How law enforcement agencies abuse asset forfeiture laws to bankroll their various budgets to the tune of billions is the focus of a big three-part investigation at The Washington Post. Two parts have been published already; the third part will be published Tuesday.
The first two articles are excerpted and linked below.
The first article
"Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training.
The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back."
The second article.
"David had developed an uncanny talent for finding cocaine and cash in cars and trucks, beginning along the remote highways of the Mojave Desert. His reputation had spread among police officers after he started a training firm in 1989 to teach his homegrown stop-and-seizure techniques. He called it Desert Snow.
The demonstration he gave on Capitol Hill in November 2003 startled onlookers with the many ways smugglers and terrorists can hide contraband, cash and even weapons of mass destruction in vehicles. It also made David’s name in Washington and launched his firm into the fast-expanding marketplace for homeland security, where it would thrive in an atmosphere of fear and help shape law enforcement on highways in every corner of the country."
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