Constitution might required a minimal level of process, but I believe there's an argument that, as a matter of public policy, more is required. In a case like this, where the seizure in itself can cause near immediate and potentially irreparable harm given the amount in question, there should be at least some process much sooner, like a preliminary hearing where the government at least has to establish probable cause.

The idea of someone pulling out a badge and taking something that is lawfully yours, is absolutely appalling to me. It's bullying. But instead of the guy being 2x as big as you, he's got a badge. Really strikes a chord with me. Law enforcement is a noble calling. But when it goes bad, the consequences need to be severe. That's the kind of reinforcement that helps maintain the proud traditions noble callings rely on.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart