Posted on 03/08/2006 10:00:00 AM PST by steel_resolve
HARRISBURG -- Cash with far higher-than-normal trace levels of cocaine can be seized as contraband from speeding drivers, a divided state appeals court ruled today.
The 5-2 Commonwealth Court decision concerned the seizure of $451,000 from two separate vehicle stops by state police on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 2002 and 2004.
(Excerpt) Read more at postgazette.com ...
Bottom line: 1) It's money. 2) We want it. 3) It's ours.
Even if the guy just cashed his paycheck at the bank, and is in a hurry to get somewhere? This is wrong.
So what's the normal level of cocaine that's acceptable on currency?
yep
Almost all cash has trace elements of Cocaine.
IB4TBL
Ping
I think I've read before that 98% of paper money has cocaine traces on it.
This is the thinnest veil yet I have seen for an outright theft from citizens by law enforcement - and an excellent example of how the WoD leads to the degradation of all law and respect for the law in this country.
Yeah, I remember hearing that long ago - it still amazes me. So did they put out guidelines on what's trace and what's beyond trace?
Another good reason for "money laundering"!
bump
Without other evidence I'd have to go with "Give it back".
Most times I have less than $20 on me but a few times I had over $10K. It's mine and I worked hard for it. If the law wants it, prove it in court.
Pretty amazing stuff. Just the fact that money has a trace amount of cocaine on it means that some will have more and some will have less. All it would take would be to have a few bills with extra cocaine on it - or, even worse, a crooked cop sprinkling a bit of cocaine on seized cash - and the money goes to the police.
Yet another hole blasted into basic constitutional protections.
It's not - but they can seize it anyway.
Nobody owns their money. The government just lets us carry some around until they want it back.
There have been several studies on the phenomenon. The cocaine is mainly spread by cash counting machines, as well as ATMs. The machines get contaminated, then spread the cocaine to every bill that goes through it after that.
In one 1985 study done by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the money machines in a U.S. Federal Reserve district bank, random samples of $50 and $100 bills revealed that a third to a half of all the currency tested bore traces of cocaine. Moreover, the machines themselves were often found to test positive, meaning that subsequent batches of cash fed through them would also pick up cocaine residue. Expert evidence given before a federal appeals court in 1995 showed that three out of four bills randomly examined in the Los Angeles area bore traces of the drug. In a 1997 study conducted at the Argonne National Laboratory, nearly four out of five one-dollar bills in Chicago suburbs were found to bear discernable traces of cocaine. In another study, more than 135 bills from seven U.S. cities were tested, and all but four were contaminated with traces of cocaine. These bills had been collected from restaurants, stores, and banks in cities from Milwaukee to Dallas.
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