Highway robbery? Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars
That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.
More than 140 people reluctantly accepted that deal from June 2006 to June 2008, according to court records. Among them were a black grandmother from Akron, who surrendered $4,000 in cash after Tenaha police pulled her over, and an interracial couple from Houston, who gave up more than $6,000 after police threatened to seize their children and put them into foster care, the court documents show. Neither the grandmother nor the couple were charged with any crime.
Officials in Tenaha, situated along a heavily traveled highway connecting Houston with popular gambling destinations in Louisiana, say they are engaged in a battle against drug trafficking and call the search-and-seizure practice a legitimate use of the state's asset-forfeiture law. That law permits local police agencies to keep drug money and other property used in the commission of a crime and add the proceeds to their budgets.
When you add the fact that the city strongly "encourages" the accused to sign waivers which forfeit any further action to recover the property, the entire situation sounds pretty fishy to me.
Highway robbery? Texas police seize black motorists' cash, cars
Once the motorists were detained, the police and the local Shelby County district attorney quickly drew up legal papers presenting them with an option: waive their rights to their cash and property or face felony charges for crimes such as money laundering-and the prospect of having to hire a lawyer and return to Shelby County multiple times to attend court sessions to contest the charges.
The process apparently is so routine in Tenaha that Guillory discovered pre-signed and pre-notarized police affidavits with blank spaces left for an officer to describe the property being seized.
My suspicions would end there, if not for my personal experiences with speed traps and "keeping the wrong people out" law enforcement. I personally am out about 2,000 dollars getting my son out of a mess like this. He was stoppd on New Years Eve night in a small town outside of Austin. He was stupid to be there, but he passed the alchohol test, but still spent the night in jail. I had to bail him out. I then retained a local lawyer to defend his case. When we indicated that the key charge of intoxication was NOT supported by the officers testing, we were told that this was not conclusive. The officer could claim that my son was driving erratically, etc, thus the case outcome was far from clear. Well, a year , much inconvenient travel back to that lovely hamlet and many postphonements latter , the matter was resolved. My son had to agree to plead guilty to "obstructing traffic" , pay a fine, and complete AAA sessions and do community service.
And then there is my other favorite experience, again stemming form my son's contact with the police in the famous "villages" off Memorial Drive here in Houston. You may not know this, but these burgs are self-contained politically independent entities , fully contained inside of Houston's incorporated boundaries. Can you say clout in Austin?
There was the incident several years ago where a black resident of one of these "villages" was confronted by an officer for running without a shirt through the neighborhood. Black man , running, white enclave, you get the picture.
Several years before that these villages had been hit with a harassment and discrimination suit alleging that they were ticketing minorities, people driving the "wrong kind of cars" etc. who had the gall to drive through the neighbhorhood. I can't find the legal case online, though I have looked. The villages settled the suit and promised to stop and desist. They didn't.
The new scam was to stop and ticket those driving through who didn't belong but not leave the paper trial which tripped them up last time.
Now the deal is if you appear in court and settle the ticket on the spot, the ticket and the record of your charges go away. No paper trial, no law suits, but the harassment goes on and the city picks up some extra money.
We all know of similar practices throughout the state, this case is simply so outrageous, it can't be ignored.
John Whitmire is authoring legislation this session to address Tenaha's abusive confiscation policies. It is way past time for that. Don't kid yourself though, the small town speed trip and harassment of non-resident motorist will continue, its a Texas tradition.
But Whitmire says he doesn't need to await the suit's outcome to try to fix what he regards as a statewide problem. On Monday he introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would require police to go before a judge before attempting to seize property under the asset-forfeiture law-and ultimately Whitmire hopes to tighten the law further so that law-enforcement officials will be allowed to seize property only after a suspect is charged and convicted in a court.
"The law has gotten away from what was intended, which was to take the profits of a bad guy's crime spree and use it for additional crime-fighting," Whitmire said. "Now it's largely being used to pay police salaries-and it's being abused because you don't even have to be a bad guy to lose your property."
It is way past time for that. Don't kid yourself though, the small town speed trip and harassment of non-resident motorist will continue, it's a Texas tradition. |
