mirror of
https://github.com/nhammer514/textfiles-politics.git
synced 2024-12-28 00:39:23 -05:00
62 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
62 lines
3.6 KiB
Plaintext
Government Seizures Victimize Innocent
|
||
|
||
By Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
|
||
|
||
Part One: The Overview
|
||
|
||
February 27, 1991. // Willie Jones, a second-generation nursery man in
|
||
his family's Nashville business, bundles up money from last year's
|
||
profits and heads off to buy flowers and shrubs in Houston. He makes
|
||
this trip twice a year using cash, which the small growers prefer. //
|
||
But this time, as he waits at the American Airlines gate in Nashville
|
||
Metro Airport, he's flanked by two police officers who escort him into a
|
||
small office, search him and seize the $9,600 he's carrying. A ticket
|
||
agent had alerted the officers that a large black man had paid for his
|
||
ticket in bills, unusual these days. Because of the cash, and the fact
|
||
that he fit a ``profile'' of what drug dealers supposedly look like,
|
||
they believed he was buying or selling drugs. // He's free to go, he's
|
||
told. But they keep his money -- his livelihood -- and give him a
|
||
receipt in its place. // No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced. No
|
||
charges were ever filed. As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither
|
||
uses drugs, nor buys or sells them. He is a gardening contractor who
|
||
bought an airplane ticket. Who lost his hard-earned money to the cops.
|
||
And can't get it back.
|
||
|
||
That same day, an ocean away in Hawaii, federal drug agents arrive at
|
||
the Maui home of retirees Joseph and Frances Lopes and claim it for the
|
||
U.S. government. // For 49 years, Lopes worked on a sugar plantation,
|
||
living in its camp housing before buying a modest home for himself, his
|
||
wife, and their adult, mentally disturbed son, Thomas. // For a while,
|
||
Thomas grew marijuana in the back yard -- and threatened to kill himself
|
||
every time his parents tried to cut it down. In 1987, the police caught
|
||
Thomas, then 28. He pleaded guilty, got probation for his first offense
|
||
and was ordered to see a psychologist once a week. He has, and never
|
||
again has grown dope or been arrested. The family thought this episode
|
||
was behind them. // But earlier this year, a detective scouring old
|
||
arrest records for forfeiture opportunities realized the Lopes house
|
||
could be taken away because they had admitted they knew about the
|
||
marijuana. // The police department stands to make a bundle. If the
|
||
house is sold, the police get the proceeds.
|
||
|
||
Jones and the Lopes family are among the thousands of Americans each
|
||
year victimized by the federal seizure law -- a law meant to curb drugs
|
||
by causing financial hardship to dealers. // A 10-month study by The
|
||
Pittsburgh Press shows the law has run amok. In their zeal to curb drugs
|
||
and sometimes fill their coffers with the proceeds of what they take,
|
||
local cops, federal agents and the courts have curbed innocent
|
||
Americans' civil rights. From Maine to Hawaii, people who are never
|
||
charged with a crime had cars, boats, money and homes taken away. // In
|
||
fact, 80 percent of the people who lost property to the federal
|
||
government were never charged. And most of the seized items weren't the
|
||
luxurious playthings of drug barons, but modest homes and simple cars
|
||
and hard-earned savings of ordinary people. // But those goods generated
|
||
$2 billion for the police departments that took them. // The owners'
|
||
only crimes in many of these cases: They ``looked'' like drug dealers.
|
||
They were black, Hispanic or flashily dressed. // Others, like the
|
||
Lopeses, have been connected to a crime by circumstances beyond their
|
||
control. // Says Eric Sterling, who helped write the law a decade ago as
|
||
a lawyer on a congressional committee: ``The innocent-until-proven-
|
||
|
||
--- Renegade v6-27 Beta
|
||
* Origin: Shark's Mouth 313-658-1110 750 MEGS Dual Amiga/IBM (23:313/108)
|
||
|