Tag: news

The Washington Post’s
original
three-part, in-depth look at the use and abuse of police civil
asset forfeiture seems to have transformed into an open-ended,
ongoing series. Over the weekend they posted a sixth installment
exploring grabby police departments taking their citizens’ cash and
belongings.

This time they kept it local, noticing that Washington, D.C.’s,
police are actually attempting to plan in its budget for asset
forfeiture proceeds in advance. This is considered a no-no for any
law enforcement agency participating in the Department of Justice’s
Equitable Sharing Program, the program where the feds and local
enforcement agencies team up, and the local police get to keep 80
percent of whatever’s seized. This planning came to light to the
Post last week because members of D.C.’s Council are
attempting to overhaul the city’s asset forfeiture guidelines to
increase the threshold of proof and requiring all asset
seizures—including the ones that come from the DOJ program—to be
placed in D.C.’s general fund, rather than the police’s budget,
thus seriously reducing the police’s incentives for snatching
whatever they can.

And just
look at what they’ve snatched:

Since 2009, D.C. officers have made more than 12,000 seizures
under city and federal laws, according to records and data obtained
from the city by The Washington Post through the District’s open
records law. Half of the more than $5.5 million in cash seizures
were for $141 or less, with more than a thousand for less than $20.
D.C. police have seized more than 1,000 cars, some for minor
offenses allegedly committed by the children or friends of the
vehicle owners, documents show.

They’re literally just taking the money out people’s wallets at
this point. And the authorities cash in even more whenever somebody
fights back:

One case cited by the Public Defender Service involves Sharlene
Powell, who had worked for three decades as a Postal Service
employee. She loaned her car to her son, who was stopped and
arrested on a misdemeanor drug offense. Prosecutors dropped the
charges, but District police kept the car. To get her car back,
Powell had to pay a $1,772 “penal sum” bond to challenge the
seizure, the Public Defender Service said in a statement last year
to the judiciary committee.

Read more
here. The city is in a legal fight with the Public Defender
Service to try to get rid or reduce those massive bonds. The city
could lose $670,000 annually from the DOJ Equitable Sharing Program
if it can no longer participate. The program’s guidelines require
that law enforcement agencies keep the money, not put it into the
general fund.

Below, Reason TV interviews economist Bart Wilson about the
twisted incentives induced when law enforcement officers are
permitted to keep money and assets they grab when fighting
crime:

The Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) launched suprise investigations of
various NFL teams yesterday, reports
The Washington Post:

The inspections, which entailed bag searches and questioning of
team doctors by Drug Enforcement Administration agents, were based
on the suspicion that NFL teams dispense drugs illegally to keep
players on the field in violation of the Controlled Substances Act,
according to a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of
the investigation.

A class-action lawsuit filed by 1,300 retired football players
“allege[s] that NFL medical staffs regularly violate federal and
state laws in plying their teams with powerful addictive narcotics
such as Percocet and Percodan, sleeping pills such as Ambien and
the non-addictive painkiller Toradol to help them play through
injuries on game days.”

The San Diego Chargers, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Seattle
Seahawks are among the teams that acknowledged searches (though
it’s not clear if those teams were being singled out for specific
reasons). The pretext for the searches is the alleged painkiller
abuse at the heart of the class-action lawsuit.

The DEA’s investigative interest in the NFL is partly based on
the agency’s conviction that lackadaisical prescribing practices
creates addicts. McMahon, who played from 1982 to 1996, said in the
lawsuit that he received “hundreds, if not thousands” of injections
and pills from NFL doctors and trainers, including Percocet,
Toradol, Novocaine, amphetamines, sleeping pills and muscle
relaxers. He said he became so hooked on pain meds that at one
point he took 100 Percocets a month.

There’s this,
too:

An
investigation of NFL medical practices by The Washington
Post last year documented
painkiller abuse in the league. In a Post
survey of more than 500 retired players, one in four said he
felt pressure from team doctors to take medication he was
uncomfortable with. Players told The Post that they swallowed
prescriptions on an almost daily basis, frequently without
documentation.

Read the whole thing here.

Given the physical punishment that is at the very center of the
game at all levels, it’s worth asking whether we’ve reached peak
football. Between this sort of action and growing
questions about concussions and traumatic brain injuries, it’s
totally plausible that football, despite its immense popularity,
has a time-limited future.

Last year, Reason TV sat down with Gregg Easterbrook to talk
about his book The King of Sports and football’s imperiled
future.

Financial anonymity as we know it was invented in
Geneva, Switzerland, in the 16th century, by Protestant Reformation
leader John Calvin. In converting his pretty mountain lake town
into a refuge for Europeans fleeing marauding Catholic governments,
Calvin loosened papal restrictions on lending at interest and
embraced individual privacy as a means of self-defense against a
predatory state. But now, writes Reason editor in chief
Matt Welch, American politicians are systemically destroying the
right to confidential banking.

View this article.

Last month
in Rocky Ford, Colorado, Jack Jacquez, Jr. was
shot in the back and killed by a cop who entered his home,
according to Jacquez’s sister-in-law, who was also home at the
time. According to her and other family members the officer,
identified as James Ashby,  also pepper sprayed Jacquez as he
lay dying on his kitchen floor. At the time, police did not explain
why an officer showed up at the home at two in the morning, why
they targeted Jacquez, or why a cop shot and killed him.

Now the officer, Ashby, has been charged with murder in the
second degree. But authorities are still refusing to disclose
details of the incident. The Denver Post
reports:

Ashby was booked Friday into the Otero County jail. He is being
held on a $1 million bond, according to court records.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation said Ashby was arrested at
the La Junta Police Department. The Otero County Sheriff’s Office
and the Colorado State Patrol also assisted in the
investigation.

Ashby’s arrest warrant has been sealed by a judge, so details
about the shooting were not available. 

In the meantime, police around the country
say they are preparing for protests when the grand jury’s
decision is announced on whether to charge the officer who shot and
killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a case which unlike
many other more police shootings, gained nationwide attention over
the summer.

h/t Stanton Smith