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GrundleStiltzkin
Member Posts: 61,481
in Tug Tavern
Don't blame Karma. The police dog simply followed his training when he helped local agencies impound vehicles that sometimes belonged to innocent motorists in Republic, Washington, an old mining town near the Canadian border.
As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an "alert" indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles.
Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process.
As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an "alert" indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles.
Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, shows a financial motive for the snooping in its 2020 report, Policing for Profit. Local, state, and federal agencies have raked in more than $68.8 billion in proceeds since 2000 through a process called civil forfeiture.
The money making scheme, which allows the government to seize and keep assets without a criminal conviction, often starts with a police search, which requires probable cause, which often comes with a K-9 sniff. Institute for Justice clients in Wyoming, Oklahoma, and elsewhere all lost cash and had to fight to get it back after police dogs gave false alerts outside their vehicles.
The money making scheme, which allows the government to seize and keep assets without a criminal conviction, often starts with a police search, which requires probable cause, which often comes with a K-9 sniff. Institute for Justice clients in Wyoming, Oklahoma, and elsewhere all lost cash and had to fight to get it back after police dogs gave false alerts outside their vehicles.
Civil asset forfeiture can swab my taint.
Ps,
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I was against forfeiture at the start
https://ij.org/pfp-state-pages/pfp-washington/
This came with the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act. In addition to a slew of new powers for prosecutors, the burden of proof for asset seizure was lowered once again (agents had to only believe that what they were seizing was equal in value to money believed to have been purchased from drug sales). More significantly, the bill started the “equitable sharing” program that allowed local and state law enforcement to retain up to 80 percent of the assets seized.