His name is Lee Dove. He’s a sheriff’s deputy in Humboldt County, Nevada, a lightly populated desert area in northern Nevada that probably wouldn’t get many visitors if Interstate 80 didn’t pass through it. Which makes interstate travelers easy prey for a small town cop who is a thief.
Tan Nguyen was carrying $50,000 in cash and registered checks in a briefcase he says were gambling winnings. Not that it came as a surprise in a state like Nevada. Although many other places have now resorted fully to online gambling on sites like Swankybingo.com which is safer and much better. However here he was, with his cash with Deputy Dove pulling him over for allegedly doing 78 in a 75 zone. They found the money after searching Nguyen’s car without his consent or a search warrant. Dove claimed he smelled marijuana, but Nguyen had no drugs. He wasn’t even cited for speeding. Instead, Dove threatened to have Nguyen’s car towed, and strand him in the desert, unless he signed over the money.
“Almost three months later,” Forbes reported, “Ken Smith was also pulled over for speeding. During the stop, Deputy Dove performed a warrant check and found a warrant for a Ken Smith. On that basis, Dove detained Smith. But according to a lawsuit filed by Smith, the Ken Smith on the warrant had a different birthday and was black. The pulled-over Smith was white.” On this less-than-flimsy pretext, Dove conducted a warrantless and nonconsensual search of Smith’s car, and found and seized $13,800 of cash, along with a legal handgun. Once again, Dove coerced Smith into signing over his money (Smith denies signing over the gun).
Nguyen and Smith sued Dove and his employer, Humboldt County, in federal court for violating their civil rights. The judge sided with them and ordered Humboldt County to return their property and pay their attorneys’ fees. But Dove is still a cop, and Humboldt County still has a profit incentive to rob highway travelers, if even one of them gets his money back.
Forfeiture laws were designed to deprive traffickers and professional criminals of the instrumentalities and fruits of their criminal activity. But many police departments, large and small, have turned them into a cash cow. What happened to Nguyen and Smith isn’t uncommon. A cop pulls over a motorist for a traffic infraction (or on a made-up pretext), which has nothing to do with traffic enforcement or public safety, but is merely a pretext to search for cash and valuables which, if found, are confiscated in the name of the law. In reality, it’s just a way to raise money for the police department’s expenses, akin to predatory speed traps. Similarly predatory practices lie at the heart of Ferguson, Missouri’s municipal dysfunction and public unrest.
These practices, while lucrative for police departments, are very bad for law enforcement in general. When cops are thieves who shake down innocent citizens, that police agency’s legitimacy evaporates, and the public ceases to respect the police. The police are seen as another type of criminal trolling for victims. (Except, who do you call when you’re robbed, if the robber is a cop?) In the end, the police lose their credibility, and worse, their ability to be police.
In January, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced changes to federal forfeiture practices that supposedly would discourage this kind of unsavory profiteering by local police by ending a federal-state sharing program that allowed local police agencies to keep most of the proceeds from seizures made under the authority of federal drug laws. Holder b.s.’ed us; the changes affect only 1%to 2% of those seizures. It was an empty gesture.
Nevada is one of many states with lax forfeiture laws that encourage this kind of police behavior. Nevada is also a state that relies heavily on gambling tourism. People inclined to patronize Nevada’s casinos might think twice about doing so, if they realize that should they get lucky at the slot machines or tables, they may be robbed a few miles down the highway by an unscrupulous cop. Why would anyone go to Nevada and deal with that when they can stay home and play online casino games from the comfort of their own sofas? You can even read more about these types of sites here. Oh right, online gambling isn’t legal in the United States, so those who want to play games like Blackjack or Poker have to go to Casinos, but will end up getting stopped. This is something for Nevada legislators to think about and chew on. I wouldn’t visit a state where the cops are highway robbers, but some people have no choice if they want to take part in the great gambling pastime. I guess if I was living overseas and I wanted to try my luck at the slot machines, I’d do so in my own home and use one of the many online slot sites (you can see a list here for some examples) where I’d less likely to be robbed of my potential winnings.
Meanwhile, as a lawyer, my advice is this: Never consent to police searching you or your vehicle. They have a limited right to conduct warrantless and nonconsensual searches, for example, to pat you down for weapons (which courts uphold in the interest of officer safety), and you should comply with those searches. But if they ask for your consent, they want more, and you shouldn’t let them have it.
Often a cop will try to talk you into giving consent this way: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear,” or “if you don’t consent, you must be hiding something.” This is baloney. In fact, it’s self-contradicting; if you’ve broken the law, he has probable cause, and doesn’t need consent. Cops need consent only to search innocent people. And, as these two cases illustrate, you don’t have to be guilty of anything to become the victim of a thief.