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This story is so unbelievably biased and one-sided, it confirms my suspicions of the value of the Washington Post anymore. Carrying $75K in cash around should

This story is so unbelievably biased and one-sided, it confirms my suspicions of the value of the Washington Post anymore. Carrying $75K in cash around should raise anyone's suspicions as to the purpose, no matter what the carrier claims. Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash? The obvious and well known reasons are, it's the most secure way to fund drug and terrorist cells without leaving a trail. The Post even acknowledges that! "There is no question that state and federal forfeiture programs have crippled powerful drug-trafficking organizations, thwarted an assortment of criminals ... " But not until they make their accusations and end the above sentence with: "... and brought millions of dollars to financially stressed police departments." Note that only a sixth of those seizures were ever challenged but the Post claims it's only because it's too expensive to do so. They do NOT question whether it's because it's drug or terrorist funding (and I will state that it is). Just unbelievable what these formerly trustworthy newspapers are churning out nowadays.

ck2 12y ago
Wait, wait - SEIZED WITHOUT A WARRANT. If it is so obviously a crime in progress, get a freaking warrant. This is how everything erodes. One day you will have $2000 on you in cash to buy a used car and they will seize that too. Also note the part where they found nothing after a warrantless search so they just posted it for other police to harass them later.
zorrb 12y ago
Look, I think most reasonable people would agree the Washington Post is pretty much a joke at this point. However, I have toe vehemently disagree with your rationale. This line of thinking has to stop. Just because YOU can't think of any reason to carry "large" sums of money doesn't mean there IS no legitimate reason. Innocent until proven guilty, all that jazz. "Think about it. Why would YOU, wear sagging jeans?" Also, yes, it IS ridiculously expensive to challenge a seizure of money. This happens ALL OF THE TIME in the south, where cops do illegal searches, find money and say DRUG MONEY DRUG MONEY, and 99% of people are SCREWED because the system is stacked against them.
- icantthinkofone 12y ago
  Tell me a legitimate reason to carry thousands of dollars of cash around. While some, here, will think of outlier reasons and point to a few "two thousand dollar" situations, the point of the whole thing is that there are a multitude of tens and hundreds of thousands and millions in cash that ARE stopped and picked up all the time for illegal reasons and the POST (and posters here) are ignoring that fact. (Except for the one line I show in my other post.) Ignoring the other side of the story is what's going on here.
  - noarchy 12y ago
    >Tell me a legitimate reason to carry thousands of dollars of cash around. A legitimate reason would be whatever reason I happen to choose, no different than if I choose to use a credit card, Bitcoin, or write a cheque. No one should have to defend their legal transactions to you or anyone. That said, some governments are moving down the path of outlawing large cash transactions. Here is one example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/17/large-cash-transactions-banned-in-mexico/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/17/large-cash...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nagrom 12y ago
    More than half of all seizures are below $9000 - the amount of money you may use to buy a second-hand car. The amount of money that you may be using to pay for a group holiday. Hell, I brought a couple of thousand dollars in cash with me to the US on holiday a few years back. You may be doing payroll for a small business that pays cash. You may have collected cash from a door-to-door sales job. Possibly you've withdrawn cash to put down as a deposit on an apartment or house. Maybe you're paying for a course for professional qualifications. Maybe you owe three month's back rent. I'd reckon that all of these put together are more probable than funding a terrorist cell or setting up a drug deal. I'd certainly not give up my rights to do these things "just in case".
  - zorrb 12y ago
    Are you asking for ONE specific legitimate reason? Say you don't trust banks, how do you purchase expensive items? Maybe you don't have a bank account for WHATEVER reason? Are you now a criminal because you don't have a bank account? Or, are you really asking, what is the RATIO between what you'd deem "legitimate" reasons to carry money and what you'd deem "ill-legitimate"? What is the correct ratio? If we take 50% of the "bad guys" money, and 50% of innocent citizens is that too high? 60/40? 80/20? What is the correct ratio? How can you even know?
privong 12y ago
> Carrying $75K in cash around should raise anyone's suspicions as to the purpose, no matter what the carrier claims. Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash? > The obvious and well known reasons are, it's the most secure way to fund drug and terrorist cells without leaving a trail. The Post even acknowledges that! Not everyone has a bank account. Maybe they should but not everyone does. Just because some people carry cash due to illicit purposes does not mean _everyone_ carries large amounts of cash for that reason. Maybe they do not trust banks? Who cares? The point is, people are essentially being punished without a trial and without being proven guilty of a crime. The presumption of innocence seems very important to a lawful society – why should that presumption be forefitted simply because one chooses to carry large amounts of cash?
allegory 12y ago
My boss carried £40k in cash around once a month for a number of years. It was people's pay on the way from the bank to the company. Imagine the consequences of siezing that. In no way should anyone assume anything. That's a bad precedence to set. And as for me, when I sold my house a few years ago, the buyer paid cash (a suitcase of 15,300 £20 notes). I had to take that to the bank and pay it in, which was suprisingly trouble-free. They just counted it and credited me right away.
- nagrom 12y ago
  That last paragraph is fascinating! How did you react to their request to pay cash? How did you count the money to ensure that it was all there - did you sit there and do it when they arrived, or employ someone or did you visit the bank together?
  - zorrb 12y ago
    It's not that crazy. A $1000 bundle of 20's is 50 bills. Usually they're wrapped up like that. That's only 15stacks. You'd only really have to count one of the stacks, if you didn't trust them.
    - hga 12y ago
      In the US, at least, there are money counting machines in, well, the two bank branches I've been using for a decade. Different banks, one small, one medium of size, in "flyover country" (Joplin, MO). The tellers don't entirely trust them, but they're at minimum useful in getting a double check of amounts. And quite fast, > 10 bills/second.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      "That's only 15stacks." I read the GP as saying 15.3k bills (i.e. £306k), not £15.3k in £20 bills. In which case, that's 306 stacks.
      - allegory 12y ago
loupereira 12y ago
Carrying $75K in cash around is not illegal, but it soon will be if the powers to be have their way. What the anti-cash movement really wants is digital totalitarianism, that's the bigger picture in all this.
CognitiveLens 12y ago
There are two important points that your critique ignores > Half of the seizures were below $8,800. > Asset forfeiture is an extraordinarily powerful law enforcement tool that allows the government to take cash and property without pressing criminal charges and then requires the owners to prove their possessions were legally acquired. The majority of seizures are nowhere near the $75K figure you're concerned about. I agree that large amounts of cash are suspicious, but these seizures seem to draw the line somewhere well below your hyperbolic example. Suspicious activity is not a priori illegal. Second, when NO criminal charges are made, the seizures are no different than government thuggery. Carrying large amounts of cash is suspicious, and should therefore influence the question of probable cause, which could then be used to gather evidence for criminal charges, but that is not happening in many of these cases. That's a fundamental problem that needs to be reported more widely.
nagrom 12y ago
We don't, generally, forbid things that are merely suspicious. You should be considered innocent unless proven guilty. This is a basic pre-requisite for a fair and open justice system. What the Washington Post is talking about here is money taken from people who have not been convicted of anything. Money taken, in the first instance, without recourse to a court of law. Money taken, often, from people without the will or resources to have it overturned. Do not underestimate how powerless people feel in the face of overwhelming authority and how that powerlessness means that they fail to assert their rights. Even those that have the money returned are subject to interest and opportunity costs with returns often taking months. Only one-sixth of seizures are challenged. This means that approximately $450m every year are taken from people who do have the means to appeal and fight back. Assuming that unreasonable (not the same thing as unsuccessful) appeals are balanced by those without the means to appeal, you are punishing innocent people by half a billion dollars in fines every year. That they may have used the money to buy drugs is not an excuse. If a society is to have a fair and reasonable justice system, that system must err on the side of the innocent and not on the side of its enforcers. Otherwise it creates perverse incentives and encourages subjugation of the populace, fermenting resentment and a system that is not of the populace, but separate to it. That system is not stable and it is not a system that can act as a basis for progression. It is a cauldron for resentment, enmity and eventually revolution. It is not a good way to live.
harry8 12y ago
Yeah biased. The police on the other hand are clearly entirely even handed, righteous and fair. There's always a defender for the indefensible in forums supporting authoritarianism. You carry 75k in cash because: "That's none of your damn business." Really that's the reason right up until you have a warrant. Even then it may still be the reason and unless proof is offered it's yours and you keep it. Because Freedom. It's very common amongst migrant communities who raise funds for business amongst family and friends for one. So that's like 90% of the USA within the last few generations. There are many other reasons, many of which you have never considered. And it still isn't your business or anybody else's right up until probable cause and a warrant. People take it seriously when it happens to them, I believe there was a war fought over that once. Would you rather the Post biased against you or the courts. 10 months to get your money back, no charges and it costs you your business. You get your money back but not the time you spent, the legal fees, no mention of interest, or compensation and to finally get it you have to promise you won't sue. Yeah you enforce that as police because you know you're in the right, sure. If that were me having my property stolen I'd be saying the post didn't go in nearly hard enough on this criminal behaviour and spent too much time not acknowledging police officers can tell lies and you can't take anything claimed by a police officer as a fact just because he or she said it. Would the word biased cover the racial profile of those stopped? Or do you think that white people aren't involved in drug crime at all? But you see here's the thing about your rights. They exist or they don't. If someone who "might look like a drug dealer" has no rights to unwarranted search and seizure, neither do you. HSBC do drug money laundering and the people involved aren't prosecuted because it might result in HSBC losing their banking license. Seriously, that's the reason given. Drug money laundering at the big end goes through banks, there are other banks than HSBC involved. If you want to get warrants to do proper searches to fight drug crime that would be the place to start and devote all spare resources. De-criminalization is a much better bet to start solving these immense problems.
droopyEyelids 12y ago
To understand your argument, you're saying that people do not have "the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against searches and seizures" because you can't personally think of a reason to carry $75k in cash?
Floegipoky 12y ago
> Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash? So the decision you've made (not to use cash) based on your personal preferences should bind the rest of the humans in this country as well. There are people from every corner of the world living in America, and you have decided that your world view and experience is the only valid one; their rights should be forfeit simply because they live their lives in a way that you yourself do not. I have noticed this disturbing trend of pride coupled with ignorance among Americans. So many of us lack an understanding and appreciation for the core principles that our founding documents were based on. You've demonstrated a complete and utter lack of understanding of what a "right" actually is. Just because you have personally decided that your rights to due process and to be free from unreasonable seizures are unimportant does not mean that you can in any way make the same decision for anyone else. That's why we call them "rights" and not "privileges". Rights in this country are a property belonging to individual human beings, not collectively, and not to the state.
DanBC 12y ago
I can't tell if your unswerving protection of police actions - no matter what those actions are - is a troll or not. Some child with no weapon gets shot in the head in a police car? You're there, absolutely refusing to accept the possibility of police mis-conduct. What would ot take for you to accept that some police officers are corrupt and that some police officers disobey the law? When someone has had their money taken what are they supposed to use to fund lawyers to get their money back?

ck2 12y ago

Wait, wait - SEIZED WITHOUT A WARRANT. If it is so obviously a crime in progress, get a freaking warrant. This is how everything erodes. One day you will have $2000 on you in cash to buy a used car and they will seize that too. Also note the part where they found nothing after a warrantless search so they just posted it for other police to harass them later.

zorrb 12y ago

Look, I think most reasonable people would agree the Washington Post is pretty much a joke at this point. However, I have toe vehemently disagree with your rationale. This line of thinking has to stop. Just because YOU can't think of any reason to carry "large" sums of money doesn't mean there IS no legitimate reason. Innocent until proven guilty, all that jazz. "Think about it. Why would YOU, wear sagging jeans?" Also, yes, it IS ridiculously expensive to challenge a seizure of money. This happens ALL OF THE TIME in the south, where cops do illegal searches, find money and say DRUG MONEY DRUG MONEY, and 99% of people are SCREWED because the system is stacked against them.

icantthinkofone 12y ago
Tell me a legitimate reason to carry thousands of dollars of cash around. While some, here, will think of outlier reasons and point to a few "two thousand dollar" situations, the point of the whole thing is that there are a multitude of tens and hundreds of thousands and millions in cash that ARE stopped and picked up all the time for illegal reasons and the POST (and posters here) are ignoring that fact. (Except for the one line I show in my other post.) Ignoring the other side of the story is what's going on here.
- noarchy 12y ago
  >Tell me a legitimate reason to carry thousands of dollars of cash around. A legitimate reason would be whatever reason I happen to choose, no different than if I choose to use a credit card, Bitcoin, or write a cheque. No one should have to defend their legal transactions to you or anyone. That said, some governments are moving down the path of outlawing large cash transactions. Here is one example: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/17/large-cash-transactions-banned-in-mexico/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/10/17/large-cash...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nagrom 12y ago
  More than half of all seizures are below $9000 - the amount of money you may use to buy a second-hand car. The amount of money that you may be using to pay for a group holiday. Hell, I brought a couple of thousand dollars in cash with me to the US on holiday a few years back. You may be doing payroll for a small business that pays cash. You may have collected cash from a door-to-door sales job. Possibly you've withdrawn cash to put down as a deposit on an apartment or house. Maybe you're paying for a course for professional qualifications. Maybe you owe three month's back rent. I'd reckon that all of these put together are more probable than funding a terrorist cell or setting up a drug deal. I'd certainly not give up my rights to do these things "just in case".
- zorrb 12y ago
  Are you asking for ONE specific legitimate reason? Say you don't trust banks, how do you purchase expensive items? Maybe you don't have a bank account for WHATEVER reason? Are you now a criminal because you don't have a bank account? Or, are you really asking, what is the RATIO between what you'd deem "legitimate" reasons to carry money and what you'd deem "ill-legitimate"? What is the correct ratio? If we take 50% of the "bad guys" money, and 50% of innocent citizens is that too high? 60/40? 80/20? What is the correct ratio? How can you even know?

privong 12y ago

> Carrying $75K in cash around should raise anyone's suspicions as to the purpose, no matter what the carrier claims. Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash? > The obvious and well known reasons are, it's the most secure way to fund drug and terrorist cells without leaving a trail. The Post even acknowledges that! Not everyone has a bank account. Maybe they should but not everyone does. Just because some people carry cash due to illicit purposes does not mean _everyone_ carries large amounts of cash for that reason. Maybe they do not trust banks? Who cares? The point is, people are essentially being punished without a trial and without being proven guilty of a crime. The presumption of innocence seems very important to a lawful society – why should that presumption be forefitted simply because one chooses to carry large amounts of cash?

allegory 12y ago

My boss carried £40k in cash around once a month for a number of years. It was people's pay on the way from the bank to the company. Imagine the consequences of siezing that. In no way should anyone assume anything. That's a bad precedence to set. And as for me, when I sold my house a few years ago, the buyer paid cash (a suitcase of 15,300 £20 notes). I had to take that to the bank and pay it in, which was suprisingly trouble-free. They just counted it and credited me right away.

nagrom 12y ago
That last paragraph is fascinating! How did you react to their request to pay cash? How did you count the money to ensure that it was all there - did you sit there and do it when they arrived, or employ someone or did you visit the bank together?
- zorrb 12y ago
  It's not that crazy. A $1000 bundle of 20's is 50 bills. Usually they're wrapped up like that. That's only 15stacks. You'd only really have to count one of the stacks, if you didn't trust them.
  - hga 12y ago
    In the US, at least, there are money counting machines in, well, the two bank branches I've been using for a decade. Different banks, one small, one medium of size, in "flyover country" (Joplin, MO). The tellers don't entirely trust them, but they're at minimum useful in getting a double check of amounts. And quite fast, > 10 bills/second.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    "That's only 15stacks." I read the GP as saying 15.3k bills (i.e. £306k), not £15.3k in £20 bills. In which case, that's 306 stacks.
    - allegory 12y ago

loupereira 12y ago

Carrying $75K in cash around is not illegal, but it soon will be if the powers to be have their way. What the anti-cash movement really wants is digital totalitarianism, that's the bigger picture in all this.

CognitiveLens 12y ago

There are two important points that your critique ignores > Half of the seizures were below $8,800. > Asset forfeiture is an extraordinarily powerful law enforcement tool that allows the government to take cash and property without pressing criminal charges and then requires the owners to prove their possessions were legally acquired. The majority of seizures are nowhere near the $75K figure you're concerned about. I agree that large amounts of cash are suspicious, but these seizures seem to draw the line somewhere well below your hyperbolic example. Suspicious activity is not a priori illegal. Second, when NO criminal charges are made, the seizures are no different than government thuggery. Carrying large amounts of cash is suspicious, and should therefore influence the question of probable cause, which could then be used to gather evidence for criminal charges, but that is not happening in many of these cases. That's a fundamental problem that needs to be reported more widely.

nagrom 12y ago

We don't, generally, forbid things that are merely suspicious. You should be considered innocent unless proven guilty. This is a basic pre-requisite for a fair and open justice system. What the Washington Post is talking about here is money taken from people who have not been convicted of anything. Money taken, in the first instance, without recourse to a court of law. Money taken, often, from people without the will or resources to have it overturned. Do not underestimate how powerless people feel in the face of overwhelming authority and how that powerlessness means that they fail to assert their rights. Even those that have the money returned are subject to interest and opportunity costs with returns often taking months. Only one-sixth of seizures are challenged. This means that approximately $450m every year are taken from people who do have the means to appeal and fight back. Assuming that unreasonable (not the same thing as unsuccessful) appeals are balanced by those without the means to appeal, you are punishing innocent people by half a billion dollars in fines every year. That they may have used the money to buy drugs is not an excuse. If a society is to have a fair and reasonable justice system, that system must err on the side of the innocent and not on the side of its enforcers. Otherwise it creates perverse incentives and encourages subjugation of the populace, fermenting resentment and a system that is not of the populace, but separate to it. That system is not stable and it is not a system that can act as a basis for progression. It is a cauldron for resentment, enmity and eventually revolution. It is not a good way to live.

harry8 12y ago

Yeah biased. The police on the other hand are clearly entirely even handed, righteous and fair. There's always a defender for the indefensible in forums supporting authoritarianism. You carry 75k in cash because: "That's none of your damn business." Really that's the reason right up until you have a warrant. Even then it may still be the reason and unless proof is offered it's yours and you keep it. Because Freedom. It's very common amongst migrant communities who raise funds for business amongst family and friends for one. So that's like 90% of the USA within the last few generations. There are many other reasons, many of which you have never considered. And it still isn't your business or anybody else's right up until probable cause and a warrant. People take it seriously when it happens to them, I believe there was a war fought over that once. Would you rather the Post biased against you or the courts. 10 months to get your money back, no charges and it costs you your business. You get your money back but not the time you spent, the legal fees, no mention of interest, or compensation and to finally get it you have to promise you won't sue. Yeah you enforce that as police because you know you're in the right, sure. If that were me having my property stolen I'd be saying the post didn't go in nearly hard enough on this criminal behaviour and spent too much time not acknowledging police officers can tell lies and you can't take anything claimed by a police officer as a fact just because he or she said it. Would the word biased cover the racial profile of those stopped? Or do you think that white people aren't involved in drug crime at all? But you see here's the thing about your rights. They exist or they don't. If someone who "might look like a drug dealer" has no rights to unwarranted search and seizure, neither do you. HSBC do drug money laundering and the people involved aren't prosecuted because it might result in HSBC losing their banking license. Seriously, that's the reason given. Drug money laundering at the big end goes through banks, there are other banks than HSBC involved. If you want to get warrants to do proper searches to fight drug crime that would be the place to start and devote all spare resources. De-criminalization is a much better bet to start solving these immense problems.

droopyEyelids 12y ago

To understand your argument, you're saying that people do not have "the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against searches and seizures" because you can't personally think of a reason to carry $75k in cash?

Floegipoky 12y ago

> Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash? So the decision you've made (not to use cash) based on your personal preferences should bind the rest of the humans in this country as well. There are people from every corner of the world living in America, and you have decided that your world view and experience is the only valid one; their rights should be forfeit simply because they live their lives in a way that you yourself do not. I have noticed this disturbing trend of pride coupled with ignorance among Americans. So many of us lack an understanding and appreciation for the core principles that our founding documents were based on. You've demonstrated a complete and utter lack of understanding of what a "right" actually is. Just because you have personally decided that your rights to due process and to be free from unreasonable seizures are unimportant does not mean that you can in any way make the same decision for anyone else. That's why we call them "rights" and not "privileges". Rights in this country are a property belonging to individual human beings, not collectively, and not to the state.

DanBC 12y ago

I can't tell if your unswerving protection of police actions - no matter what those actions are - is a troll or not. Some child with no weapon gets shot in the head in a police car? You're there, absolutely refusing to accept the possibility of police mis-conduct. What would ot take for you to accept that some police officers are corrupt and that some police officers disobey the law? When someone has had their money taken what are they supposed to use to fund lawyers to get their money back?