Glad to see this in USA today: cops addicted to drug money

[Luminous Animal]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/10/24/police-drug-money-policing-for-profits-column/3182955/

Jonathan Turley

Across the country, citizens are increasingly finding themselves stopped on routine traffic stops or sobriety checkpoints only to be subjected to extensive questioning and searches. At a time of decreasing budgets, police seem to be hitting the streets in search of their own sources of funding.

Federal and state officers are tapping into an increasingly lucrative tactic called "churning" or "policing for profits." This is how it often works:

Officers stop cars on a pretext such as not using a turn signal and then ask a series of questions about drugs or contraband in the car. If the driver does not consent to a search, officers will sometime declare that the driver is acting suspiciously and call in a drug dog or search the passenger for their own personal safety. Any drugs found can then be used to seize the car and any money inside of it. The result is that police are mining our highways for jackpot stops.

[leftyohiolib]

1. next will be the planting of drugs

[99th_Monkey]

3. Not "next". It's happening NOW.

[Dawson Leery]

2. k/r

[FreeJoe]

4. Catch money, not drugs

Several years ago, I had a chat with a constable. He explained to me that the law encourages him to heavily patrol southbound traffic and not northbound traffic. If he watches the northbound traffic, he might catch someone with drugs. Nice enough, but if he watches the southbound traffic, he might catch someone with drug money. He gets to use a share of that for his department. Given the need for more funding, what does he do? He focuses on catching the drug money going south rather than the drugs going north.

[Luminous Animal]

5. Municipalities need to take control of their police

[FreeJoe]

6. I don't doubt that the county commissioners...

...supported his strategy. Few of the drugs on the interstate are going to wind up in their county. His focus on capturing drug money allows them to spend more money on law enforcement without the commissioners having to raise taxes.

It is a perverse system of incentives. Law enforcement should never be profitable. It screws things up.

[Luminous Animal]

7. I am talking about citizens.

[FreeJoe]

8. I'm not sure that they disagree

If they were given the choice on a secret ballot between letting drugs head north and spending drug money on local law enforcement or raising taxes, which would they choose?

I remember when they raised the speed limit. Small towns fought it hard because they were going to have raise taxes to replace the lost fine revenue.

[otohara]

9. Colorado License Plates

are sure to get stopped in KS, NB - and the sniffing dogs come with.

[JHB]

10. That might explain the guy forced to have multiple colon searches on grounds of "clenched buttocks"

Was forced to endure multiple enemas and a colonoscopy (all without consent) just because the officer who stopped him for not coming to a full stop at a stop sign thought he was standing as if his buttocks were clenched. And then after being released because they found absolutely no drugs, the victim was handed the bill for the procedures.
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/10023981384

I'd wondered why they kept upping the ante, and had guessed that the most likely things were either harassment of the particular individual or some kind of "we have to make our numbers" thing. If they'd found anything whatsoever, they'd have an excuse to seize the car, possessions, maybe even the house he lived in (and he wouldn't necessarily have to be the owner).

[Initech]

11. I was pulled over in a fashion exactly described in the article last year.

I was going to my friends' birthday party. My car literally stopped an inch over the line at a stop light and there just coincidentally happened to be a cop right behind me. And they started asking questions in the matter almost exactly described in this article. And my car was not even a month old. The cops started making me do all the sobriety tests as well. Thank fully they let me go but that was seriously scary. This article is a good eye opener and should be a warning to those that are subject to this. This kind of arrest should be against the fourth ammendment.

[Mnemosyne]

12. K&R for more visibility. nt

[LisaLynne]

13. K&R ....nt

[Th1onein]

14. knr