from the not-a-crime-if-you’ve-got-a-badge-I-guess dept
Seward County is distinguished from Nebraska’s many blink-and-you’ll-miss-it counties by its penchant for seizing cash from motorists. The county’s population checks in at under 18,000 but its overly enthusiastic law enforcement still manages to rake in millions of dollars every year from pretextual traffic stops. The only other thing notable in its Wikipedia article is its reliance on center-pivot irrigation.
Unsuspecting drivers are treated as de facto suspicious by the uniformed opportunists employed by the Seward County Sheriff’s Office. Somehow, this tiny county with no notable cities has managed to produce a third of the state’s forfeitures.
Four hundred and fifty-five miles of Interstate 80 run through Nebraska.
But one 24-mile stretch has become nationally known – or notorious – for a type of traffic stop that sends millions to a single Nebraska county and its sheriff’s office.
[…]
One out of every three civil forfeiture cases in Nebraska’s state courts happens in Seward County, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis of a decade of court records and a data request provided by the Nebraska Judicial Branch.
Over the past half-decade, this small stretch of highway has produced $7.5 million in forfeitures. That may not sound like much, but it’s second only to Lancaster County, whose population is 20 times that of Seward.
Because they’ve got to justify this outlandish seizure rate, law enforcement reps try to portray Seward County as an integral part of the US drug distribution pipeline. They also pretend taking cash from motorists while refusing to charge them with any crimes is somehow instrumental to fighting a successful drug war.
Many in law enforcement, including Seward County Sheriff Mike Vance, say civil forfeiture is an important tool to take money, drugs and weapons out of the hands of criminals.
“The point is that we’re trying to dismantle these criminal organizations,” said Amy Blackburn, an assistant U.S. attorney. “You can maybe take off a load of drugs, but if you take off their money, you’re crippling their ability to conduct their criminal activity.”
Considering this country as a whole has never won a single battle in the Drug War, it seems unlikely the Seward County Sheriff’s Office is making any perceivable dent in the distribution of drugs. In fact, it appears the only interest deputies have in anything drug-related is its ability to create “reasonable suspicion” out of thin air that allows them to engage in warrantless roadside searches.
This story focuses on the case of Christopher Bouldin, who had $18,000 stolen from him while driving through Seward County to Colorado. Deputies claimed it was money meant to purchase illegal drugs. Bouldin maintained it was funds for his Colorado vacation, where he hoped to visit casinos and, possibly, purchase another vehicle. He admitted he also planned to purchase marijuana in Colorado for personal use — a state where it’s completely legal to do so.
Deputies presented him with a completely unfair choice: he could either agree to hand over the money and go on his way or he could be arrested for the apparently criminal act of traveling through Seward County with a sizable amount of cash. (A drug dog was brought in. It allegedly “alerted,” giving deputies permission to search Bouldin’s car. No drugs or any other illegal items were found.) He refused, but the deputies kept his money anyway, charging him with a misdemeanor for “possessing drug money.”
Bouldin isn’t an anomaly:
[A]nother driver, Kenan, pulled over by Vance in 2019, said the interaction felt more like “extortion.” He was pulled over in 2019 with a small amount of drugs and $5,477.
Kenan told the Flatwater Free Press that, like Bouldin, he was given two choices: Be charged with two felonies and taken to a county jail 1,000 miles from home, or surrender the money and sign a form admitting guilt – a choice he believed would make it impossible to fight for the money later. He agreed to be quoted using only his first name because he’s now in college and looking for a job.
This theft and abuse of drivers’ rights continues, despite a law being passed to curb these abuses. The 2016 law still allows Nebraska law enforcement to use the federal outlet to retain seized cash if the total is above $25,000. Another loophole — one that allows cops to imply the cash is related to drug trafficking (without having to prove it in court unless challenged by their victims) — is the one exploited by Seward County deputies to separate drivers from their money.
And the county attorney, Wendy Elston, justifies her involvement with this highway robbery by suggesting its ok to rob Peter to save Paul a few tax dollars.
Today, Elston, whose county attorney’s office gets a slice of forfeiture funds, estimates that the criminal cases that emerge from highway stops take up at least a third of her office’s workload.
A civil forfeiture often ends up being faster and cheaper, she said.
“The person is going to be sitting in jail potentially, pending a criminal case … Then they’re going to get a court-appointed attorney, possibly. It’s taking up court resources,” Elston said. “That’s not going to be the only reason that I would do it, but it plays in that little mental checklist that I do.”
There’s no “mental checklist.” The attorney’s office profits directly from forfeitures. Civil forfeiture allows the government to bypass the difficulties of a criminal prosecution and get straight to depositing money in its accounts. And it shifts the burden of proof to the person with the fewest resources: the driver whose cash has been presumed guilty with nearly zero input from any court of law.
If there’s been any impact beyond the financial misery inflicted on drivers, Seward County law enforcement has yet to provide any evidence that this so-called police work does anything to deter drug trafficking. All it has done is make some small government entities far richer than their counterparts located in more populous areas where drug trafficking is far more likely to occur.
Filed Under: civil asset forfeiture, legalized theft, mike vance, nebraska, seward county, seward county sheriff’s office
Source link
