LACop, we have gone over this before on here, but I see its going to have to be done again. Later today I will post all the examples of these laws gone bad, but for now here are a few questions:

Do you actually think it is ethical for any agency to get to profit from removing a citizens property? You say that in most cases if it is done without a conviction that the citizen signed it over, but you forgot to mention that they often sign over a percentage of whatever is siezed because the agency threatens to tie it up in court and drive them broke with legal fees. Does this turn of events sound ethical- LEO siezes property (lets say cash) but doesn't charge a crime more than tailight (says he suspects the cash is drug money, it is odd that a man in a tractor trailer has thousands of dollars, never mind taht he is on his way to an equipment auction). When the citizen attempts to get his money back, the county offers him 80% of it and says that if he wants it all they will fight it in court. After the counties 20% and the lawyer he has less than 50% of the cash left, and it is 6 months later. Does that sound right to you? It is exactly what happened to a friend of mine in LA as he was driving through to Texas.

If forfiture is going to be used the agencies that sieze the property should get none of the money, period. There is too much potential for abuse doing it any other way. In the situation above the county made more money off that one traffic stop than they paid that officer for the whole month, without having to prove a crime. Way to much potential for abuse.

It can be another way if you want to fight crime....it just may take a little more work to aviod stomping on the rights of those you swore to protect.

LACop, I have no problem with the the average cop on the beat, hell my best friend and most of my shooting buddies are in law enforcement in one form or another. But I believe that in many cases allowing a department to profit from a siezure give the wrong incentive. As a punishment it may have some merit, albiet under tighter restrictions that it is now (ie conviction required and a few others) but my problem with it comes from the fact that the departments can benifit by getting the $$$ form these cases. I have seen several reports where the value of a piece of property that was about to be searched was included in the briefing before the raid, of what importance was that information unless one of the goals was $$$$$$.

I have no problem with cops, but I have a big problem with bad policies. We need to work on reforming the court system to make the punishment fit the crime instead of using policies that do more harm to individual property rights.

Here in NC an arrest for dui while your are suspended for a DUI results in siezure of the vehicle, but upon conviction it is sold and the money goes to the school system, The punishment is the same, but it removes the appearance of impropriety and it makes sure that the the only motivation for the seizure is to deter the crime.

FEAR-List Bulletin by Vin Suprynowicz, The Libertarian (a syndicated column), 7-21-95
posted to FEAR-List by Vin Suprynowicz, 1-15-96



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Newt stood before the Republican national Committee this month and uttered the bravest-sounding, most carefully-positioned statement on the Drug War that I've heard.

"We should either legalize drugs entirely, or we should get serious," said the speaker of the house. Since his listeners want nothing to do with legalizing drugs, they most likely heard only the second half. But at a later date, when the polls inevitably show a majority in favor of legalization (just as they did in 1932), who do you think will re-run that tape and smugly remind
us: "See, I proposed legalization back in '95?"

In the same breath, Mr. Gingrich said something even stranger. He said "We must tell anyone who wants to bring drugs into this country to poison our children: We will kill you."

Libertarians would also favor harsh punishment for those who "poison children." But how many drug dealers really tie down young children and inject them with cocaine or heroin against their will? Someone's been watching "Reefer Madness." In real life, why give drugs away when there's plenty to be made selling to well-heeled consenting adults? This crime, statistically, doesn't exist.

But this either/or stuff is far more corrosive than that. Mr. Gingrich is saying that either there is a Constitutional right to put any drugs or medicines we please into our own bodies, or else we should murder people who put drugs and medicines into their own bodies without government permission. Either/or, he doesn't care, just pick one by majority vote and let's go.

Imagine for a moment the Speaker took a similar either/or position on our other freedoms. Either there's a God-given right to practice whatever religion we choose, or else we should murder anyone who practices a religion not approved by the majority. Doesn't matter to him which option we choose, just choose and let's get moving.

This is principled leadership?

In fact, the ever-expanding drug war now reaps more and more victims who have never touched or seen a drug, let alone fed any to innocent children.

Take Gary and Joanne Tucker, sentenced to federal penitentiaries in Georgia for selling fluorescent light bulbs.

Hundreds of hours of undercover work failed to produce any tapes of the Tuckers willing to discuss marijuana growing in their lightbulb store in suburban Atlanta. So the feds just busted a customer of the Tuckers who was growing marijuana to ease the pain of her husband's cancer, and threatened her with jail -- leaving no one to care for her dying spouse -- unless she testified that the Tuckers told her how to use their lights to grow dope.

Or take 68-year-old Russian emigre Sam Zhadanov of Brooklyn, N.Y., now serving five years at Allenwood because his little plastics factory in Metuchen, N.J., manufactured plastic bottles which the government claims could be used to store cocaine.

Old Sam even got a written opinion from a local attorney, Martin Spritzer, about the legality of accepting the wholesale order at his little factory. He was told recent court rulings protect him from any claim that plastic bottles can be considered "drug paraphernalia."

So, instead, the government charged Sam Zhadanov with conspiracy to transport two-and-a-half tons of

The government proceeded to seize Zhadanov's Social Security checks, his $800,000 life savings, and his business -- $1.5 million in all -- on the strength of their having (start ital)accused(end ital) him of drug-related dealings.

Sam Zhadanov opted for representation by an attorney who had been, until four months earlier, a federal prosecutor in New York. The lawyer told Zhadanov he was sure he could "work something out" with the prosecutors.

"He worked something out, all right," says Sam's son, Eli. Penniless, and facing the prospect that his 58-year-old wife would be on the streets should he be convicted, the elder Zhadanov accepted a "deal" to plead guilty to (start ital)all charges(end ital) in exchange for the return to his wife of half the value of his factory.

But the wife never got a penny.

"It was a trick," son Eli says. "It was a scam from the very beginning. The IRS came in and seized the other half that was supposed to be returned to her. They said 'We're not prosecutors, we're another branch of government, so a deal you made with them doesn't apply to us.' "

(The Tuckers' attorney, Nancy Lord, says the Tuckers lost their Georgia house through a similar subterfuge. She got the court to release its federal seizure order, only to see the house immediately seized by Georgia state tax authorities.)

"So instead of working on his life-saving medical devices," like an intravenous syringe that retracts on removal so a nurse can't stick herself and catch AIDS, says Eli Zhadanov, "my father is in Allenwood. A man who is the most law-abiding man I ever met -- he wouldn't get a traffic ticket.

"You know, my father says he came to this country thinking he was going to escape the gulag, and he ended up in the gulag. You come here and you kind of relax, you say 'Oh, they'll see it's a mistake, it's not the KGB, it's the federal government, I can talk to them. ...' "

These are the kind of "drug dealers" who are being locked away in our names as prosecutors build careers on the "War on Drugs."

As real drug wholesalers grow more sophisticated and harder to catch, it's the Gary Tuckers and the Sam Zhadanovs who prove to be the easiest pickings.

Newt Gingrich thinks we should kill them.

Here is what happens when you don't file the proper "papers" with the government when you want to transfer your own money from bank to bank!

Victim Story of Dr. Richard Low, M.D.
by Bob Bauman, 09/20/95
   Richard "Dick" Low, M.D. is the Alabama doctor in question. He lives in Haleysville (205 + 486-3916 [o], 486-2400 His attorney, Michael Seibert, Esq. of Huntsville ((205)852-3592) tells me this in bare outline is the story:
 
   Three years ago Dr. Low, at the request of a friend who had establish a new bank, order his then current banker to transfer his funds to the new bank. The amount was approximately $2.6 million and represented his life savings. The transfer was accomplished by a series of checks drawn by the bank official who had been instructed by Dr. Low. Dr. Low was unaware of the need to file a CTR and in any case his attorney says the banker should have filed it for him, as was customary, altho' the legal responsibility for filing was the doctor's under the 1986 Money Laundering Act.
 
   Low's attorney, Mr. Seibert, believes the reason the US Attorney went after the doctor, who was never charged with any other extraneous crime, was because of the amount of money involved and the fact that the law makes a felony of not filing the CTR, punishable with possible jail and a $250,000 fine. Even if the government did not get all the doctor's money, they believed they would get something big in the way of bucks.
 
   When Low put up a major fight (he even fired a professional PR firm), the government was angered and surprised and as a pressure tactic, they got the IRS to place liens on all his property and other assets because, with no cash available, he was unable to pay his usual income taxes when they became due. They also charged the doctor with conspiracy to obstruct justice, meaning he was fighting the government in every way he knew how. The court dismissed this ridiculous charge early on.
 
   The end result was that Dr. Low, after trial in US District Court, was acquitted of all charges and his $2.6 million returned by court order. He then settled his tax situation with the IRS. However, he sued the government for $317,000 in interest he lost during the time they held his funds, won that case, and the government has appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit where it is now pending.

   Attorney Seibert says the case was a "nightmare" for the doctor, his wife and him as well. Seibert says the government attitude in this case was no different from Waco or Ruby Ridge, except no one died. He says the entire affair cost the doctor several hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for both Seibert and Bo Edwards, a local criminal defense attorney who handled part of the case.

   Seibert said he did not think Dr. Low would have any objection to our identifying him by name in our literature, since he welcomed publicity about his ordeal in order to warn others of what can happen.

F.E.A.R.-List Bulletin
Forfeiture Victims The Joneses
by John Paff, posted 11/17/94
The Palm Beach Post (Florida) ran a front page story on Sunday, November 13, 1994 entitled "Family still fights for good name after feds seized ranch 6 years ago."

The story, written by Susannah A. Nesmith, features Donald Jones, 36, his sister Toni Wiersma, 40, and their 75-year-old mother Mildred Jones whose 4,000 acre family ranch was seized by then- acting U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen in September 1988. The working ranch, valued at $6 million, is located on Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation in Glades County, near Lake Okeechobee.
 

The seizure--touted by Lehtinen as being the "largest federal property seizure in U.S. history"--was precipitated by the crash of a twin-engine Piper Navajo in February 1986. The badly-burned crash victims were never positively identified and no drugs were found in the wreckage. Still, law enforcement authorities concluded that the plane was carrying drugs because metal grommets were found in the plane's remains. According to court documents, the grommets were similar to those used in the duffel bags drug dealer typically pack their drugs in. The grommets were later lost by the Glades County Sheriff's Office. Nobody in the Jones family was charged with drug dealing, nor were any of the employees on the ranch.
 

The plane did not crash on the Jones ranch. It crashed about a mile from the ranch's western border. The ranch was seized because of the government's claim that the alleged drug plane was headed to the ranch before it crashed.
 

The government made the seizure after snitch Lazaro Fernandez, who was caught unloading drugs off a different plane, made a deal with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to stay out of jail. Fernandez fingered 10 other men and gave the government the "probable cause" it needed to seize the family ranch.
 

Fernandez's story changed repeatedly from 1988 to 1993. At first he said that he had never been to the Jones ranch. Later, he said that he did go to the ranch and saw a man named Richard I. Platt in a pickup truck near the alleged airstrip. By 1993, Fernandez stated that the man in the truck was not Platt, but Bill Wiersma, Toni Wiersma's husband. Fernandez also was caught lying under oath in a related criminal case in 1987.
 

In May 1994, U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler returned the ranch to the Jones family. Hoeveler wrote "It is of interest to note that, unlike the majority of the populace, Mr. Fernandez's memory seemed to improve rather than fade away with the passage of time, so that, remarkably, in 1993, he did what he couldn't do in 1988 or earlier: He identified Bill Wiersma."
 

Despite the return of their ranch, family members still don't think they received justice. Besides the $700,000 in legal fees they've expended, the family members say that the drug allegations have hurt the family's reputation. "I didn't step foot out of the house for three weeks," Mildred Jones said. "It was so embarrassing. I had never been in such a predicament."
 

The family has filed a slander suit against Lehtinen. They claim that Lehtinen, in a press conference held the day after the seizure implied that they were drug dealers. At the press conference, Lehtinen is reported to have said: "These properties are assets of drug dealers. This is a major effort to take the war on drugs to the drug smuggler's pockets." The slander suit was dismissed by Judge James C. Paine due to Lehtinen's prosecutorial immunity. The family is appealing the dismissal.
 

Lehtinen's nomination for permanent U.S. Attorney was refused by the Senate in 1991. Lehtinen resigned from office in 1992.
 

Donald Jones had this to say: "They say we're in a war, and in a war there's innocent victims. I guess we're the innocent victims."

Note: Susannah Nesmith can be contacted at: The Palm Beach Post, 2751 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33405, telephone 407/747-1888.

[b][red][size=3] $50,000 tractor siezed for running over rats![/b][/red][/size=3]
Wildlife Police Seize Tractor: U.S. Files Suit Alleging Farm
Implements Ran Over Rats

- by Judy Osburn, F.E.A.R. Chronicles, Vol. 2 No. 2 (July 1994)

Like many of the more than 200 federal seizure laws attached to
non-drug crimes, the forfeiture statute under the Endangered
Species Act contains no protection for innocent owners.  

Wildlife Act Creates Dilemma for Tractor Firm is reprinted from The
Bakersfield Californian, April 29, 1994:

Bakersfield businessman E.G. Berchtold couldn't have been more
shocked when he received the official document from the U.S.
attorney's office.

"The United States of America vs. One Ford Tractor."

A $50,000 tractor and disc Berchtold Equipment Co. had sold
recently to a customer had been confiscated by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. Berchtold still has a sizable financial interest
in the equipment.

What the document didn't say, but what Berchtold later learned, was
that it was the tractor driven by Taung Min Lin when he allegedly
ran over and killed several endangered Tipton kangaroo rats about
20 miles southwest of Bakersfield.

Lin, an El Monte-based businessman and an owner of Wang-Lin Farms
Inc., is the first farmer in Kern County to face prosecution under
the federal Endangered Species Act, said Karen Kalmanir, assistant
U.S. attorney in Fresno.

"Our concern is not only the tractor we might lose," Berchtold
said. "All of us are losing our rights. The government is doing
whatever it wants to do to us. What people don't realize is that
this could be their house if they happened to kill some endangered
animal in their backyard."

The tractor - and a disc - were confiscated by the federal agents
in the same way as property is confiscated from drug traffickers,
Kalmanir explained.

The Endangered Species Act "authorizes the confiscation of
instruments of crime," she said.

The document had been sent to Berchtold Equipment Co. to let it
know of the forfeiture action so that the company could petition
the court to show any financial interest.

"We  are  an  innocent  party here," he said from his Bakersfield
office. Berchtold added that he does not know whether he will get
the tractor, even though the company has a Uniform Commercial Code
document filed with the secretary of state defining the company's
financial interest in the equipment.

"We sold a tractor that ran over something," he said. "This could
happen to anyone. This could happen to a truck sold by Jim Burke
Ford."

Berchtold also noted that the company was given only a few days to
respond to the notice.

Through Bakersfield attorney Kenneth Bates, Berchtold has filed a
response and hopes to either get the rest of the money owed on the
tractor, or the tractor back.

He fears that Lin, facing a possible $200,000 fine and imprisonment
if convicted, will not be able to pay the balance. U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service already has stopped him from farming until the
matter has been handled.

Lin's criminal case will come before the U.S. Magistrate in Fresno
May 11.

"This is a risk that all of my colleagues in the equipment business
are now facing," Berchtold said.

Berchtold also said he was concerned about Lin. The elderly man
from Taiwan does not speak English. He does not have an attorney.
He does not have any good friends in Kern County and according to
ranch manager Robert Sanchez, does not understand the environmental
law.

Fred Starrh Jr., as an active member of the Coalition to Promote
and Preserve  Private  Property Rights, said many local farmers are
concerned about Lin's case. "There are other cases just like this
going on right now," he said. "(State) Fish and Game and (U.S.)
Fish and Wildlife are out of control."

Lin allegedly was caught cultivating virgin desert that he had
purchased three years ago from Tenneco Oil Co. Starrh said that as
urban Bakersfield expands over farmland, farmers are being forced
to move toward the desert.

"Basically in this area, any land that is desert is home to
endangered species," he said. "Farmers are finding that land
they've owned for years but haven't used has become federal reserve
property and there is nothing they can do about it."

L.A. Forfeiture Squads Kill California Millionaire
-- by Brenda Grantland, Esq., F.E.A.R. Chronicles, Vol 1. No. 5, (November, 1992)
 
On October 2, 1992, a "task force" composed of L.A. County sheriff's deputies, DEA agents and U.S. Park Service officers executed a search warrant -- crossing Los Angeles County lines into Ventura County (without notifying Ventura County police) -- on California millionaire Don Scott's estate.

The search warrant was based on information from an informant that marijuana was growing on Scott's 250 acre estate, a piece of land coveted by the government. DEA agents planned to use this to seize Scott's estate, which federal officials had earlier tried to buy to incorporate into its scenic corridor in the Santa Monica Mountains. "But Scott would never negotiate with government officials, whom he distrusted," according to the Los Angeles Times.

The task force arrived at Scott's estate before 9 a.m.. They crashed through the door and pushed Scott's wife, Frances Plante, through the kitchen into the living room. She screamed "Don't shoot me! Don't kill me!", apparently awakening her husband, who came downstairs brandishing a gun over his head. According to Plante, the officers told him to lower the gun, and, as he lowered his arm, they shot him to death. They left him lying in a pool of blood on the floor as they searched the premises, finding no trace of marijuana anywhere on the estate.

When Scott's wife ran to the body, they "hustled her out of the house." Recorded phone conversations show that while the dead or dying millionaire lay in a pool of his own blood, police used the phone to make calls, and answered a call from one of Scott's neighbors, telling the neighbor Scott was "busy."

Several weeks before the raid -- according to Malibu Surfside News reporter Anne Soble, (who covered this story in extensive and probing detail) -- a game warden and a California Coastal Commission employee paid a visit to the Scotts, bringing with them a six-pack of beer. During the visit, they asked for a tour of the Chumash Indian trails on the property, which the Scotts refused because of rattlesnakes. Scott's widow, Frances Plante, believes the visit was connected to the investigation leading to the raid - particularly since U.S. Park Service agents -- who had an obvious interest in obtaining the property -- participated in the raid.

Part of the allure of the estate is its repute as an archaeological site of the Chumash Indians -- a fact not missed by the forfeiture squads, who seized old maps and other historical documents relating to the property, during the fatal October 2 raid, according to Scott's wife, Frances Plante.

That is one of my big problems with these laws...they are passed with the excuse "we need this to get drug dealers or poachers or (insert crime of choice here)" but then the use rapidly expands to any crime that can be made to fit. The rat case is a great example..... the man could have been fined but the agency stood a lot more to gain by seizing the tractor. I wonder how long before asset forfiture comes to firearms violations? "The wood on the stock of that shotgun your father left you is 1/8 inch to short, and since you were hiding it in your house we are seizing the land and dwelling" or "You were in possesion of post 94 mags, we don't care that the marking were removed and obscured when you bought em and you didn't notice, and lucky for us you had em in your brand new pickup!" or "we know you are an LEO, but you purchased those LEO mags without a letterhead, so say goodbye to your house". If they can take a $50,000 tractor for running over some rats on the mans own property it's not that far fetched!