Researchers at Dartmouth have provided further confirmation of the popular rumor:

A UMass Dartmouth chemistry professor's study detected trace amounts of cocaine in 67 percent of the dollar bills researchers collected in Southeastern Massachusetts during the past two years.

"I hope this can give objective data so law enforcement can take the right measures to eliminate, or reduce, these kinds of problems and increase the community's security," Mr. Zuo said. [southcoasttoday.com]

I'm not sure what he means here. Obviously, the drug war is precisely the reason we all have drugs stuck to our money. The drug trade is a cash-only business, thanks to prohibition. So every time you reach into your wallet, the far-reaching consequences of our disastrous war on drugs will literally stick to your fingers. There's nothing law-enforcement can do about that, except speak out against this mindless crusade.

Really, if there's anything worthwhile to be learned from all this, it's that police must stop confiscating people's money every time a drug sniffing dog hits on it. Over and over we learn about naïve citizens losing their life-savings under our forfeiture laws, often based largely on that singular and clearly absurd criteria.

Having traces of drugs on your money doesn't mean you're a drug dealer. It just means you live in a nation with a massive, out of control war on drugs that infects everything it touches.

I received this email through the Flex Your Rights website a few weeks back and found it quite disturbing, though perfectly typical and unsurprising by drug war standards:

I'm a retired police lieutenant from a large midwestern city. Prior to my retirement my department, like so many others, saw dollar signs when new laws in response to the "drug war" (gawd, what a mistake THAT has turned out to be) allowed law enforcement to seize property with either flimsy or non-existent probable cause.

Special police units were posted on the expressways leading into the city with instructions to stop as many cars as possible, search them and the occupants, and if anyone had more than a few dollars, SEIZE IT.

Our command staff gleefully reported to us that the burden of proof was on the citizen to prove that the money was NOT drug proceeds, and since the amount of money seized would often be less than the amount that the citizen would have to spend to sue us, that we could be assured of keeping the bulk of the money.

I was flabbergasted. To make things worse, part of my yearly performance rating as a police lieutenant was based on how much money and other real property, such as cars, that my troops seized. On my instructions, my troops never seized a dime.

Turning law enforcement officers into bounty hunters is one of the most tragic mistakes this country has ever made.

Keep up the good work.

Lieutenant Harry Thomas (ret.)

I can't verify any of this, but I really don't need to. Lt. Thomas describes the asset forfeiture epidemic that corrupted law enforcement agencies throughout the nation, necessitating the formation of Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR) in 1992 and the passage of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000. And now that forfeiture laws have been "reformed," police have since felt free to continue confiscating property under the most ludicrous circumstances because the drug war says it's ok.

Lt. Thomas's story provides a particularly disturbing picture of police officers being commanded by their superiors to operate as an extortion ring. The recognition that citizens would have a difficult time proving their property "innocent" demonstrates an unconscionable willingness to seize property from law-abiding citizens. Put simply, the behavior described above is theft in both effect and intent.

Make what you will of this particular account, but if you think that one could implement forfeiture laws such as ours without provoking this exact behavior, then I dare you to put your life savings in a briefcase and drive around Indiana consenting to police searches.

In a reprise of a tactic first used against Los Angeles and Sacramento area dispensaries, the DEA this week sent letters to dozens of owners of buildings leased to San Francisco dispensaries warnin

One of our readers sent in the following observations about asset forfeiture and its impact on investing (and consequently economic development) in neighborhoods that are perceived to have illegal drug problems. (Forfeiture is not solely limited to drug cases, but drugs are the mainstay.)

I am in the real estate investment business. Increasingly I find investors staying away from investing in rental properties and neighborhoods perceived to have illegal drug problems. Investors more frequently state police can too easily forfeit their real estate because of one tenant's illegal activity at a rental property, e.g., selling drugs, even when it is unknown to the owner. Consequently investors' fears of forfeiture are depressing property values in certain neighborhoods and cities, driving downward the property tax base needed for tax revenues to support the infrastructure of the community.

Consider: As governments more and more force landlords to act as attorney generals policing the lives of their tenants, and hold landlords accountable to police for not stopping their tenants from committing unknown or foreseen illegal acts, more investors say, "who needs this!"

Constant police raids in certain neighborhoods may actually result in a financial net loss to a community where investors retreat, causing assessed property values and property taxes to decline. There is little incentive for investors to spend money upgrading rental property in neighborhoods where drug problems exist if the police are targeting rental property for asset forfeiture.

I think that pretty much speaks for itself. But it would be a shame to stop there. So, a few links:

• click here to read how the Fulton County (Atlanta, GA) DA's office spent forfeiture funds on banquets and balloons and a superman costume;

• click here to read about the Austin, Texas police department's criminal inquiry into possible misuse of forfeiture funds; and
• click here for a recent report over what is basically an act of theft via forfeiture committed by New Mexico police. (Make them stop, Gov. Richardson!)

Read our asset forfeiture reporting on an ongoing basis here, or subscribe to it by RSS here. And of course, check out the organization Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR).

A routine audit of the Fulton County (Atlanta) district attorney's office has turned up questionable spending of money seized from drug suspects under asset forfeiture laws.

A trucker who lost nearly $24,000 in cash after it was seized by a New Mexico police officer and turned over to the DEA is suing the federal drug agency to get his money back.

Austin, Texas, Police Chief Art Acevedo announced August 9 that a criminal inquiry is underway into how Austin police spent money seized in the past five years and whether they violated rules gover

In a closely divided 4-3 opinion, the California Supreme Court has ruled that local governments cannot seize the vehicles of people arrested on suspicion of buying drugs or using prostitutes, the t

Some good news on the forfeiture front, via TalkLeft: California's Supreme Court has found that city ordinances allowing the seizure and forfeiture of vehicles that police claim were used in the commission of minor crime's (including drug possession) are not authorized by state law, overturning a law passed by the city of Stockton.

We'd rather they threw the law out because it's disproportionate and corrupting of police agencies, and because taking people's cars is theft. But we'll take it.

Via Rogier van Bakel, here's another example of gratuitous malfeasance courtesy of the war on drugs.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The Milwaukee Police Department is accused of taking possession of a Mercedes-Benz convertible from a drug-addicted local businessman in return for agreeing not to prosecute him for cocaine possession.
…

"In brief, the family claims Beck did this only because it was threatened that the fact he had been arrested would be affirmatively disclosed to his former wife's attorney to be used against Mr. Beck in a child custody matter."

Again and again, we discover our public servants perverting justice and jettisoning any remote appearance of caring about the law. The complete moral bankruptcy of the drug war becomes particularly vivid when police start offering to drop charges in exchange for luxury sports cars.

Of course no such incident would be complete without the obligatory nonsensical rationalization from the local prosecutor:

"The drug violation in this case, . . . possession of cocaine, is among those violations for which a vehicle is not subject to forfeiture," [Milwaukee County district attorney, E. Michael McCann] wrote. "We believe the officers acted in good faith under this creative interpretation in justifying securing Mr. Beck's car, but it cannot stand up as a matter of law."

Ok, if something "doesn't stand up as a matter of law" that means it's illegal. It's not a "creative interpretation" of some otherwise appropriate sanction, and police shouldn't be administering punishments anyway. Of course Mr. Beck ultimately wasn't punished, because the police department accepted a bribe instead. That's called extortion.

Equally preposterous is McCann's casual determination that the officers acted in good faith. The "good faith" doctrine forgives police for actions they believed to be legal (i.e. executing a flawed warrant), but it requires some vague pretense of reasonableness. Calling something like this "good faith" is an extremely generous, but obnoxiously typical, prosecutorial response to police misconduct.

As long as prosecutors persist in redefining misconduct as "creative" or "good faith" policing, we should expect plenty more of it.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has rules in place to safeguard the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash seized or forfeited from drug suspects each year, but DEA agents largely ignore