Winst, zelfs in tegenspoed

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Wie wil er niet werken voor een bedrijf dat _altijd_ winst maakt?

Doet me een beetje denken aan die jongens van de BSA (die hadden -hebben?- toch ook een advokatenkantoor in hun gevolg, die dreigbrieven
rondstuurde). Pay-up now or we will come later :).
Voor zover ik weet zijn ze hun -eigen!!- opsporingsbevoegdheid nu kwijt.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/readings/hidden.html

[knip]
The forfeiture reward scheme has heightened police interest in drug-law enforcement, but with badly skewed priorities. Economic temptation
now hovers over all drug-enforcement decisions: Methamphetamine distribution may demand more enforcement, for example, but targeting
marijuana deals is usually far more profitable because methamphetamine transactions tend to occur on condemned or valueless property. The
Justice Department's study suggests precisely this focus in noting that as asset seizures become important "it will be useful for task force
members to know the major sources of these assets and whether it is more efficient to target major dealers or numerous smaller ones."

One example of skewed priorities is the "reverse sting" that targets drug buyers rather than sellers, a now common tactic that was rarely used
before the law allowed police departments to retain seized assets. The reverse sting is an apparently lawful version of police drug dealing in
which police pose as dealers and sell drugs to unwitting buyers. Buyers may be less dangerous and less culpable, but operations against them are
easier and safer, and reliably result in seizure of the buyer's cash. According to one participant in these operations, in his police force reverse
stings "occurred so regularly that the term reverse became synonymous with the word deal." A similar motivation may underlie the otherwise
baffling policy adopted by both the New York City and Washington, D.C., police shortly after the forfeiture retention amendments were passed,
directing police to seize the cash and cars of People coming into the city to buy drugs. Of course, arresting buyers before the sale means that the
drugs that would have been purchased will continue to circulate freely. But as former New York City Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy
explained to Congress, forfeiture laws give police "a financial incentive to impose [spot-check] roadblocks on the southbound lanes of I-95
which carry the cash to make drug buys, rather than the northbound lanes, which carry the drugs. After all, seized cash will end up forfeited to the
police department, while seized drugs can only be destroyed."

Worse, by linking police budgets to drug-law enforcement, forfeiture laws induce police and prosecutors to neglect other, often more pressing
crime problems. These officials make business judgments that can only compete with, if not wholly supplant, their broader law-enforcement
goals. The Justice Department has periodically made this practice official policy, as in 1989, when all US. Attorneys were directed to "divert
personnel from other activities" if necessary to meet their commitment to "increase forfeiture production."



For law-enforcement agencies dependent on forfeiture income, fairness, too, may be a luxury they can ill afford. This is most obvious at the
sentencing of drug offenders, where forfeiture laws provide an avenue for affluent defendants to buy their freedom. Plea bargains are struck that
commonly favor kingpins willing to forfeit their assets and penalize "mules" with nothing to trade. In eastern Massachusetts, Boston Globe
reporters found that agreements to forfeit $10,000 or more bought elimination or reduction of trafficking charges in almost three-quarters of
such cases. The prosecutors involved had a compelling financial reason to recalibrate the scales of justice in this way because 12 percent of their
budgets was financed through forfeiture income. At the federal level, Federal Circuit Court Judge Juan Torruella has noted that in his experience,
penalties for drug trafficking are imposed on the less culpable, while "the 'big fish' are able to work out deals with the government which may
leave them with light sentences or even without any prosecution." It is not a good omen that Attorney General Janet Reno recently requested that
all U.S. Attorneys consult forfeiture specialists before settling criminal cases.

Finally, growing numbers of law-enforcement agencies have been morally and sometimes criminally deformed by their dependence on drug war
financing. In Paducah, Kentucky, the lawless operations of one agency--the Western Area Narcotics Task Force, or WANT--came to light when
the discovery of almost $66,000 secreted in its headquarters provoked an official inquiry and major scandal. Among other things, reporters
discovered that WANT had promised federal funders that it would produce a 20 percent rise in asset seizures. According to the Paducah police
chief's estimate, 60 percent of the money found in WANT headquarters had been improperly seized. Often the seizures had no connection to any
drug transaction. One seizure was as small as 93 cents, showing, according to the Paducah Sun, "once again that the officers were taking whatever
the suspects were carrying, even though by no stretch could pocket change ... be construed to be drug money."

Unfortunately, there are numerous other examples of police agencies targeting assets with no regard for the rights, safety or even lives of the
suspects. In one federal civil rights judgment against an Oakland, California, drug task force, we read an officer's admission that his unit operated
"more or less like a wolf-pack," driving up in police vehicles and taking "anything and everything we saw on the street comer." In Louisiana, police
illegally stopped and searched massive numbers of drivers, seizing money that was then diverted to police department ski trips and other
unauthorized uses. In Los Angeles, a Sheriffs Department employee revealed that deputies routinely planted drugs and falsified police reports to
establish probable cause for cash seizures. Recent investigations in Florida, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington State have
exposed similar lawlessness by police in search of forfeitable cash.

Then there is the appalling case of Donald Scott, a 61-year-old wealthy California recluse. Scott lived on a $5 million, 200-acre ranch in Malibu
adjacent to a large recreational area maintained by the National Park Service. Tragically for him, in 1992 the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department received a false report that Scott was growing several thousand marijuana plants on his land. It assembled a team--including agents
from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Park Service, the D.E.A., the Forest Service, the California National Guard and the California
Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement--to investigate the tip, largely through the use of air and ground surveillance missions. Despite several
unsuccessful efforts to corroborate the informant's claim, and despite advice that Scott posed little threat of violence, the L.A. Sheriffs
Department dispatched a multi-jurisdictional team to conduct a military-style raid. On October 2, 1992, at 8:30 A.M., thirty officers descended
upon the Scott ranch with high-powered weapons, flak jackets, dogs, a battering ram and what purported to be a lawful search warrant. After
knocking and announcing their presence, they kicked in the door and rushed through the house. There they saw Scott, armed with a gun in
response to his wife's screams. With Scott's wife watching in horror, agents fired two bullets into Scott's chest and killed him. They found no
marijuana plants, other drugs or paraphernalia anywhere.

Following Scott's death, the Ventura County District Attorney's office conducted a five-month investigation of the raid. The seventy-page report
found that there was no credible evidence of present or past marijuana cultivation on Donald Scott's property. It found that the Los Angeles
County Sheriffs Department knowingly sought the search warrant on legally insufficient information, and that much of the information
supporting the warrant was false while exculpatory evidence was withheld from the judge. The report concluded that the search warrant "became
Donald Scott's death warrant," and that Scott was needlessly killed.

The targeting of Donald Scott, and the massive multi-jurisdictional police presence, cannot be explained as any kind of crime control strategy.
Rather, as the District Attorney's report concluded, one purpose of this operation was to garner the proceeds expected from forfeiture of the $5
million ranch. The investigation found that as they invaded the property, the officers--with two asset forfeiture specialists in tow--were armed
with a property appraisal of Scott's ranch, a parcel map of the ranch marked with the sale price of a nearby property and instructions to seize the
ranch if at least fourteen marijuana plants were found.

Groet,

Cees Binkhorst - cees at binkhorst.xs4all.nl

Een paar recente uitspraken:
'Als de VN relevant willen zijn, moeten ze precies doen wat ik zeg.'
'Ik weet dat ik tegen de wensen van de Security Council en de tekst
van het VN-verdrag in ga, maar ik doe het wel om een VN-resolutie
uit te voeren.'
Een oude uitspraak van Thomas Paine uit 1795 "Every man must
finally  see the necessity of  protecting the rights of others as the
most effectual security for his own"

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