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Reminds me of a series a news station in TN ran on civil seizure.
I could not find the link but it was a well done series showing how the police patrolled a stretch of high way known as a drug route.
It turns out they stopped the side going out (money) something like 10x as often as the side coming in (drugs)
State law allowed departments to keep 50% of the loot the other 50% went to the state iirc.
There was more profit hitting the money then the drugs side... It created incentive to LET the drugs come in to be sold so that they could collect the money going out.
So much incentive infact that they actually had video of one department trying to muscle in on another departments stop.. with cops threatening other cops on the side of the road.
They targeted cars with out of state tags and even went so far as to invent traffic violations to pull them over, one such stop a news chopper doing traffic just happen to be over head when a car was pulled over for weaving when in fact the driver was shown to be driving perfectly straight.
Of course with civil seizure you don't actually arrest anyone, you arrest the money, and that is just how it sounds.. the money has to be proven innocent via the owner showing legit source.
This means hoops to get your own money back and there is no hard rule about how much is 'suspicious', a business man with 30k headed to buy a refrigerated truck had his money seized.
The logic of it all is if you have a large sum (again no sum is defined) it's assumed you either just sold drugs, or are on your way to purchase.
Reminds me of a series a news station in TN ran on civil seizure.
I could not find the link but it was a well done series showing how the police patrolled a stretch of high way known as a drug route.
It turns out they stopped the side going out (money) something like 10x as often as the side coming in (drugs)
State law allowed departments to keep 50% of the loot the other 50% went to the state iirc.
There was more profit hitting the money then the drugs side... It created incentive to LET the drugs come in to be sold so that they could collect the money going out.
So much incentive infact that they actually had video of one department trying to muscle in on another departments stop.. with cops threatening other cops on the side of the road.
They targeted cars with out of state tags and even went so far as to invent traffic violations to pull them over, one such stop a news chopper doing traffic just happen to be over head when a car was pulled over for weaving when in fact the driver was shown to be driving perfectly straight.
Of course with civil seizure you don't actually arrest anyone, you arrest the money, and that is just how it sounds.. the money has to be proven innocent via the owner showing legit source.
This means hoops to get your own money back and there is no hard rule about how much is 'suspicious', a business man with 30k headed to buy a refrigerated truck had his money seized.
The logic of it all is if you have a large sum (again no sum is defined) it's assumed you either just sold drugs, or are on your way to purchase.
ops: 
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