mirror of
https://github.com/nhammer514/textfiles-politics.git
synced 2024-12-25 07:19:31 -05:00
80 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
80 lines
4.9 KiB
Plaintext
'Looking' Like a Criminal
|
||
|
||
Ethel Hylton of New York City has yet to regain her financial
|
||
independence after losing $39,110 in a search nearly three years ago in
|
||
Hobby Airport in Houston. // Shortly after she arrived from New York, a
|
||
Houston officer and Drug Enforcement Administration agent stopped the
|
||
46-year-old woman in the baggage area and told her she was under arrest
|
||
because a drug dog had scratched at her luggage. The dog wasn't with
|
||
them, and when Miss Hylton asked to see it, the officers refused to
|
||
bring it out. // The agents searched her bags, and ordered a strip
|
||
search of Miss Hylton, but found no contraband. // In her purse they
|
||
found the cash Miss Hylton carried because she planned to buy a house to
|
||
escape the New York winters which exasperated her diabetes. It was the
|
||
settlement from an insurance claim, and her life's savings, gathered
|
||
through more than 20 years of work as a hotel housekeeper and hospital
|
||
night janitor. // The police seized all but $10 of the cash and sent
|
||
Miss Hylton on her way, keeping the money because of its alleged drug
|
||
connection. But they never charged her with a crime. // The Pittsburgh
|
||
Press verified her jobs, reviewed her bank statements and substantiated
|
||
her claim she had $18,000 from an insurance settlement. It also found no
|
||
criminal record for her in New York City. // With the mix of outrage and
|
||
resignation voiced by other victims of searches, she says: ``The money
|
||
they took was mine. I'm allowed to have it. I earned it.'' // Miss
|
||
Hylton became a U.S. citizen six years ago. She asks, ``Why did they
|
||
stop me? Is it because I'm black or because I'm Jamaican?'' // Probably,
|
||
both -- although Houston police haven't said. //
|
||
|
||
Drug teams interviewed in dozens of airports, train stations and bus
|
||
terminals and along other major highways repeatedly said they didn't
|
||
stop travellers based on race. But a Pittsburgh Press examination of 121
|
||
travellers' cases in which police found no dope, made no arrest, but
|
||
seized money anyway showed that 77 percent of the people stopped were
|
||
black, Hispanic, or Asian.
|
||
|
||
In April, 1989, deputies from Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana, seized
|
||
$23,000 from Johnny Sotello, a Mexican-American whose truck overheated
|
||
on a highway. // They offered help, he accepted. They asked to search
|
||
his truck. He agreed. They asked if he was carrying cash. He said he was
|
||
because he was scouting heavy equipment auctions. // They then pulled a
|
||
door panel from the truck, said the space behind it could have hidden
|
||
drugs, and seized the money and the truck, court records show. Police
|
||
did not arrest Sotello but told him he would have to go to court to
|
||
recover his property. // Sotello sent auctioneer's receipts to police
|
||
which showed he was a licensed buyer. the sheriff offered to settle the
|
||
case, and with his legal bills mounting after two years, Sotello
|
||
accepted. In a deal cut last March, he got his truck, but only half his
|
||
money. The cops kept $11,500. // ``I was more afraid of the banks than
|
||
anything -- that's one reason I carry cash,'' says Sotello. ``But a lot
|
||
of places won't take checks, only cash, or cashier's checks for the
|
||
exact amount. I never heard of anybody saying you couldn't carry cash.''
|
||
|
||
Affidavits show the same deputy who stopped Sotello routinely stopped
|
||
the cars or black and Hispanic drivers, exacting ``donations'' from
|
||
some. // After another of the deputy's stops, two black men from Atlanta
|
||
handed over $1,000 for a ``drug fund'' after being detained for hours,
|
||
according to a hand-written receipt reviewed by the Pittsburgh Press. //
|
||
The driver got a ticket for ``following to (sic) close.'' Back home,
|
||
they got a lawyer. // Their attorney, in a letter to the Sheriff's
|
||
department, said deputies had made the men ``fear for their safety, and
|
||
in direct exploitation of that fear a purported donation of $1000 was
|
||
extracted...'' // If they ``were kind enough to give the money to the
|
||
sheriff's office,'' the letter said, ``then you can be kind enough to
|
||
give it back.'' If they gave the money ``under other circumstances, then
|
||
give the money back so we can avoid litigation.'' // Six days later, the
|
||
sheriff's department mailed the men a $1,000 check.
|
||
|
||
Last year, the 72 deputies of Jefferson Davis Parish led the state in
|
||
forfeitures, gathering $1 million -- more than their colleagues in New
|
||
Orleans, a city 17 times larger than the parish. // Like most states,
|
||
Louisiana returns the money to law enforcement agencies, but it has one
|
||
of the more unusual distributions: 60 percent goes to the police
|
||
bringing a case, 20 percent to the district attorney's office
|
||
prosecuting it and 20 percent to the court fund of the judge signing the
|
||
forfeiture order. // ``The highway stops aren't much different from a
|
||
smash-and-grab ring,'' says Lorenzi, of the Louisiana Defense Lawyers
|
||
association.
|
||
|
||
--- Renegade v6-27 Beta
|
||
* Origin: Shark's Mouth 313-658-1110 750 MEGS Dual Amiga/IBM (23:313/108)
|
||
|