Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him • Hacker News Board

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#41

Post by superuser2 » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:06 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #32

superuser2 wrote: post #25

For those who didn't RTFA, he carried his life savings with him in cash . We've seen several stories like this: person has $xx,xxx in cash on them like that's just a normal thing to do. Bad thing happens. Person is incredulous. No one thinks they have any culpability for opting to carry $10k+ in cash over vastly safer and free alternatives. That doesn't excuse the seizure, but I don't see how it's worth our time to g…

Having cops steal money should not be a risk anyone is taking, let alone a stupid one. If he got mugged, that'd be another thing. Also, free alternatives? Elaborate. And certainly they aren't free from surveillance. We should encourage and treat the carrying of $$$$$ in cash as a normal thing to do.

Checking accounts. Bitcoin (not free, but close).

If it weren't the state, it could just as easily have been an ordinary mugger, or an airline employee theft, or simple airline incompetence.

>And certainly they aren't free from surveillance.

If you want a financial system free from surveillance then you need to get the public on board with ending taxation (and consequently all public services). Good luck.

And, as we saw, moving cash on an airplane is the most heavily surveilled and scrutinized way to do it.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#42

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

hoffspot wrote: post #5

I'm not saying the police are right, the whole seizure thing is ridiculous, but this story is so shady. You have 11 grand in cash and want to move it from A to B. The obvious and safe way is to deposit it in a bank and get a cashier's check or do an ACH transfer. Who in their right mind would carry it with them or even worse, put it in a checked bag that airlines notoriously lose? The point of the story is valid, but…

I'd have no qualms about carrying $11K in cash from A to B, and if I already had the money in cash at A, I seriously doubt I'd bother to go make a deposit, electronically transfer it, and then withdraw it at B. Far more likely that it would go into my backpack.

This is coming from someone who is very well-served by the banking industry; for someone less well-served, I can even more readily understand it.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#43

Post by nicarus1984 » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

albedoa wrote: post #40

nicarus1984 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you appear to believe that because I stated we have the freedom to have an open and critical dialogue around these issues - something one is unlikely to have in N. Korea, etc. - that I am implying we do not have these problems. That is not what I had stated.

There is obviously a disconnect between what you think you wrote and how it reads to others. Perhaps instead of getting defensive you should acknowledge that the confusion is valid and apologize for being unclear. People are responding to your exact comment, not guessing what you might be thinking.

I honestly don't feel/think I am being defensive here. I've even asked for correction if I am wrong. I'm not asking people to "guess" what I might be thinking, hence the discussion.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#44

Post by dalke » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #25

For those who didn't RTFA, he carried his life savings with him in cash . We've seen several stories like this: person has $xx,xxx in cash on them like that's just a normal thing to do. Bad thing happens. Person is incredulous. No one thinks they have any culpability for opting to carry $10k+ in cash over vastly safer and free alternatives. That doesn't excuse the seizure, but I don't see how it's worth our time to g…

Umm, it is normal enough thing to do. Here are some other cases, found by searching just for "$15,000":

"The Catholic priest took $15,000 in cash to Skid Row and doled it out to hundreds of the city's most down-and-out residents outside the Fred Jordan Missions" - http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Priest-turns-90-handin...

"Dr. Berlin took $15,000 from the cash received in wedding gifts, leased an examination room in another doctor's office and worked nights and weekends over the next decade to build a thriving private practice all his own." - http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/28/us/clinton-s-health-plan-s...

"“Once you’re in Cuba – as an American – everything has to be paid in cash. American credit and debit cards do not work — hotels, meals, taxis AND the cost of the footage all had to be paid for in cash. We took $15,000 in cash. To make things more difficult, we could not pay in $U.S. for the footage. We had to transfer our dollars to Cuban pesos." - http://www.documentarytelevision.com/sweet-spots/fidel-castr...

"During the criminal trial, Chatfield testified that Brown had met with her several times and lured her to his house, hinting that it might be for sale. Chatfield said she brought $15,000 in cash as a possible down payment on June 15, 2012." - http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/midwest/2014/08/12/253190....

"Baltimore Woman Posted a Stranger’s $15,000 Cash Bail To Get Him Out Of Jail" - http://www.barstoolsports.com/dmv/woman-posted-a-strangers-1...

"The woman’s $3000 Louis Vuitton handbag was stolen with $15,000 inside while she was waiting for a green light on the corner of Chesterville Rd and Bernard St at 2.15pm on Monday. ... the woman reported the money as “business takings”." - http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/inner-south/louis-vuitton...

These are just cases where one person had the money in public. I left out places where an organization raise $15K in charity, or someone won $15K in cash from a raffle ticket, or people found $15K in someone's home after they died, or in one case in Australia where the husband put $15K in the oven and the wife, not knowing that, turned on the oven to preheat it.

And of course you don't hear about all the normal cases where nothing notable happened.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#45

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

hoffspot wrote: post #5

I'm not saying the police are right, the whole seizure thing is ridiculous, but this story is so shady. You have 11 grand in cash and want to move it from A to B. The obvious and safe way is to deposit it in a bank and get a cashier's check or do an ACH transfer. Who in their right mind would carry it with them or even worse, put it in a checked bag that airlines notoriously lose? The point of the story is valid, but…

My car got stolen about a week ago and I had to get another one in a hurry. The seller didn't want to work with the banks and effectively forced me to get the money in cash, which I did. Should I be liable to lose it on my way to buy the car because I move some money from A to B in its physical form?

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#46

Post by jMyles » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

nicarus1984 wrote: post #38

diego wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a non sequitur. He's talking about grouping countries by specific criteria. To make a code parallel, if you ran select from countries group by police_score; and select from countries group by freedom_of_press_index; You'd expect different results. Maybe there would be a correlation, and the US would be an outlier.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you appear to believe that because I stated we have the freedom to have an open and critical dialogue around these issues - something one is unlikely to have in N. Korea, etc. - that I am implying we do not have these problems. That is not what I had stated.

Well, you said that "to group the US in with the likes of N. Korea and China is dishonest and inaccurate." So although you didn't expressly state that you didn't think the US has a police state problem, you did seem to think that grouping with other states with this same problem was deceptive. The only odd part was that you used as your justification an assessment that, in a completely separate (albeit obviously related) set of criteria, these states don't belong in the same group.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#47

Post by jMyles » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:17 PM UTC

1971genocide wrote: post #29

csense wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the government and businesses have slowly but surely been eroding the role of cash in our lives. Most people use checks or credit cards for big purchases. Most people are paid by check, and the exceptions are usually near minimum wage. Nobody does big transactions in cash anymore -- even if you want to pay tens or hundreds of thousands in cash for a car, a house, or college tuition, if you show up with a brie…

I agree with your conclusion - but your premise of conspiracy is wrong. Using virtual Money is obviously much better than paper money. The difference is should it be centralized or de-centralized and anonymous ? The paradoxical economic problem with decentralized money is that the govt has no control over it. Which means during bad time its going to be very difficult for the govt to enact changes. We learnt it the ha…

> The paradoxical economic problem with decentralized money is that the govt has no control over it.

This is a not a paradox nor even a contradiction; indeed to advocates of many decentralized currency solutions, this is the killer feature.

> Which means during bad time its going to be very difficult for the govt to enact changes. We learnt it the hard way During the great depression when money was pegged to gold and the govt was unable to use inflation to restart the economy.

Of course you realize that this narrative does not enjoy consensus.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#48

Post by twic » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #24

hoffspot wrote: post #5

I'm not saying the police are right, the whole seizure thing is ridiculous, but this story is so shady. You have 11 grand in cash and want to move it from A to B. The obvious and safe way is to deposit it in a bank and get a cashier's check or do an ACH transfer. Who in their right mind would carry it with them or even worse, put it in a checked bag that airlines notoriously lose? The point of the story is valid, but…

There is nothing illegal about doing it so it shouldn't be anyones business. Who in their right mind? A farmer or two going to buy some equipment, me paying my first year of college, and plenty of folks buying cars. ACH transfer and cashier checks cost money, and hell, even Walmart won't cash a cashier check. Your attitude towards other people's business offends me about as much as the actual seizure. Its attitudes l…

You paid your university fees in cash? Is this normal?

As a Brit, all these stories about people carrying around huge chunks of cash seem completely outlandish to me. But then, we have free bank-to-bank transfers here.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#49

Post by jMyles » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:20 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #4

ipsin wrote: post #3

It this began with a ticket agent (who generally gets a cut) and a "drug-sniffing" dog. Police dogs are magical beasts -- you just point the dog at the thing you want searched and wait for it to "signal" that it's found something. I really wish that the Supreme Court had had the chance to review the accuracy of drug dogs in their case this year (Rodriguez v. US). How many times can a dog signal a false positive befor…

It wasn't a false positive, he admits himself that he smoked weed on the way to the airport. That's really not the point of the article however.

That's still a false positive. Dogs are ostensibly trained to distinguish between a lingering odor (or "residue") and actual material. So the dog, we're told, indicated because of "residue," falsely giving a positive indication for material.

Re: Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

#50

Post by jMyles » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 4:21 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #19

ipsin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that it can still be a false positive, even though "detecting weed" and "using weed" both occurred. The dog "alerted" for drugs, but the dog can't testify as to why -- because it actually smelled drugs or because it sensed its handler wanted it to. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/legal-challen...

So just to be clear: He said he used drugs, a gate agent smelled drugs, the cops smelled drugs, and you just want to argue that if a dog also smelled drugs that that dog is unreliable even though the arrested party says the dog was correct..? I just don't understand what point you're even trying to make. Just seems like you want to talk/criticise drug-dog evidence even though it has no relation to this case at all. I…

> So just to be clear: He said he used drugs, a gate agent smelled drugs, the cops smelled drugs, and you just want to argue that if a dog also smelled drugs that that dog is unreliable even though the arrested party says the dog was correct..?

There's nothing strange about this. On one the features of a drug sniffing dog is that it is supposed to be able to distinguish between a lingering odor, a passing odor, the presence of residue, and the presence of actual material - in a way that a human can't.