See What I Mean?

While I’m bitching about our government, fellow blogger Acidman wrote a posting that reminded me of another one of my pet peeves...

Asset Forfeiture.

”A Quincy woman who apparently stuffed $46,950 in cash in her bra before trying to board a plane to Texas for plastic surgery has sued a federal agency, demanding the return of her money.

The money was seized from Ileana Valdez, 26, after a security check at a metal detector at Logan International Airport on Feb. 3. Valdez told authorities she was heading to Texas for plastic surgery on her buttocks and breasts.

"I don't know why she was carrying it (the cash) in her bra," said Boston lawyer Tony V. Blaize, who filed the suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston on behalf of Valdez.

In her suit, Valdez said a male Drug Enforcement Administration agent told her she had a nice body and didn't need surgery — and then seized the cash, claiming it was drug money.”

This (asset forfeiture) is a little ditty that the government has invented as part of their “War on Drugs.”

Here is the idea: take away the criminals “ill gotten gains” and “assets and machinery”—cash, houses, cars, airplanes, boats, etc.—and they won’t be able to transport and sell drugs.

You know what the only problem with this idea is?

What if the government is wrong, and the asset that they seize is legitimately that of the person it is taken from? Once they have your money, you have to go to court to get it back. The laws even give the local police jurisdictions an incentive to seize assets—if they can successfully prevent you from recovering your property—they get to keep it.

Thus the dilemma.

Take Ileana Valdez’s situation. The woman sells some stuff, but maybe she doesn’t have a bank account.

What does she do? Even if she does have a bank account, with the proliferation of counterfeit checks these days, you can’t even trust a cashiers check or money order to be valid when you need to go from point A to point B with large sums of cash. Buying cars, boats, and airplanes comes to mind.

Now the government has authorized it's police force to look at you and on the spot decide how much money they think you should be allowed to have in your pocket. Having long hair and needing a shave (which I do most of the time) could eliminate me from being allowed to carry around $2000 in my coin purse in some up-tight-assed cops' minds.

Talk about legal profiling...

I once bought a 32’ boat in south Florida and had to travel from Atlanta to inspect and take ownership of the vessel.

The owner had published a price and I was pretty sure that we were going to be able to strike a deal, but instead of getting a certified check for the exact amount, I low balled the number and then brought cash (more than $5,000 worth) and believe me I worried about having that much money on me, not so much from the standpoint of losing it or being robbed, but fear of being stopped by police and having them take my money.

After all, interstates 75 and 95 in south Florida are notorious as drug trafficking pathways, but they are also the sources of horror stories of law abiding citizens having their hard earned cash taken by over zealous members of our law enforcement community.

Where is it going to end?