Posted on 03/05/2020 11:14:10 AM PST by nickcarraway
Neither Terry Rolin or his daughter were ever charged with a crime, but that didn't stop the DEA from trying to seize more than $82,000 from them through civil asset forfeiture.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) will return more than $82,000 that it seized from an elderly Pittsburgh man and his daughter after a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on their behalf last month.
The Institute for Justice, the libertarian-leaning public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit, announced today that the DEA will return $82,373 that it seized from Rebecca Brown six months ago at a Pittsburgh airport. The money was the life savings of her father, Terry Rolin, a 79-year-old retired railroad engineer. She says she intended to deposit the money in a bank but ran out of time before her flight.
According to Brown, a DEA agent met her at her gate and grilled her about the money. Brown told The Washington Post that the agent demanded she put her confused father on the phone, and, when their stories didn't exactly match, the agent seized the cash.
"I'm grateful that my father's life savings will soon be returned, but the money never should have been taken in the first place. I can't believe they're not even offering an apology for the stress and pain they caused for my family," Brown said in a press release today. "Without this money, my father was forced to put off necessary dental work—causing him serious pain for several months—and could not make critical repairs to his truck."
In cases like Rolin's, the DEA seizes cash using civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows police to seize cash and property suspected of being connected to criminal activity, even if the owner is not charged with a crime.
After the seizure, the DEA notified Brown that it was seeking to permanently forfeit Rolin's life savings. Neither Rolin or Brown were charged with a crime.
Law enforcement groups say civil asset forfeiture is a vital tool to disrupt organized drug trafficking by targeting its illicit revenues. However civil liberties groups say there are too few protections for innocent owners and too many perverse profit incentives for police. More than half of all U.S. states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform because of these concerns, but it is less constrained at the federal level.
Although it is legal to fly domestically with large amounts of undeclared cash, the Institute for Justice lawsuit claims the DEA has a practice or policy of seizing currency from travelers at U.S. airports without probable cause simply if the dollar amount is greater than $5,000. This practice, the suit argues, violates travelers' Fourth Amendment rights.
"We are glad that Terry will get his money back, but it is shameful that it takes a lawsuit and an international outcry for the federal government to do the right thing," said Institute for Justice senior attorney Dan Alban. "We know that this routinely happens to other travelers at airports across the United States."
In 2016, a USA Today investigation found the DEA seized more than $209 million from at least 5,200 travelers in 15 major airports over the previous decade.
A 2017 report by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General found that the DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of drug activity over the previous decade, but $3.2 billion of those seizures were never connected to any criminal charges.
The report reviewed 100 cash seizures and found that only 44 of those were connected to or advanced a criminal investigation. The majority of seizures occurred in airports, train stations, and bus terminals, where the DEA regularly snoops on travel records and maintains a network of travel industry employees who act as confidential informants.
"When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution," the Inspector General warned.
That warning has not been heeded, and Brown and the Institute for Justice plan to continue pursuing their lawsuit.
"The government shouldn't be able to take money for no reason, hang on to it for months, and then give it back like nothing happened, which is why the lawsuit we filed will continue," Brown said. "No one should be forced to go through this nightmare."
They helped fund that libertarian group.
They spend time fighting noncriminals and give criminals a pass.
I can't dispute that statement! 😁
I prefer the American philosophy of "MYOB".
I’ve been following this civil forfeiture stuff for a couple of decades now. It’s one of the things that showed me that the US is more like the USSR of old than we want to admit.
It’s also why you NEVER allow the cops to search your car. But, of course, this one wasn’t about a car.
“How much was the cost to them in legal fees to get their money returned? That should be repaid to them as well.”
Plus interest and a civil suit for emotional distress.
I thought I’d have to go back and find the original thread to find all the people that defended what the DEA did. Luckily for me, some of you are self identifying right here on this thread.
It never ceases to amaze me how constitutional, small government conservatives lose all their principles when it comes to the cops.
Government always tends to become tyrannical. Even if you start with democracy, it doesn’t matter. Government officials are always taking more power and repressing the folks more, and so it marches inexorably towards a controlling, overreaching autocracy.
Happening here. Freedom of speech doesn’t exist. The Fourth Amendment is ignored.
No seizures of money (or things of value) without a criminal conviction.
Are you serious? They defended the DEA?
Why would anyone carry that much cash on them?
It’s nobody’s business but theirs.
There is an other case with a guy flying to Florida to buy a bunch of used big rigs. In his case it was almost $200,000. And in their business, cash is the preferred method.
There are plenty of stories about people with $12k or $20k on their way to purchase a car in another state off Craigslist, they get stopped by the cops, the cops search the car, find the money, and keep it because it “must be” drug money. Except there is no evidence that it is other than its mere existence.
The whole thing is repugnant. Nobody carries tens of thousands of dollars around with them every day, but it is not uncommon to have the need on occasion, especially if you are not a fan of credit cards or checks.
I disagree. I wouldn’t do it, but I find it comical that who you have to worry about taking it from you is the cops.
Absolute violation of 4th Amendment rights. Heads should roll.
Wow, you have a good memory, that was almost 30 years ago.
What is comical is that in civil forfeiture cases, do you know who they bring the charges against?
The stuff they seized.
I kid you not.
It’s “The state vs 2020 Corvertte” or “The city of [X] vs $50,000”.
So the people who own the item are never charged with a crime, but their stuff is. That’s funny right there, except it’s not.
I’m flying to Vegas for a four day NCAA Tournament week party and the $$$ in my possession is Nobodies Business...
Does that mean if you really are guilty you can dime out on your possessions? “Give me a plea, DA. If you give me probation, I will testify against my Escalade. It was all the Escalade’s idea. It just asked me to drive it. I had no idea.”
THAT part is funny :)
Not only do they not give a shit, they are pissed off that their victim was able to fight back. I think they should have to pay interest pf 20% per month for illegally depriving these people of their property without justification. The interest should come directly out of their budget for the next year.
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