Today, Explained - Your money is under arrest

Episode Date: February 26, 2019

Police can seize your property without ever charging you with a crime. And you probably won’t get it back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who do you bank with? I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for Aspiration because Aspiration wants you to bank with them. You can download the Aspiration app to open an account today. You can save money while trying to save the world. That's their whole thing. They're a financial partner that puts you and your conscience and the planet first. Check it out. Aspiration. actually still using a walker, and he was at his house, heard the knock at his door, and a woman screaming outside for help. He opened his door, and a robber barged in and smashed a bottle over his head. Like, the robber didn't even take anything. Me and him got into a tussle, got into a fight and stuff, and I called the cops. When 9-1-1 sent EMS to the house, they took Isaiah to the hospital. He had a head wound from that smashed bottle and police also responded to his apartment. The police report says that they smelled the odor of marijuana inside and so they did a check and in that process they found marijuana that Isaiah says he had been using to fight the pain from the car accident. It was a little bit more than an ounce.

So police searched his apartment, and they went through his closet, and they found $1,800 in cash that he had stuffed into a shoebox. This was also right before I had to go and pay rent and stuff like that. I just had cashed my check from the tattoo shop I was working in at. And they seized that money under a South Carolina law called civil forfeiture. I didn't fully understand. Like, I understood what was going on,

but I did not understand what was going on. Like, I was the victim, and you come and address me as if this was a drug deal going bad or something like that. And I'm like, no. I sit here and called you in regards to a crime. They said it was proceeds from drug sales, and under South Carolina law, they were allowed to seize that money. And if Isaiah wanted to get it back, he would have to fight them in court.

Like it was medicinal usage and you sitting there telling me, oh but you're selling. I'm like there was no scales, there was nothing. Meanwhile, Isaiah is in the hospital room with nurses and doctors working on him, but a police officer squeezed into that room as well and notified him that they had seized his cash and that they were charging him with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. So from there, that's when they arrested me from the hospital and took me to jail. Eventually, those charges would be dropped, but Isaiah was still out his $1,800 cash. And when he lost his rent money, he had no way to pay his rent.

He was forced out of his apartment. He had no idea that he could have money just disappear and have no way to get it back. Nathaniel Carey, you're an investigative reporter for the Greenville News in South Carolina. You and your team just put out this big investigation on this kind of crazy tool police have called civil forfeiture. How's it work? Basically, it's a system that allows police and sheriff's officers to seize cash and property. They're not charging a person with a crime. They're charging an object with a crime. So many times you'll have a case that is the city of Greenville against $10,000 on an iPhone. We've seen police seize PlayStations and Xboxes and television sets, a boat, jewelry, firearms, even an RV. And this property can be

taken when you're not even charged with any criminal offense at all. It's a civil matter and it's completely separate from any potential criminal offense. Why does this exist? Why are cops allowed to do this? The idea and the intent behind the law is that this gives cops a tool to go after drug rings. If you take the drugs, those drugs are just going to be replaced. If you take the profits, then that strikes at the heart of the drug ring. But what we found is the number of cases where there may not be any drugs involved at all. And many, many times, if there is a charge and even a conviction, it's for a possession. And so

where's the enterprise? That's what defense attorneys have told us. Where's this drug ring you're trying to break up? You guys did this spanning investigation across the state. How much property, how much money has been seized in South Carolina? What did you find? We found that police agencies across the state over this three-year period had seized more than $17 million from people. That's not including vehicles, houses, electronics, all of which they can seize and then sell and use those proceeds.

So $17 million just in cash? $17 million just in cash. But in South Carolina, 95% of those proceeds go to law enforcement. 75% goes right back to the agency that made the seizure. And 20% goes to the prosecuting agency that handled the case. What does law enforcement end up doing with the cash? Under South Carolina law, they are supposed to use the cash for fighting crime. So they can use it for all sorts of investigations.

They can purchase equipment with it. They've used it for drug buy money. They can use it for fuel for their helicopters or for parts for their helicopters. And that's not something that's allowed. They aren't supposed to use it for ongoing operating expenses. It should be just considered a bonus. But when we reached out to police officers and police chiefs at the end of our investigation just to run these findings by them and make sure we had everything straight, and we asked them, you know, what would happen if there was reform

and you didn't have access to this money anymore, police chiefs were telling us they'd have to shut down their K-9 units or they'd have to drastically redo their operating budgets. And so they're obviously counting on this funding. There's a direct incentive for them to find people's money and take it. That's the crux of the issue. So if there's a questionable case, they're going to lean on the side of taking the money, and we'll sort this out later.

In fact, that's exactly what at least two police chiefs have told us. So if someone takes, let's say, $10,000 of your money because they found you with an ounce of weed in South Carolina, how do you try and get it back? If they take $10,000, you actually have a little bit better chance because there's an amount that's high enough that you may be able to convince an attorney to take your case. And most of these cases are actually much smaller. 55% of the time, they've taken less than $1,000. And we found more than 2,000 instances where they seized less than $500. So if they netted $17 million, that means they just took a ton of money from a ton of people. That's right. That's where we get more than 4,000 subjects where they're seizing money from. And so when it's less than $10,000, when it's $40, $200, $1,000, how do you try and get your

money back? You're basically out of luck. People will go to the defense attorney and they'll say, hey, here's my case. This was taken unjustly. This was my tip money from a pizza delivery or, you know, I just got off work at the bar. And they'll have a case, but the cost involved and the time involved for an attorney makes it not worth it. And so they have to turn these cases down. And individuals are then left to try to go at it alone and try to figure out this complicated civil court process by themselves. So who ends up being hurt by this in South Carolina? You looked at 4,000 cases. What did you find?

One of the things we were able to find through this process was the race of almost everybody who was involved in one of these cases. And we found that 71% of all civil forfeiture cases in South Carolina involved African Americans. Despite the fact that African Americans make up just 27% of the state's population, 65% of the time these cases were involving black men. And if you were black in South Carolina and you wanted to get your money back, you had half as much chance of getting it back as if you were white. Coming up, privateers, slavery, and moonshine. The origin story of civil forfeiture. Transcription by CastingWords Aspiration, not like the thing, the bank. Aspiration offers an account where you decide what your monthly fee is. No joke. I would probably settle on zero dollars. Aspiration

also offers 2% annual percentage yield, zero ATM fees anywhere in the world, and 10% of their earnings go to help other Americans. Also, also, also, none of their money goes to funding oil pipelines or drilling or anything like that. You can read more about Aspiration in Forbes, in the New York Times, in Money Magazine. They want you to know that you deserve a financial firm that's fair, that provides great products, and helps you make more money while making a difference.

If you're interested, you can put your money where your heart is and download the Aspiration app today to open up an account. Nathaniel, how is civil forfeiture even legal? Has it always been legal? So this actually goes back all the way to the American colonies. Great Britain wanted every ship that was headed towards America to pay tariffs to England. If you wanted to go out of the way and not have your goods be taxed, they set up this legal system where they could seize the goods that this ship captain was bringing. And that's where forfeiture in America really got its start. These privateers would patrol the seas and they would seize these ships and seize the goods from the ships.

That kind of died down into the 20th century when Prohibition saw a resurgence in forfeiture, law enforcement would go after the moonshine, and they would go after the vehicles that were transporting the moonshine. And then it began to die down again until really into the 1970s and early 80s with the war on drugs. federal government led the way with using civil forfeiture to go after the proceeds of kingpins and big money laundering operations. And that's where our modern era of civil asset forfeiture really took off. How does it evolve or perhaps devolve from this British shipping concern to this drug kingpin thing to like getting called to a guy's house who's Department in the 1970s and 80s. And he's the one who first began experimenting with using civil forfeiture to target drug dealers. In the early 80s, he set up the Justice Department's first unit that specialized in civil asset forfeiture as part of this war on drugs. But what he found was when he would go to local and state agencies and say, we're trying to go after these people's money.

We think that's a good way to go after the criminals and break up these rings. He wasn't finding much success. So what the Justice Department did was create a system where they would share these profits. And once they created that system, everybody wanted to be involved in this. And that's where we end up with the system that we have today, where they are incentivized to go after the cash when they come across it, especially in drug cases, but sometimes not even in drug cases. And it's just used more and more as the years have gone along to go after smaller and smaller amounts. So I feel like that's one historical timeline, the historical timeline of civil forfeiture in the United States and specifically South Carolina. What about the other timeline that's important here, the timeline of infringing on the civil rights of black people in South Carolina? There's this clear line from slavery to the Civil War and to civil rights and to civil forfeiture. In South Carolina, this goes back to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.

He was marching through the South to Savannah, and he promised these freed slaves they'd receive 40 acres of tillable ground from all of these plantations that had been abandoned and confiscated from Confederates. And many of these African Americans who had just been emancipated, they were given army mules left over to give them a head start in this new lifestyle, and large numbers of them stayed. And after President Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson returned this land to its previous owners, and that left these freed slaves to tend land that had been ripped from them, and they became sharecroppers and often worked for their former owners.

Fast forward decades later, and communities used these covenants to create whites-only neighborhoods. They prevented black people from buying homes in the appreciating part of town. And banks used redlining of areas that they considered poor investments, and it gave them the ability to reject loans to some Black residents. And so there's been this distrust of the system, and that actually leads to more of our African-American residents who carry cash. More often, African-Americans in South Carolina are either unbanked or they do not use their bank account. And more often, black South Carolinians are working jobs that pay in cash, such as tourism-related jobs or food service or industry jobs. And so just historically, there's more African Americans, particularly in our rural areas, who are carrying cash.

And that just leads to more opportunity for them to have their cash seized. So it's almost like these two timelines converge at civil forfeiture, this history of moonshine and the colonies and bootlegging and the history of oppression of black people in South Carolina. It certainly seems that that's the case. When you have 7 out of 10 cases of civil forfeiture are involving black people in South Carolina, there's really only one reason

that it would be that great of a disparity. Seizing people's cash and property and prized possessions without charging them with a crime, man, it seems downright un-American. That's exactly what one professor that we talked to told us. This seems like it's un-American. It doesn't follow the property rights that we all believe that we have as Americans. And it's because it's taking place separate of any sort of a criminal case.

You could be found completely innocent on the criminal side, and yet your assets can still be seized and forfeited. You talked to any number of cops in your investigation. What do they think of the reporting you came up with? They see this system as being fair in their eyes. What we've heard from police is that these people have an opportunity to recover their assets. They can take us to court if they believe we unjustly did this. But by and large, what we found is that doesn't actually happen. It certainly doesn't happen with every case. What police fear is that they're going to lose a source of funding that's not

going to be made up. I don't think that the cops in South Carolina have ever been confronted with the actual numbers, and they'd never, until our series began to roll out, have never seen the scale or the disparities that are involved in asset forfeiture. So I think that awareness may open some eyes and change some minds. Would you mind repeating some of those numbers for us before we go? 71% of cases were targeting African American residents. And the vast majority of those, 65% of all cases, were against African American men in South Carolina. African Americans only make up 27% of our state's population. And African American men make up 13%.

So there's this wide disparity between the population numbers of South Carolina and the numbers that we're finding in our asset forfeiture cases. I can see how this is a tool that police would need to go after drug kingpins who were, you know, otherwise elusive. But getting back to the story of Isaiah that you told up top,

I mean, this is a guy who called the cops for help. And they took his rent money and he ends up getting evicted. Did he get any justice in the end? It's been almost three years since he lost that money. He's tried to take actions to try to get it back after the fact, but that case is already closed and done with. So he's made no progress. It's just crazy how they can screw you over in such a short period of time,

but then it'll take 30 to 90 days at minimum for them to just fix what they destroyed. But then by the time I gain that information from my lawyer, you tell me that, oh, it's too late. The money is already lost in the system. Like, what? Last week, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive fines, applies to the practice of civil forfeiture.

The ruling will make it harder for states and police departments to use civil forfeiture for regular funding, and it also allows defendants to argue that seizing their property is excessive. To be clear though, this does not stop civil forfeiture, but it is a ruling that might lay the for the Greenville News in South Carolina. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi, Bridget McCarthy, Noam Hassenfeld, Luke Vanderplug, and Afim the Dream Shapiro make the show.

Siona Petros is our intern, and the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder makes music for us. Shouts to Kainaz Amaria at Vox for her help with this one. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher and we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thanks to Aspiration for supporting the show today. You can enjoy 2% annual percentage yield,

zero ATM fees anywhere in the world, and maybe even make the world a more functional place with Aspiration's fossil fuel-free account. Check it out. Try and save some money while trying to save your old pal planet Earth. Download the Aspiration app to open an account today. And one more thing. It's a podcast thing. This podcast is called Displaced. Do you know it? It's from our friends at the Vox Media Podcast Network and the International Rescue Committee, aka the IRC. It's all about the global refugee crisis and what we humans can do about it. There's a new episode out today that's all about refugee resettlement, and it features a resettled refugee who just became a member of the United States House of Representatives, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

She talks about how refugee resettlement was once a bipartisan issue, and how lately, less so. Also, what people can do about it. Displaced is on Apple Podcasts, it's on Stitcher, it's on the app you use to find your podcasts. Take a listen now.