Welcome To Extortion, Texas.

[Fenian_Bastard]

Just climate-wise, bubbler.
Pewaukee girls, really knock me out...

 

[Smallpotatoes]

"Your car is blue. I believe that's ground for a strip search."

 

[Angola!]

Real Sports on HBO did a piece on a minor league baseball player, who was shot by police for DWB in Bellaire, a suburb of Houston. It was pretty damning.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

That's a good story from the San Antonio paper.
And AQB is dead right. This goes way beyond the cops. Obviously, the 80-year old (!) mayor's getting a piece, and you;ve got to figure the town fathers cooked up this scheme and thought nobody would ever notice.
Hope there's anough Motel 6 rooms nearby for the upcoming DOJ task force.

Agreed, the San Antonio Express piece was more informative. That assett forfeiture law has got to be one of the most ill-considered invitions to corruption ever enacted in this country, at least in terms of it breadth. That they can keep the seized property of people never actually charged and convicted is unreal to me. I'd love to know how the courts have squared that with Constitution's due process protections.

And notice that guy has been Mayor for 54 years. I've got this mental picture of some Boss Hogg type character ruling over this town since the Jim Crowe days with little awareness that they've ended.

That's what I'd like to know. Where in the Constitution does it say that any law enforcement agency get to strip away people's property if they are arrested or convicted?

 

[Ace]

That's a good story from the San Antonio paper.
And AQB is dead right. This goes way beyond the cops. Obviously, the 80-year old (!) mayor's getting a piece, and you;ve got to figure the town fathers cooked up this scheme and thought nobody would ever notice.
Hope there's anough Motel 6 rooms nearby for the upcoming DOJ task force.

Agreed, the San Antonio Express piece was more informative. That assett forfeiture law has got to be one of the most ill-considered invitions to corruption ever enacted in this country, at least in terms of it breadth. That they can keep the seized property of people never actually charged and convicted is unreal to me. I'd love to know how the courts have squared that with Constitution's due process protections.

And notice that guy has been Mayor for 54 years. I've got this mental picture of some Boss Hogg type character ruling over this town since the Jim Crowe days with little awareness that they've ended.

That's what I'd like to know. Where in the Constitution does it say that any law enforcement agency get to strip away people's property if they are arrested or convicted?

So I take it you are one of them pinkos who wants to coddle criminals and strip away the rights from cops.

If you are against a police officer jamming his cold fist up your anal cavity, you must have something to hide.

 

[kleeda]

That is a hell of a lot of riding around money, I must say.

 

[Tom Petty]

i've listened to stories that black folks my age tell about driving through texas "back in the day" and how their fathers wouldn't pull over for the night until they were in new mexico. i had no idea this **** still existed today.

 

[Ace]

That is a hell of a lot of riding around money, I must say.

Yeah. Idiots should have kept it in the stock market.

 

[kleeda]

Or traveler's checks. Or, I don't know, a bank account with an ATM card? Just saying.

 

[Ace]

Or traveler's checks. Or, I don't know, a bank account with an ATM card? Just saying.

I'm looking through the Texas penal codes, though, and don't see where carrying cash is illegal.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

Or traveler's checks. Or, I don't know, a bank account with an ATM card? Just saying.

Or how about just, **** it, it's my money and I don't need permission from Mayor Gomer and Sheriff Goober to carry it in pennies if I want to.

 

[kleeda]

I agree Fenian, but $6k is going to make honest Cooter damned suspsicious. It's going to make dishonest Cooter salivate.

 

[slappy4428]

That's a good story from the San Antonio paper.
And AQB is dead right. This goes way beyond the cops. Obviously, the 80-year old (!) mayor's getting a piece, and you;ve got to figure the town fathers cooked up this scheme and thought nobody would ever notice.
Hope there's anough Motel 6 rooms nearby for the upcoming DOJ task force.

Not holding my breath on that -- or for a conviction

 

[Stoney]

That's a good story from the San Antonio paper.
And AQB is dead right. This goes way beyond the cops. Obviously, the 80-year old (!) mayor's getting a piece, and you;ve got to figure the town fathers cooked up this scheme and thought nobody would ever notice.
Hope there's anough Motel 6 rooms nearby for the upcoming DOJ task force.

Agreed, the San Antonio Express piece was more informative. That assett forfeiture law has got to be one of the most ill-considered invitions to corruption ever enacted in this country, at least in terms of it breadth. That they can keep the seized property of people never actually charged and convicted is unreal to me. I'd love to know how the courts have squared that with Constitution's due process protections.

And notice that guy has been Mayor for 54 years. I've got this mental picture of some Boss Hogg type character ruling over this town since the Jim Crowe days with little awareness that they've ended.

That's what I'd like to know. Where in the Constitution does it say that any law enforcement agency get to strip away people's property if they are arrested or convicted?

No idea. But I do know where the 5th amendment states "No person shall be deprived of ...property without due process of law". People never charged and tried have had no due process. How this law has passed constitutional scrutiny, at least with regard to the unconvicted, is beyond me.

 

[Angola!]

I agree Fenian, but $6k is going to make honest Cooter damned suspsicious. It's going to make dishonest Cooter salivate.

How does a policeman even know how much money I am carrying? Unless, honest and dishonest Cooter were searching the black people just because.

 

[I Digress]

I have a cousin-by-marriage who uses the n-word and closes his little shop during Black Spring Break in Daytona because he can't stand to have blacks in his shop. Me, if I owned a shop, I'd only hate to have people with no money in it. So that doesn't surprise me that the yokels up there would do something like this.

there's a "black spring break"? Last I checked,the money black folks use is green......your cousin is a f*cked up person.

by marriage.... no shared blood! I've only met the guy once. Complete tool. Can't stand him.

 

[JR]

San Antonio Express-News first broke the story.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Property_seizures_seen_as_piracy_.html

Says it all:

But in Tenaha, a town of chicken farms that hugs the Louisiana border, critics say being a black out-of-towner passing through with anything of value is seen as evidence of a crime.

Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.

“It’s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,” Bowers said.

Local police, he said, must take aggressive action to stem the narcotics trade that flows through town via U.S. 59 — drugs heading north, cash going south.

“No doubt about it. (U.S. 59) is a thoroughfare that a lot of no-good people travel on. They take the drugs and sell it and take the money and go right back into Mexico,” said Bowers, who’s been Tenaha’s mayor 54 years.

 

[Ace]

I'll say this about 59 from Houston to Texarkana -- it's a nice stretch of non-highway. Divided four lanes almost all the way.

Not sure about the drug flow, though.

 

[writing irish]

Cow****istan is in the house!

Lunatic motel proprietor in West Texas freaks out on guests in racially-themed tirade. This was last summer.

http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/?p=626

 

[writing irish]

DWB = Driving While Black.