The best way to defeat this for subversives is to mark every license plate.
I am Spartacus.
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There was a great sequence of cops doing this on one of the protest livestreams back in early June.
The rational is that they have set a perimeter, and are ‘graciously’ allowing cars inside to be driven out… but are marking those cars in case a ‘trouble maker’ returns against their instructions.
ETA: it’s better than slicing all the tires, I guess. Abolish the cops !!!1!
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real world answer to OP’s general question…
the first question to ask yourself when asking “should i get a lawyer?”, is what are my actual damages?
if you, yourself, cant think how to monetize them, then no lawyer is going to really do anything unless there is fairly obvious civil rights issues that would lead to a $ payout.
all that seems fairly standard though. coming from someone with some prosecuting experience, a cop following you is always going to find a “reason” to pull you over if they want to, the time you can be asked to wait for drug dogs is “a reasonable amount”. as someone pointed out drug dos are magical according to the supreme court and can not be impugned. a cops assertion that you are appearing “furtive” is often the only justification they need to search the immediate area surrounding you. and of course nothing you say can be used to help you(cops have no affirmative duty to write down and record your responses to questions nor are they required to testify about what you said during the encounter), and everything you say WILL be used against you.
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And they will lie about that. Just in my limited experience taking two traffic tickets to court, the cop flat out lied in one case. It was the kind of lie that was like - I don’t remember what happened so I’ll just say the standard thing that supports my story.
What is the chain of events required to trigger a successful asset seizure? They just need to claim you were furtive, call the dog, and have it indicate?
generally yes. the dog indicating would give them reason to search the area where the dog is indicating. then as soon as they have probable cause to arrest you(which would be the furtiveness and the dog indication/finding something in the dog indicated area) and choose to do that, they can do whats called “search incident to lawful arrest” which is a search of your body and everything in your immediate area for “officer safety”. then if your car is on a public roadway and you’ve been arrested they can search it incident to impounding it, for the “safety” of taking it to their impound lot. if you’re passing the car off to someone else to remove it from the scene after you’ve been arrested so they dont impound it, they still can likely search the car do to your arrest with possible exception of the trunk, due to the automobile exception to the warrant requirement.
i had a case one time where our drug unit was investigating a drug house and they didnt have enough just based on some informants, so they tasked uniformed officers to follow every single car that left the house and their job was to find whatever pretext they could to pull people over.
guy got nervous being followed and allegedly “rolled” through a stop sign, gets pulled over looks nervous, a drug dog unit “just happened” to be in the area so it was within a reasonable time, passed once didnt indicate, did a second pass indicated on the bed of the truck, so they put it in the bed, and it found like half a pound of meth in the engine compartment of a leaf blower.
all ruled perfectly acceptable
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on second thought i realized you may have been talking about civil asset forfeiture. if so, the standard for that is generally preponderance of the evidence, so just “more likely than not” the assets were used in criminal proceedings. its also an in rem case so there is no due process requirements.
in practice those cases would be settled a lot through deals involving us keeping a percentage of the money/assets seized. once we got the criminal case passed the preliminary hearing stage we had already met the evidentiary standard of preponderance so it would be used as a cautionary warning that we could meet that standard in the civil case if required.
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Yeah that is what I’m asking about since I default assume the cops are up to no good.
Hypothetical: Say I’m passing through one of these Deliverance movie set areas with a significant amount of cash wearing a vintage gold-filled Swiss watch. I have the cash on my person because I’m heading to play poker at a casino and I have the watch because I’m transfixed by the spellbinding luster of extravagant gadgetry powered by unobtanium components prone to failure. A lot of people here can probably relate. What’s the highest-probability strategy for holding onto my property if I’m stopped for some invented / minor violation? Unless I’m missing something, it seems like I’d want to avoid summoning Ruff the Magic Doggo at all costs.
I have considered the question about carrying large sums through shitty places like that and the best solution I can think of is putting the cash in an otter box and securing said box under the hood of whatever vehicle I’m riding in.
IANAL but that seems like a bad idea to me. I think the best place is your wallet (if it fits) followed by your pocket in a money clip.
The topic is interesting to me and I’ve read a bunch of articles, listened to podcasts, and watched youtube videos on civil forfeiture. My takeaway from all that is if the cops pull you over with the intent to rob you, having it on your person isn’t going to stop them. I’d rather they not find it. Here’s a Gambling With An Edge episode on the subject:
Your potential solution is addressed around 22:30.
obvious disclaimer that this isn’t actual legal advice.
largely depends how much. generally you’re going to be ok if it’s just money(no drugs/warrants/whatever) and you have a coherent reason/excuse for having it, hypothetically if its for gambling or something less than on the up and up, and you are in a situation where you cant or dont think you can say that, you could print out a used car listing for close to the amount and near the location you are heading and saying that you are going to look at it and had the cash in case you decide to buy. give your lawyer the gift of something to work with. like the adage that if you are going to carry a baseball bat around with you to break kneecaps, at least put a mitt and ball in the trunk also.
obviously i cant speak for every jurisdiction, but i’m in a backwards red state and cash generally isnt enough to warrant seizure. if we’re talking more than pocket money than potentially a lock box in the trunk of your car would be your best bet.
whatever the amount of money, the more it uniform it looks the better of you are. no joke, part of the standard questions we were told to ask our cops on the witness stand during prelim hearings was to describe in their best memory the denominations and conditions of the bills seized. smaller/varied denominations in worse physical condition alluded to the idicia of intent to sell drugs and possible drug proceeds from small level drug sales. the more it looks like your money came straight from the bank/atm the less likely you are to lose it, at least on the criminal front.
i never did civil asset forfeiture cases, but the inherent difficulty is that the cases are structured “municipality of X vs. 10,000 dollars cash”. which means its vs the property and not you so it limits due process and the burden ends up largely on you to prove that the money ISNT criminally connected at your own expense.
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The content I have consumed doesn’t match your statement that cash generally isn’t enough to warrant a seizure.
Black dude pulled over for going 65 in a 70 - clearly suspicious behavior.
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Hmmm… Do they make any bigger ones?
$20k is a considerably larger amount than I meant. I do think that would be strange to hold on your person. $3k to $5k for 5/10 and a Heuer Camaro though? Obviously if they’re gonna steal it they’re gonna steal it. If they find your hidden box of cash I’d guess it’s 100% they both assume you are running contraband and call in Hairy Houndini. Even as a non-cop, I’d be really suspicious if I found a hidden waterproof box of cash under your hood and strongly assume you’re a drug dealer. Probably a good reason to arrest you on the spot if the dog gives a false indication which they are wont to do for dat milkbone.
I was kidding lol…
There are stories of people being pulled over and forfeiting huge sums of money. One was a guy who won a poker tournament, one was a guy with his life savings on him going to buy a business.
They eventually got it back, I think, but not before a couple years of legal nightmares. Civil Forfeiture is a fucking joke.
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Did they have it bolted under the hood in Pelican cases and stashed in the door panels though? I’d be shocked if anyone ever got that money back.