DEA Out Of Control Seizing "Assets"

[RetroGrow]

Under Obama, the DEA has been out of control, ignoring state laws, and seizing more assets than ever before. They truly are a renegade branch of an ever increasing renegade government:

"Joseph Rivers was hoping to hit it big. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the aspiring businessman from just outside of Detroit had pulled together $16,000 in seed money to fulfill a lifetime dream of starting a music video company. Last month, Rivers took the first step in that voyage, saying goodbye to the family and friends who had supported him at home and boarding an Amtrak train headed for Los Angeles.

He never made it. From the Albuquerque Journal:

A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.

The agent found Rivers's cash, still in a bank envelope. He explained why he had it: He was starting a business in California, and he'd had trouble in the past withdrawing large sums of money from out-of-state banks.

The agents didn't believe him, according to the article. They said they thought the money was involved in some sort of drug activity. Rivers let them call his mother back home to corroborate the story. They didn't believe her, either.
The agents found nothing in Rivers's belongings that indicated that he was involved with the drug trade: no drugs, no guns. They didn't arrest him or charge him with a crime. But they took his cash anyway, every last cent, under the authority of the Justice Department's civil asset forfeiture program.

Rivers's life savings represent just a drop in the Justice Department's multibillion-dollar civil asset forfeiture bucket. Rivers has retained a lawyer in the hope of getting at least some of his money back. Rivers says he suspects he may have been singled out for a search because he was the only black person on that part of the train.

There is no presumption of innocence under civil asset forfeiture laws. Rather, law enforcement officers only need to have a suspicion -- in practice, often a vague one -- that a person is involved with illegal activity in order to seize their property. On the highway, for instance, police may cite things like tinted windows, air fresheners or trash in the car, according to a Washington Post investigation last year.

The DEA declined to comment in detail to the Albuquerque Journal's Joline Guierrez Krueger, though it did say that Rivers was not targeted because of his race. The Albuquerque DEA office did not immediately respond to a request by The Washington Post for more information about the case.

Once property has been seized, the burden of proof falls on the defendant to get it back -- even if the cops ultimately never charge them with a crime. "We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty," an Albuquerque DEA agent told the Journal. "It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty."

The practice has proven to be controversial. Earlier this year, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced measures restricting the use of some types of civil asset forfeiture. But as the Institute for Justice noted in a February report, these changes only affect a small percentage of forfeitures initiated by local law enforcement agencies, not federal ones like the DEA. About 90 percent of Justice Department seizures won't be affected at all.

Asset forfeiture is lucrative for the DEA. According to their latest notification of seized goods, updated Monday, agents have seized well over $38 million dollars' worth of cash and goods from people in the first few months of this year. Some of the goods may be directly related to ongoing criminal investigations, but most of them are not.

For instance, in fiscal year 2014 Justice Department agencies made a total of $3.9 billion in civil asset seizures, versus only $679 million in criminal asset seizures. In most years since 2008, civil asset forfeitures have accounted for the lion's share of total seizures.

The Obama administration has generally pushed forward on criminal justice reform. Under Holder, who recently resigned as attorney general, the Justice Department took a hands-off approach to state-level marijuana laws, changed its drug sentencing policies and issued new rules to curb racial profiling.

But asset forfeiture has not been targeted much for reform. Asset forfeitures have more than doubled during President Obama's tenure, a Washington Post analysis found last year. The DEA, meanwhile, has been skeptical of the administration's agenda, openly opposing sentencing reforms and marijuana reforms, and defying Congressional bills meant to curb DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.

But with DEA administrator Michele Leonhart stepping down this month under a cloud of controversy, Obama may name a successor who will aim the agency in a different direction.

The irony of Rivers's case is that five days before his money was seized, New Mexico's governor signed into law a bill abolishing civil asset forfeiture in that state. The bill passed unanimously in New Mexico's House and Senate, a sign of the widespread opposition to the practice.

But New Mexico's law only affects state law enforcement officials. As a result, in New Mexico -- and everywhere else, for that matter -- DEA agents will be able to board your train, ask you where you're going and take all your cash if they don't like your story, all without ever charging you with a crime."

Links to other similar stories:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...harging-him-of-a-crime/?tid=pm_business_pop_b

 

[acridlab]

what they did was absolutely wrong..

BUT

This is one of many reasons why u should not take a train,, or any form of public transportation, while holding your life savings...

Rent a vehicle for h sakes.buy a car,, something,, shit...

 

[RetroGrow]

what they did was absolutely wrong..

BUT

This is one of many reasons why u should not take a train,, or any form of public transportation, while holding your life savings...

Rent a vehicle for h sakes.buy a car,, something,, shit...

Ummmm.....maybe not....:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/



After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways.

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.

Stop and Seize: In recent years, thousands of people have had cash confiscated by police without being charged with crimes. The Post looks at the police culture behind the seizures and the people who were forced to fight the government to get their money back.
Part 2: One training firm started a private intelligence-sharing network and helped shape law enforcement nationwide.
Part 3: Motorists caught up in the seizures talk about the experience and the legal battles that sometimes took more than a year.
Part 4: Police agencies nationwide routinely buy vehicles and weapons with money and property seized under federal civil forfeiture law from people who were not charged with a crime.
Part 5: Highway seizure in Iowa fuels debate about asset-forfeiture laws.
Part 6: D.C. police plan for future seizure proceeds years in advance in city budget documents.
Chat transcript​: The reporters behind “Stop and Seize” answered your readers’ about the investigative series.

Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms that teach the techniques of “highway interdiction” to departments across the country.

One of those firms created a private intelligence network known as Black Asphalt Electronic Networking & Notification System that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop.

Many of the reports have been funneled to federal agencies and fusion centers as part of the government’s burgeoning law enforcement intelligence systems — despite warnings from state and federal authorities that the information could violate privacy and constitutional protections.
A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.

“All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym. Hain is a marketing specialist for Desert Snow, a leading interdiction training firm based in Guthrie, Okla., whose founders also created Black Asphalt.


Hain’s book calls for “turning our police forces into present-day Robin Hoods.”

Cash seizures can be made under state or federal civil law. One of the primary ways police departments are able to seize money and share in the proceeds at the federal level is through a long-standing Justice Department civil asset forfeiture program known as Equitable Sharing. Asset forfeiture is an extraordinarily powerful law enforcement tool that allows the government to take cash and property without pressing criminal charges and then requires the owners to prove their possessions were legally acquired.

The practice has been controversial since its inception at the height of the drug war more than three decades ago, and its abuses have been the subject of journalistic exposés and congressional hearings. But unexplored until now is the role of the federal government and the private police trainers in encouraging officers to target cash on the nation’s highways since 9/11.

“Those laws were meant to take a guy out for selling $1 million in cocaine or who was trying to launder large amounts of money,” said Mark Overton, the police chief in Bal Harbour, Fla., who once oversaw a federal drug task force in South Florida. “It was never meant for a street cop to take a few thousand dollars from a driver by the side of the road.”

To examine the scope of asset forfeiture since the terror attacks, The Post analyzed a database of hundreds of thousands of seizure records at the Justice Department, reviewed hundreds of federal court cases, obtained internal records from training firms and interviewed scores of police officers, prosecutors and motorists.

There have been 61,998 cash seizures made on highways and elsewhere since 9/11 without search warrants or indictments through the Equitable Sharing Program, totaling more than $2.5 billion. State and local authorities kept more than $1.7 billion of that while Justice, Homeland Security and other federal agencies received $800 million. Half of the seizures were below $8,800.
Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures.
Hundreds of state and local departments and drug task forces appear to rely on seized cash, despite a federal ban on the money to pay salaries or otherwise support budgets. The Post found that 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.
Agencies with police known to be participating in the Black Asphalt intelligence network have seen a 32 percent jump in seizures beginning in 2005, three times the rate of other police departments. Desert Snow-trained officers reported more than $427 million in cash seizures during highway stops in just one five-year period, according to company officials. More than 25,000 police have belonged to Black Asphalt, company officials said.
State law enforcement officials in Iowa and Kansas prohibited the use of the Black Asphalt network because of concerns that it might not be a legal law enforcement tool. A federal prosecutor in Nebraska warned that Black Asphalt reports could violate laws governing civil liberties, the handling of sensitive law enforcement information and the disclosure of pretrial information to defendants. But officials at Justice and Homeland Security continued to use it.

Justice spokesman Peter Carr said the department had no comment on The Post’s overall findings. But he said the department has a compliance review process in place for the Equitable Sharing Program and attorneys for federal agencies must review the seizures before they are “adopted” for inclusion in the program.
“Adoptions of state and local seizures — when a state and local law enforcement agency requests a federal seizing agency to adopt a state and local seizure for federal forfeiture — represent an average of only 3 percent of the total forfeiture amount since 2007,” Carr said.

The Justice Department data released to The Post does not contain information about race. Carr said the department prohibits racial profiling. But in 400 federal court cases examined by The Post where people who challenged seizures and received some money back, the majority were black, Hispanic or another minority.

A 55-year-old Chinese American restaurateur from Georgia was pulled over for minor speeding on Interstate 10 in Alabama and detained for nearly two hours. He was carrying $75,000 raised from relatives to buy a Chinese restaurant in Lake Charles, La. He got back his money 10 months later but only after spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer and losing out on the restaurant deal.

A 40-year-old Hispanic carpenter from New Jersey was stopped on Interstate 95 in Virginia for having tinted windows. Police said he appeared nervous and consented to a search. They took $18,000 that he said was meant to buy a used car. He had to hire a lawyer to get back his money.

Mandrel Stuart, a 35-year-old African American owner of a small barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Va., was stunned when police took $17,550 from him during a stop in 2012 for a minor traffic infraction on Interstate 66 in Fairfax. He rejected a settlement with the government for half of his money and demanded a jury trial. He eventually got his money back but lost his business because he didn’t have the cash to pay his overhead.

“I paid taxes on that money. I worked for that money,” Stuart said. “Why should I give them my money?”



The Post’s review of 400 court cases, which encompassed seizures in 17 states, provided insights into stops and seizures.

In case after case, highway interdictors appeared to follow a similar script. Police set up what amounted to rolling checkpoints on busy highways and pulled over motorists for minor violations, such as following too closely or improper signaling. They quickly issued warnings or tickets. They studied drivers for signs of nervousness, including pulsing carotid arteries, clenched jaws and perspiration. They also looked for supposed “indicators” of criminal activity, which can include such things as trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy drinks or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors.

One recent stop shows how the process can work in the field.

In December 2012, Frye was working in his capacity as a part-time deputy in Seward County, Neb. He pulled over John Anderson of San Clemente, Calif., who was driving a BMW on Interstate 80 near Lincoln. Frye issued a warning ticket within 13 minutes for failing to signal promptly when changing lanes.


He told Anderson he was finished with the stop. But Frye later noted in court papers that he found several indicators of possible suspicious activity: an air freshener, a radar detector and inconsistencies in the driver’s description of his travels.

The officer then asked whether the driver had any cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin or large amounts of cash and sought permission to search the BMW, according to a video of the stop. Anderson denied having drugs or large amounts of cash in his car. He declined to give permission for a search. Frye then radioed for a drug-sniffing dog, and the driver had to wait another 36 minutes for the dog to arrive.

“I’m just going to, basically, have you wait here,” Frye told Anderson.

The dog arrived and the handler said it indicated the presence of drugs. But when they searched the car, none was found. They did find money: $25,180.

Frye handcuffed Anderson and told him he was placing him under arrest.

“In Nebraska, drug currency is illegal,” Frye said. “Let me tell you something, I’ve seized millions out here. When I say that, I mean millions. . . . This is what I do.”

Frye suggested to Anderson that he might not have been aware of the money in his vehicle and began pressing him to sign a waiver relinquishing the cash, mentioning it at least five times over the next hour, the video shows.

“You’re going to be given an opportunity to disclaim the currency,” Frye told Anderson. “To sign a form that says, ‘That is not my money. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it. I don’t want to come back to court.’ ”

Frye said that unless the driver agreed to give up the money, a prosecutor would “want to charge” him with a crime, “so that means you’ll go to jail.”
An hour and six minutes into the stop, Frye read Anderson his Miranda rights.
Anderson, who told Frye he worked as a self-employed debt counselor, said the money was not illicit and he was carrying it to pay off a gambling debt. He would later say it was from investors and meant to buy silver bullion and coins. More than two hours after the stop had begun, he finally agreed to give up the cash and Frye let him go. Now Anderson has gone to court to get the money back, saying he signed the waiver and mentioned the gambling debt only because he felt intimidated by Frye.

A magistrate has ruled at a preliminary step in the case that Frye had reasonable suspicion to detain Anderson. Frye said he always follows the law and has never had a seizure overturned.

Legal scholars who viewed the video of the stop told The Post that such practices push constitutional limits. Officers often are taught not to tell the driver they have a right to leave at any time after a traffic stop is concluded. But extended stops in which the officer uses psychological pressure on the driver without charges or Miranda warnings can cross the line.

“Encouraging police to initiate searches for the purpose of seizing cash or other assets, rather than to seize evidence to be used in a prosecution, is a dangerous development,” said Clifford Fishman, a law professor at Catholic University and former New York City prosecutor. “It is particularly troubling if police officers are trained to manipulate the suspect into forfeiting the assets or waiving the right to contest the search.”

David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, said Frye’s stop crossed the line when he detained the driver while summoning a canine.

“You cannot elongate the stop to bring in the dogs,” he said. “In doing that, you’re detaining the person without probable cause. That ain’t kosher.”


Getting the money back

Decisions that police make during brief roadway stops take motorists who challenge the seizures a year on average to resolve, according to a Post analysis. For 350 owners, it took more than two years to get their money back.

Last year, Ming Tong Liu, 55, a Chinese-born American from Newnan, Ga., was stopped on I-10 in Alabama for driving 10 miles over the speed limit while heading to Louisiana to buy the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Lake Charles for himself and his investors — two daughters and another relative.

A Mobile County sheriff’s deputy gave Liu a ticket for speeding and asked for permission to search the car. The deputy found $75,195 in a suitcase in the back seat, neatly wrapped in white napkins and placed in a black plastic bag and then took the money after the deputy said Liu gave conflicting accounts of his travel plans.

The deputy took Liu to a sheriff’s department office and called for an officer from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which stood to share in the money.

Liu’s attorney, Rebecca Ding-Lee, said the officers overstepped their authority, held Liu for nearly two hours and searched his car unlawfully without a warrant. “He cannot speak English,” she said. “He didn’t understand what the police said.”

Ten months after the cash was seized, customs officials agreed to return the money, documents show.

Police often rely on drug-sniffing dogs to justify warrantless searches when a driver refuses to give consent. In 48 cases examined by The Post, dogs alerted to the presence of drugs but the officers found only money.

In October 2008, Benjamin Molina, 40, a permanent resident from El Salvador, was traveling through Virginia on I-95 when an Emporia police officer pulled him over for tinted windows. A carpenter, Molina was going from North Carolina to his home in Perth Amboy, N.J. The officer wrote him a warning ticket and began asking him questions, including whether he had cash in the car.

Molina told the officer that he was shopping for a used car and had $18,000 in his pockets. Molina’s face began to tremble, which police said they took as a sign of possible wrongdoing. Molina said his cheek twitched from medication he was taking for a health condition that included kidney disease. Molina also had duct tape in his car, which police said is “commonly used by traffickers.”


The officer asked Molina, who had no criminal history, to hand over the cash. The officer placed the money in an envelope, which he set down on the ground alongside two empty envelopes.

A dog called to the scene sat down next to the envelope with the cash, indicating the presence of drugs, according to police.

The police took the money, but Molina took steps to get it back.

He hired David Smith, an Alexandria attorney and former federal prosecutor who once headed the federal government’s forfeiture program in the Eastern District of Virginia.

After Molina appealed, a federal prosecutor refunded the money. It took four months.

Smith said the Molina case is an example of the kind of overreach that the civil asset forfeiture reforms passed by Congress in 2000 were aimed at preventing.

“This type of police bounty hunting is antithetical to everything our criminal justice system is supposed to stand for,” said Smith, who helped craft the reform legislation.

Among the indicators police look for are rental cars, which are often used by smugglers.

On Nov. 1, 2011, Jose Jeronimo Sorto and his brother-in-law, Victor Ramos Guzman, were driving a rented sedan on I-95 south of Richmond when a Virginia state trooper stopped them. Both were lay leaders of the Pentecostal Nuevo Renacer church in Baltimore. They were carrying $28,500 in church funds meant for the purchase of land to build a church in El Salvador and a trailer for a new congregation in North Carolina.

Their experience has been cited as a case study in civil forfeiture abuse by The Post’s editorial page, the New Yorker magazine and others. Unknown until now in the public debate is the fact that the trooper who made the stop, C.L. Murphy, is a top interdiction trainer for Virginia State Police and Desert Snow, as well as a member of Black Asphalt.

Murphy told Sorto and Guzman that they were speeding and following too closely. Murphy said Guzman told him about the cash and consented to a search of the car.

Guzman, 39, of Sterling, Va., said he showed the trooper documents indicating that he belonged to a tax-exempt church, and he said the cash had been collected from congregation members. But Murphy disregarded their explanations, saying they contained inconsistencies. He called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which accepted the seizure for the Equitable Sharing Program, and he escorted the men to a nearby police station. He did not issue a ticket but seized the cash after Guzman signed a waiver.

Three lawyers agreed to represent the church members for free. Three months later, they received a check from ICE for $28,500.

Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller would only say, “The facts of the stop speak for themselves.”

ICE spokeswoman Marsha Catron defended the seizure, saying in a statement “the situation was indicative of bulk cash smuggling” and that Guzman consented by signing a waiver for the money.

“Both the male driver and passenger disclaimed ownership of the money and provided inconsistent and contradictory statements,” Catron said. She added: “Money was ultimately returned to Mr. Ramos Guzman after he provided documentation that the cash belonged to his church.”

Guzman told The Post he was truthful to the trooper the entire time. The experience left him shaken.

“They didn’t give me a chance to explain,” Guzman said. “There was no way out.”

Know your rights: During traffic stops on the nation’s highways, the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protects motorists “against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The law also gives police the power to investigate and act on their suspicions.

1. Police have a long-established authority to stop motorists for traffic infractions. They can use traffic violations as a pretext for a deeper inquiry as long as the stop is based on an identifiable infraction.

2. An officer may detain a driver only as long as it takes to deal with the reason for the stop. After that, police have the authority to request further conversation. A motorist has the right to decline and ask whether the stop is concluded. If so, the motorist can leave.

3. The officer also has the authority to briefly detain and question a person as long as the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in criminal activity. Reasonable suspicion is based on specific and articulable facts but falls short of the legal standard for making an arrest.

4. A traffic infraction or reasonable suspicion alone do not give police authority to search a vehicle or a closed container, such as luggage. Police may ask for permission to search; drivers may decline. Police do not have to tell drivers that they have a right to refuse.

5. An officer may expand a roadside investigation if the driver’s responses and other circumstances justify a belief that it is more likely than not that criminal activity is occurring. Under this standard, known as probable cause, an officer can make an arrest or search a vehicle without permission. An alert by a drug-sniffing dog can provide probable cause, as can the smell of marijuana.
6. Police can seize cash that they find if they have probable cause to suspect that it is related to criminal activity. The seizure happens through a civil action known as asset forfeiture. Police do not need to charge a person with a crime. The burden of proof is then on the driver to show that the cash is not related to a crime by a legal standard known as preponderance of the evidence.

Pictures and more @ the link provided.

 

[acridlab]

Mail it to the destination in a priority box??

 

[panick503]

I think the supreme court recently ruled against civil forfeiture on a local law enforcement level, but unfortunately I don't think the ruling did anything to reign in the federal thugs...

 

[Gry]

Did asset forfeiture start before or after they decided to start shipping in the cocaine.

 

[idiit]

it's not just asset seizures. here's two recent dea cases of misconduct:

DEA Agents Wrongly Jailed Student for 5 Days Without Food or Water Until He Had to Drink Own Urine; Nobody Fired

Posted on May 11, 2015 by The Doc

http://www.silverdoctors.com/dea-ag...until-he-had-to-drink-own-urine-nobody-fired/

Report: DEA agents had ‘sex parties’ with prostitutes hired by drug cartels

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b2d53e-d3bd-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html

the entire system is corrupt. the officials in places of authority are the crooks. the war on drugs is being waged by the drug lords on us.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=bush c...tag=AE89FD93123&form=CONBDF&conlogo=CT3210127

^ just check out some of the links.

the cia deposed every leader of every country that stood up to the NWO elite. the only ones strong enough to take them on is a unified Russia and China.

China, Russia to upgrade joint military exercises

^ http://wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150418000113&cid=1101

Russia/china new monetary system:

^
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40664.htm

 

[mowood3479]

The dea the most ineffective and corrupt of all the ineffective and corrupt government institutions...
This country is so fucked

 

[JointOperation]

what they did was absolutely wrong..

BUT

This is one of many reasons why u should not take a train,, or any form of public transportation, while holding your life savings...

Rent a vehicle for h sakes.buy a car,, something,, shit...

this doesn't make any sense are you not understanding the law? they can take it from your vehicle also... off your person.. whatever they want..

I say.. find out which cop took it ask for a name.. then go rob his house and before you leave.. set it on fire.. let him see how it feels to fucking LOSE EVERYTHING

 

[WaittillIdie]

420

 

[snake11]

This is so disgusting. Our government agencies are out of control.

 

[trichrider]

ever read about china's opium wars?

Opium Wars

Opium Wars, 1839–42 and 1856–60, two wars between China and Western countries. The first was between Great Britain and China. Early in the 19th cent., British merchants began smuggling opium into China in order to balance their purchases of tea for export to Britain. In 1839, China enforced its prohibitions on the importation of opium by destroying at Guangzhou (Canton) a large quantity of opium confiscated from British merchants. Great Britain, which had been looking to end China's restrictions on foreign trade, responded by sending gunboats to attack several Chinese coastal cities. China, unable to withstand modern arms, was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and the British Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue (1843). These provided that the ports of Guangzhou, Jinmen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai should be open to British trade and residence; in addition Hong Kong was ceded to the British. Within a few years other Western powers signed similar treaties with China and received commercial and residential privileges, and the Western domination of China's treaty ports began. In 1856 a second war broke out following an allegedly illegal Chinese search of a British-registered ship, the Arrow, in Guangzhou. British and French troops took Guangzhou and Tianjin and compelled the Chinese to accept the treaties of Tianjin (1858), to which France, Russia, and the United States were also party. China agreed to open 11 more ports, permit foreign legations in Beijing, sanction Christian missionary activity, and legalize the import of opium. China's subsequent attempt to block the entry of diplomats into Beijing as well as Britain's determination to enforce the new treaty terms led to a renewal of the war in 1859. This time the British and French occupied Beijing and burned the imperial summer palace (Yuan ming yuan). The Beijing conventions of 1860, by which China was forced to reaffirm the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin and make additional concessions, concluded the hostilities.


Read more: Opium Wars http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/opium-wars.html#ixzz3ZwG3Guss

this is pecisely what the british are doing now to americans. saturate with drugs and disable the populations with the ancillary measures like prison and asset forfeiture.

pharmaceutical companies have inundated the states with opiates, are now guiding legislation towards legality of cannabis and cannabinoids, all the while providing income for major corporate interests in the prison-industrial complex and law enforcement.

 

[stoned-trout]

don't make it easy on em ..do not cooperate like that fool on train did...fuck the dea ...nothing new here tho they been doing it long time....Nevada is famous for confiscated cash ....yeehaw

 

[acridlab]

this doesn't make any sense are you not understanding the law? they can take it from your vehicle also... off your person.. whatever they want..

I say.. find out which cop took it ask for a name.. then go rob his house and before you leave.. set it on fire.. let him see how it feels to fucking LOSE EVERYTHING

Not gonna lie,, I don't even try to understand the law..
People just need to start using more common sense..all I was getting at..People are getting away with moving huge dope,, huge cash..whatever.. only people getting it confiscated are the slow ones in the herd...

 

[trichrider]

cashiers check...

not cash! cash is suspect. read article.

 

[waveguide]

hi folks

sure is a bummer, isn't it!


i wonder, how many of you read that other thread about the occult police force in the california DA's office?


because, i'm reading your comments, and i'm thinking, well... you probably wouldn't appreciate what i'm thinking. but fuck i've tried to tell you what is so obvious you should know it.

 

[waveguide]

keep feeling safe, you don't have to gain insight from my crazy AP news article posts.

 

[MarijuanaMogul]

really fucked up story, don't think it was the smartest choice by the guy to take the amtrak though

 

[floralheart]

Did asset forfeiture start before or after they decided to start shipping in the cocaine.

The same day, down to the minute

 

[floralheart]

ever read about china's opium wars?

Opium Wars

Opium Wars, 1839–42 and 1856–60, two wars between China and Western countries. The first was between Great Britain and China. Early in the 19th cent., British merchants began smuggling opium into China in order to balance their purchases of tea for export to Britain. In 1839, China enforced its prohibitions on the importation of opium by destroying at Guangzhou (Canton) a large quantity of opium confiscated from British merchants. Great Britain, which had been looking to end China's restrictions on foreign trade, responded by sending gunboats to attack several Chinese coastal cities. China, unable to withstand modern arms, was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and the British Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue (1843). These provided that the ports of Guangzhou, Jinmen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai should be open to British trade and residence; in addition Hong Kong was ceded to the British. Within a few years other Western powers signed similar treaties with China and received commercial and residential privileges, and the Western domination of China's treaty ports began. In 1856 a second war broke out following an allegedly illegal Chinese search of a British-registered ship, the Arrow, in Guangzhou. British and French troops took Guangzhou and Tianjin and compelled the Chinese to accept the treaties of Tianjin (1858), to which France, Russia, and the United States were also party. China agreed to open 11 more ports, permit foreign legations in Beijing, sanction Christian missionary activity, and legalize the import of opium. China's subsequent attempt to block the entry of diplomats into Beijing as well as Britain's determination to enforce the new treaty terms led to a renewal of the war in 1859. This time the British and French occupied Beijing and burned the imperial summer palace (Yuan ming yuan). The Beijing conventions of 1860, by which China was forced to reaffirm the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin and make additional concessions, concluded the hostilities.


Read more: Opium Wars http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/opium-wars.html#ixzz3ZwG3Guss

this is pecisely what the british are doing now to americans. saturate with drugs and disable the populations with the ancillary measures like prison and asset forfeiture.

pharmaceutical companies have inundated the states with opiates, are now guiding legislation towards legality of cannabis and cannabinoids, all the while providing income for major corporate interests in the prison-industrial complex and law enforcement.

No need to read. I can look around the street and see the heroine use...

which tells me it's still going on.