Two weeks ago, I wrote about a rogue sheriff’s deputy in northern Nevada who pulled over highway travelers and threatened them with arrest and imprisonment if they didn’t hand over their cash and valuables. By some weird coincidence — or inevitability — he was arrested the very next day for pulling a gun on someone in a convenience store. When he goes to trial on that felony charge, he can’t claim he did it in any law enforcement capacity, because he was already suspended from his job for other (undisclosed) reasons. At this point, I offer readers the standard admonition that “all suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,” which applies to him even though he gave no such consideration to the motorists he shook down (I trust you appreciate the irony here). Meanwhile, pending disposition of the pending criminal charges against him, Deputy Lee Dove won’t be shaking down any more interstate highway travelers for a while. By the way, Dove wasn’t acting entirely alone. Lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against his department in response to flurry of money and property seizures from citizens. Asset forfeiture laws were never intended to be used this way, and are badly in need of reform, both at federal and state levels.
Photos: Lee Dove posing for mugshot (l), and posing with seized cash in happier days, before a federal judge ordered him to return it to the innocent motorists he took it from (r).