R9J-Discuss- Civil Forfeiture Policy Of The City Of Miami Beach -Wolfson-g MIAMIBEACH
OFFICE OF THE MAYOR AND COMMISSION MEMORANDUM
To: Jimmy Moroles, City Monoger
From: Jonoh Wolfson, Commissioner
Dote: October 7,2014
Re: Commission Agendq ltem
Pleose ploce on the October 22,2014 Commission Agendo the following item:
Discussion regording the Civil Forfeiture policy of rhe City of Miomi
Beoch.
Civil Forfeilure is o procedure in which lqw enforcement ogencies ore
ollowed Io seize property from individuols who moy or moy not hove
commified q crime. This procedure hos goined nqtionol ofiention
recently qnd the Woshinglon Posl published on qrticle thot outlines the
potentiol issues wirh lhe procedure. I hove ottqched o copy of port I
of rhe orticle series os porf of rhis memo.
Pleose feel free to contoct my Aide, Brett Cummins ot x6437, if you hove ony
questions.
JW
Agenda ltem R?.r
Date /0-22-/C/623
Stop and seize
Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars
from motorists not charged with crimes
Written by Michael Sallal,, Roberl O'Harrow Jr'., Steven Ri*lr
Published on Septernb er 6,2014
After the terror attacks on Sept. ll, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes
and ears of homeland security on America's highways.
Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively
in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of
Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training.
The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the
spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions
of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post
investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last
more than ayear to get their money back.
Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms
that teach the techniques of "highway interdiction" to departments across the country.
One of those firms created a private intelligence network known as Black Asphalt Electronic
Networking & Notification System that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports
about American motorists - criminals and the innocent alike - including their Social
Security numbers, addresses and identiffing tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers
to stop.
Many of the reports have been funneled to federal agencies and fusion centers as part of the
goveflrment's burgeoning law enforcement intelligence systems - despite warnings from
state and federal authorities that the information could violate privacy and constitutional
protections.
A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the
most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network's chat rooms and sharing
"trophy shots" of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of
raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.
"All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine," Deputy Ron Hain of Kane
County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym. Hain is a marketing
specialist for Desert Snow, a leading interdiction training firm based in Guthrie, Okla., whose
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founders also created Black Asphalt.
Hain's book calls for "tuming our police forces into present-day Robin Hoods."
Cash seizures can be made under state or federal civil law. One of the primary ways police
departments are able to seize money and share in the proceeds at the federal level is through a
long-standing Justice Department civil asset forfeiture program known as Equitable Sharing.
Asset forfeiture is an extraordinarily powerful law enforcement tool that allows the
government to take cash and property without pressing criminal charges and then requires the
owners to prove their possessions were legally acquired.
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 ofjournalistic expos6s 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 9/1 1.
"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."
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.
The Post found:
. There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11
without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling
more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that
while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half
of the seizures were below $8,800.
. Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of
legal action against the govemment. But in 41 percent of cases - 4,455 - where there
was a challenge, the govemment agreed to return money. The appeals process took more
than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign
agreements not to sue police over the seizures.
. Hundreds of state and local departments and drug task forces appear to rely on seized
cash, despite a federal ban on the money to pay salaries or otherwise support budgets. The
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Post found that 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20
percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.
. Agencies with police known to be participating in the Black Asphalt intelligence
network have seen a32percent jump in seizures beginning in 2005, three times the rate
of other police departments. Desert Snow-trained officers reported more than $427
million in cash seizures during highway stops in just one five-year period, according to
company officials. More than 25,000 police have belonged to Black Asphalt, company
officials said.
. State law enforcement officials in Iowa and Kansas prohibited the use of the Black
Asphalt network because of concerns that it might not be a legal law enforcement tool. A
federal prosecutor in Nebraska warned that Black Asphalt reports could violate laws
governing civil liberties, the handling of sensitive law enforcement information and the
disclosure of pretrial information to defendants. But officials at Justice and Homeland
Security continued to use it.
Justice spokesman Peter Carr said the department had no comment on The Post's overall
findings. But he said the department has a compliance review process in place for the
Equitable Sharing Program and attorneys for federal agencies must review the seizures before
they are "adopted" for inclusion in the program.
"Adoptions of state and local seizures - when a state and local law enforcement agency
requests a federal seizing agency to adopt a state and local seizure for federal forfeiture -represent an average of only 3 percent of the total forfeiture amount since 2007," Carr said.
The Justice Department data released to The Post does not contain information about race.
Carr said the department prohibits racial profiling. But in 400 federal court cases examined
by The Post where people who challenged seizures and received some money back, the
majority were black, Hispanic or another minority.
A 55-year-old Chinese American restaurateur from Georgia was pulled over for minor
speeding on Interstate 10 in Alabama and detained for nearly two hours. He was carrying
$75,000 raised from relatives to buy a Chinese restaurant in Lake Charles, La. He got back
his money 10 months later but only after spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer and
losing out on the restaurant deal.
A 40-year-old Hispanic carpenter from New Jersey was stopped on Interstate 95 in Virginia
for having tinted windows. Police said he appeared nervous and consented to a search. They
took $18,000 that he said was meant to buy a used car. He had to hire a lawyer to get back his
money.
Mandrel Stuart, a 35-year-old African American owner of a small barbecue restaurant in
Staunton, Va., was stunned when police took $17,550 from him during a stop in2012 for a
minor traffic infraction on Interstate 66 in Fairfax. He rejected a settlement with the
government for half of his money and demanded a jury trial. He eventually got his money
back but lost his business because he didn't have the cash to pay his overhead.
"I paid taxes on that money. I worked for that money," Stuart said. "Why should I give them
my money?"
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In defense of seizures
Steven Peterson, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who arranged
highway interdiction training through a company called the 4:20 Group, said that patrol
officers used to try to make their names with large drug busts. He said he saw that change
when agency leaders realized that cash seizures could help their departments during lean
times.
"They saw this as a way to provide equipment and training for their guyS," Peterson said. "If
you seized large amounts of cash, that's the gift that keeps on giving."
There is no question that state and federal forfeiture programs have crippled powerful drug-
trafficking organizations, thwarted an assortment of criminals and brought millions of dollars
to financially stressed police departments.
Advocates of highway interdiction say it plays an important role in protecting the public and
that officers take care to respect the rights of citizens.
"We don't go hunting for money in general," said Sandy Springs, Ga., Officer Mike DeWald,
who has served as a trainer for 4:20. "I never have been pressured to go after money. We are
in pursuit of the criminal element."
Police trainers said that their work has helped make the country safer by teaching police to be
more vigilant in identifring drug smugglers and terrorists.
"9/11 caused a lot of officers to realize they should be out there looking for those kind of
people," said David Frye, a part-time Nebraska county deputy sheriff who serves as chief
instructor at Desert Snow and was operations director of Black Asphalt. "When money is
taken from an organrzation, it hurts them more than when they lose the drugs."
Frye and Desert Snow's founder, a former California highway patrolman named Joe David,
defended Black Asphalt, which David started in2004. They said they have taken steps in
recent years to ensure that the informal police network complies with state and federal laws.
David declined to speak to The Post.
"The Black Asphalt is not flawless, however the intent behind it is," David and Frye wrote in
a letter in2012 sent to police and obtained by The Post. "The information being moved
through the system has proven itself reliable on hundreds of occasions. Much more reliable
than any criminal informant. The results have been staggering. It has proven itself an
extremely valuable tool for law enforcement."
Hain, Desert Snow's marketing official, said "the operational and software platforms of the
Desert Snow site and Black Asphalt site are completely separate." He said Black Asphalt is
"a secure system for intelligence sharing" and does not store infonnation.
'No personal identifoing information from seizure reports have ever been collected or stored
by the Black Asphalt," Hain said. "The Black Asphalt software is simply a pass-through
system that allows the user to input data, which is then sent directly,via e-mail, to a select
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group of law enforcement (i.e. local investigators, ICE Bulk Cash Smuggling Center, DEA
agents, etc.). Again, none of the personal information is held within the system, only the
summary of the seizure. And then the seizure narratives are only maintained for 21 days
before they get purged."
The Post obtained hundreds of Black Asphalt records from law enforcement sources with
access to the system.
Among Black Asphalt's features is a section called BOLO, or "be on the lookout," where
police who join the network can post tips and hunches. In April, Aurora, Colo., police Officer
James Waselkow pulled over a white Ford pickup for tinted windows. Waselkow said he
thought the driver, a Mexican national, was suspicious in part because he wore a University
of Wyoming cap.
"He had no idea where he was going, what hotel he was staying in or who with," Waselkow
wrote. The officer searched the vehicle with the driver's consent but found no contraband.
But he was still suspicious, so he posted the driver's license plate on Black Asphalt.
"Released so someone else can locate the contraband," he wrote. "Happy hunting!"
Waselkow's department did not respond to a request for an interview.
The Post's review of 400 court cases, which encompassed seizures in 17 states, provided
insights into stops and seizures.
In case after case, highway interdictors appeared to follow a similar script. Police set up what
amounted to rolling checkpoints on busy highways and pulled over motorists for minor
violations, such as following too closely or improper signaling. They quickly issued warnings
or tickets. They studied drivers for signs of nervousness, including pulsing carotid arteries,
clenched jaws and perspiration. They also looked for supposed "indicators" of criminal
activity, which can include such things as trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy
drinks or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors.
One recent stop shows how the process can work in the field.
In December 2012, Frye was working in his capacity as a part-time deputy in Seward County,
Neb. He pulled over John Anderson of San Clemente, Calif., who was driving a BMW on
Interstate 80 near Lincoln. Frye issued a waming ticket within 13 minutes for failing to signal
promptly when changing lanes.
"The results have been staggering. It has proven itself an extremely valuable tool for law
enforcement."
-David Frye and Joe David, talking about the Black Asphalt network in a2012letter to
police
He told Anderson he was finished with the stop. But Frye later noted in court papers that he
found several indicators of possible suspicious activity: an air freshener, aradar detector and
inconsistencies in the driver's description of his travels.
The officer then asked whether the driver had any cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin or large
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amounts of cash and sought permission to search the BMW, according to a video of the stop.
Anderson denied having drugs or large amounts of cash in his car. He declined to give
permission for a search. Frye then radioed for a drug-sniffing dog, and the driver had to wait
another 36 minutes for the dog to arrive.
"I'm just going to, basically, have you wait here," Frye told Anderson.
The dog arrived and the handler said it indicated the presence of drugs. But when they
searched the car, none was found. They did find money: $25,180.
Frye handcuffed Anderson and told him he was placing him under arrest.
"In Nebraska, drug cuffency is illegal," Frye said. "Let me tell you something, I've seized
millions out here. When I say that, I mean millions. . . . This is what I do."
Frye suggested to Anderson that he might not have been aware of the money in his vehicle
and began pressing him to sign a waiver relinquishing the cash, mentioning it at least five
times over the next hour, the video shows.
'You're going to be given an opportunity to disclaim the currency," Frye told Anderson. "To
sign a form that says, 'That is not my money. I don't know anything about it. I don't want to
know anything about it. I don't want to come back to court.' "
Frye said that unless the driver agreed to give up the money, a prosecutor would "want to
charge" him with a crime, "so that means you'll go to jail."
An hour and six minutes into the stop, Frye read Anderson his Miranda rights.
Anderson, who told Frye he worked as a self-employed debt counselor, said the money was
not illicit and he was carrying it to pay off a gambling debt. He would later say it was from
investors and meant to buy silver bullion and coins. More than two hours after the stop had
begun, he finally agreed to give up the cash and Frye let him go. Now Anderson has gone to
court to get the money back, saying he signed the waiver and mentioned the gambling debt
only because he felt intimidated by Frye.
A magistrate has ruled at a preliminary step in the case that Frye had reasonable suspicion to
detain Anderson. Frye said he always follows the law and has never had a seizure overtumed.
Legal scholars who viewed the video of the stop told The Post that such practices push
constitutional limits. Officers often are taught not to tell the driver they have a right to leave
at any time after a traffic stop is concluded. But extended stops in which the officer uses
psychological pressure on the driver without charges or Miranda wamings can cross the line.
"Encouraging police to initiate searches for the purpose of seizing cash or other assets, rather
than to seize evidence to be used in a prosecution, is a dangerous development," said Clifford
Fishman, a law professor at Catholic University and former New York City prosecutor. "It is
particularly troubling if police officers are trained to manipulate the suspect into forfeiting the
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assets or waiving the right to contest the search."
David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, said Frye's stop crossed the line
when he detained the driver while summoning a canine.
"You cannot elongate the stop to bring in the dogs," he said. "In doing that, you're detaining
the person without probable cause. That ain't kosher."
A tool in the drug \ryar
Civil asset forfeiture law is among the more unusual areas of American jurisprudence. It does
not involve evidence of a crime or criminal charges. It is a civil action against an object, such
as currency or a boat, rather than a person. It has its basis in British admiralty law, which
allowed the taking of a ship to recover damages.
ln 1970, Congress turned the federal civil asset forfeiture law into a weapon against the
illegal drug trade, allowing for the seizure of aircraft, boats and vehicles used to transport
drugs. The federal law was eventually expanded to include cash tied to drug trafficking and to
allow the money to be shared with local and state police, who could keep up to 80 percent of
the seized assets. When police make a seizure, a federal agency must approve or "adopt" it
for inclusion in Justice's Equitable Sharing Program.
It was a much more effective tool for federal prosecutors than criminal forfeiture, which
required the conviction of a defendant with proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Most
significantly, the law places the burden of proof on the property owner to demonstrate that an
object is not tied to criminal activity.
As the drug trade ramped up throughout the 1980s, money deposited into Justice's federal
forfeitures fund increased from $27 million in 1985 to $556 million in 1993. (It reached $2.6
billion in2007 .) Some of that increase was driven by Operation Pipeline, a nationwide DEA
program launched in 1986 that promoted highway interdiction training for state and local
police.
Several newspapers later wrote expos6s about innocent people being caught up in the
forfeiture net and police spending on luxuries. The Orlando Sentinel rvon a Pulitzer Prize in
1993 for pointing out that the Volusia County Sheriff s Office had used state seizure laws to
take $8 million from motorists, nine out of 10 of them minorities.
The attention prompted Congress to reform federal seizure laws in 2000, allowing owners to
be reimbursed for their legal fees after successful lawsuits. But a key reform was cut. It
would have removed what some lawmakers called the "perverse incentive" to target cash -the sharing of money between the feds and locals. It died after police and Justice waged a
"voracious lobbying" campaign, according to former representative Bamey Frank (D-Mass.).
"We didn't have the votes," said Frank, who is still an ardent critic of asset forfeiture. "There
is this terrible unfairness. It is about as fundamental a denial of their constitutional rights as i
can think of."
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After Sept. 1 1, 2001 , civil forfeiture and the war on drugs became entwined with efforts to
improve homeland security. Smugglers of all kinds turned away from airports because of the
tightened security and took to the nation's interstate highway system. With federal
encouragement, police from small towns, rural counties and big cities sought specialized
training.
Among those that met the demand was Desert Snow, a family-owned company founded in
1989 by Joe David, a California highway patrolman. Other firms also stepped up, including
the 4:20 Group, Caltraps, Hits, Diamondback Training, and Global Counter-Smuggling
Training Consultants. Soon more than a dozen companies were competing for millions in
state and federal grants and contracts, along with fees from local departments across the
country.
The training had an immediate effect in some areas.
After the Kansas Highway Patrol arranged sessions through Desert Snow for state and local
police in 2005 and2006, the amount of cash flowing into police budgets from seizures nearly
doubled, from an average of $2.6 million ayear between 2000 and 2006 to $4.9 million a
year after 2007.
Amount seized increases over time
After 25 Wisconsin State Patrol officers received training from Desert Snow in 2010, the
agency's cash seizures the following year more than doubled to $585,6 57 . "It creates a surge
period," said Sgt. Nate Clarke, a state patrol supervisor. "These guys get all fired up because
they're seeing photo after photo of seizures on the PowerPoints."
The number of agencies participating yearly under Equitable Sharing went up 22 percentto
2,842 between 2003 and 2007, while cash seizures without search warrants or indictments
during that period rose more than 50 percent, to $242 million. Under the Obama
administration, police have made more than 22,000 such seizures worth about $1 billion
through the Justice Department program.
Federal support helped drive the surge. In Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and
Wisconsin alone, police spent a total of at least $1 million during the last decade in Justice
and Homeland Security grants for Desert Snow training. The DEA, Customs and Border
Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and others spent an additional $2.5
million in contracts on Desert Snow training for police, records show. The DEA also paid
more than $2 million for training from the 4:20 Group. Individual local and state police
forces across the country paid millions more for the training using seized cash, one of the
uses permitted by Equitable Sharing rules.
The police trainers estimate they have taught more than 50,000 police officers in the more
aggressive techniques during the last decade.
Some trainers say they worry that an overemphasis on seizing money has distorted policing.
"Over a period of a single decade, the culture was now totally changed," said Shawn Pardazi,
a detective in Pearl, Miss., and owner of Global Counter-Smuggling Training Consultants
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and a former Desert Snow trainer.
As the demand for training gr€w, the competition among the firms for business became
fierce.
"It's all about the money," said James Eagleson, owner of the 4:20 Group, who also once
worked at Desert Snow.
Getting the money back
Decisions that police make during brief roadway stops take motorists who challenge the
seizures a year on average to resolve, according to a Post analysis. For 350 owners, it took
more than two years to get their money back.
Last year, Ming Tong Liu, 55, a Chinese-bom American from Newnan, Ga, was stopped on
I-10 in Alabama for driving 10 miles over the speed limit while heading to Louisiana to buy
the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Lake Charles for himself and his investors - two
daughters and another relative.
A Mobile County sheriff s deputy gave Liu a ticket for speeding and asked for permission to
search the car. The deputy found $75,195 in a suitcase in the back seat, neatly wrapped in
white napkins and placed in a black plastic bag and then took the money after the deputy said
Liu gave conflicting accounts of his travel plans.
The deputy took Liu to a sherifPs department office and called for an officer from U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, which stood to share in the money.
Liu's attorney, Rebecca Ding-Lee, said the officers overstepped their authority, held Liu for
nearly two hours and searched his car unlawfully without awarcant. "He cannot speak
English," she said. "He didn't understand what the police said."
Ten months after the cash was seized, customs officials agreed to return the money,
documents show.
Police often rely on drug-sniffing dogs to justi$, warrantless searches when a driver refuses to
give consent. In 48 cases examined by The Post, dogs alerted to the presence of drugs but the
officers found only money.
In October 2008, Benjamin Molina, 40, a permanent resident from El Salvador, was traveling
through Virginia on I-95 when an Emporia police officer pulled him over for tinted windows.
A carpenter, Molina was going from North Carolina to his home in Perth Amboy, N.J. The
officer wrote him a warning ticket and began asking him questions, including whether he had
cash in the car.
Molina told the officer that he was shopping for a used car and had $18,000 in his pockets.
Molina's face began to tremble, which police said they took as a sign of possible
wrongdoing. Molina said his cheek twitched from medication he was taking for a health
condition that included kidney disease. Molina also had duct tape in his car, which police
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said is "commonly used by traffickers."
The officer asked Molina, who had no criminal history, to hand over the cash. The officer
placed the money in an envelope, which he set down on the ground alongside two empty
envelopes.
A dog called to the scene sat down next to the envelope with the cash, indicating the presence
of drugs, according to police.
The police took the money, but Molina took steps to get it back.
He hired David Smith, an Alexandria attorney and former federal prosecutor who once
headed the federal government's forfeiture prograln in the Eastern District of Virginia.
After Molina appealed, a federal prosecutor refunded the money. It took four months.
Smith said the Molina case is an example of the kind of overreach that the civil asset
forfeiture reforms passed by Congress in 2000 were aimed at preventing.
"This type of police bounty hunting is antithetical to everything our criminal justice system is
supposed to stand for," said Smith, who helped craft the reform legislation.
Among the indicators police look for are rental cars, which are often used by smugglers.
On Nov. 1,2011, Jose Jeronimo Sorto and his brother-in-law, Victor Ramos Guzman, were
driving a rented sedan on I-95 south of Richmond when a Virginia state trooper stopped
them. Both were lay leaders of the Pentecostal Nuevo Renacer church in Baltimore. They
were carrying $28,500 in church funds meant for the purchase of land to build a church in El
Salvador and a trailer for a new congregation in North Carolina.
Their experience has been cited as a case study in civil forfeiture abuse by The
Post's editorial page, the New Yorker magazine and others. Unknown until now in the public
debate is the fact that the trooper who made the stop, C.L. Murphy, is a top interdiction
trainer for Virginia State Police and Desert Snow, as well as a mernber of Black Asphalt.
Murphy told Sorto and Guzman that they were speeding and following too closely. Murphy
said Guzman told him about the cash and consented to a search of the car.
Guzman, 39, of Sterling, Va., said he showed the trooper documents indicating that he
belonged to a tax-exempt church, and he said the cash had been collected from congregation
members. But Murphy disregarded their explanations, saying they contained inconsistencies.
He called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which accepted the seizure for the
Equitable Sharing Program, and he escorted the men to a nearby police station. He did not
issue a ticket but seized the cash after Guzman signed a waiver.
Three lawyers agreed to represent the church members for free. Three months later, they
received a check from ICE for $28,500.
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Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller would only say, "The facts of the stop
speak for themselves."
ICE spokeswoman Marsha Catron defended the seizure, saying in a statement "the situation
was indicative of bulk cash smuggling" and that Guzman consented by signing a waiver for
the money.
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Written by Michael Saliah, Robert O'ltran'olv .1r.. Steven Rich
Videos by Gabe Silvennan
Graphics by Ernily Chorv, Ted h,{ellnik
Know your rights: During tratlic stops on the nation's highr,vays. the U.S. Constitution's
Fourlh Amendment protects motorists "against unreasonable searches and seizures." The law
also gives police the por,ver to investigate and act on their srispicions.
1. Police have a long-established authority to stop rnotorists for traffic infractions. They can
use traffic violations as a pretext for a deeper inquiry as long as the stop is basecl on an
identifi able infracti on.
2. Att oflicer may detain a driver only as long as it takes to deal with the reason for the stop.
After that, police have the authority to request further conversation. A motorist has the right
to decline and ask whether the stop is conclucled. If so, the motorist can leave.
3. The otlcer also has the authority to briefly detain and question a person as long as the
officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person is involvecl in criminal activity. Reasonable
suspicion is based on specific and articulable facts but falls short of the legal standard tbr
making an arrest.
4. A traffic infraction or reasonable suspicion alone do not girre police authority to search a
vehicle or a closed container, such as luggage. Police may ask fbr perrnission to search;
drivers may decline. Police do not have to tell drivers that they have a riglrt to reftise.
5. An olficer may expancl a roadside investigation if the clriver's responses and other
circumstances justifli a belief that it is more likely than not that criminal activity is occurring.
Under this standard, knorvn as probable cause, an oflicer can make an arrest or search a
vehicle rvithout permission. An alert by a dmg-snifting dog can provide probable cause. as
can the smell of marijuana.
6. Police can seize cash that they find if they have probable cause to suspect that it is related
to oriminal activity. The seizure happens throurgh a civil action known as asset forfeiture.
Police do not need to charge a person with a crime. The burden of proof is then on the driver
to shorv that the cash is not related to a crirne by a legal standard known as preponderance of
the evidence.
Sources: Jon Noruis, criminal deJbnse ottonrcy; Dcvid A. Harris, Lfniversit), oJ'Pittsburgh
Itm'pro-lbssor: Scott Bwllack, civil liberties lat+'1,-er, htstitutefor h*tice; Dep*rtment of
Homeland Securitv.
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