Policemen Like Big Tips Too

[XLFD]

Passing the Bucks

A Minnesota waitress who says a customer told her she could keep a box containing $12,000 has sued after police impounded the cash as suspected drug money.
Stacy Knutson of Moorhead, Minn., filed a lawsuit asking that the cash be returned to her. She said she believes the money was meant as an anonymous gift from someone who knew that she, her husband and five children were struggling with severe financial difficulties.
"I do know that the person gave me what was in that to-go bag," Knutson wrote in the lawsuit filed in March. "Thus as I understand it, it is mine."
A message left at Knutson's home Wednesday was returned by her attorney, Craig Richie, who said his client is "overwhelmed" and didn't want to speak to a reporter.
The lawsuit says Knutson was working at the Fry'n Pan restaurant when a customer left behind a takeout box from another restaurant. She followed the diner to her car and tried to return the box but the lady said, "No, I am good, you keep it," the lawsuit said.
When Knutson went back into the kitchen and opened the box, she found three wads of bills - $100s, $50s, $20s and $10s - wrapped in rubber bands, Richie said.
Even though she really needed the money, she decided to call police, her attorney said.
Officers told her to wait 90 days in case someone claimed the money. No one did but police still refused to return the cash, saying it was being held in a drug investigation because it smelled of marijuana, Richie said.
But if Knutson believed the diner was the rightful owner of the cash, and that the diner gave her explicit permission to keep the money, why would Knutson even bother going to police?
"She's saying, hey, this is a lot of money," Richie said. "She doesn't want to be in a position where she's doing something wrong."
After no one claimed the money, that confirmed for her that the money was truly a gift, Richie said.
Moorhead police Lt. Tory Jacobson said when money is usually found and turned over to police, the finder can keep it if no one claims it in 90 days. But in a narcotics case, the money goes to the county attorney's office unless the finder persuades a judge to award the cash to them, he said.
"That doesn't mean she can't raise the issue with the judge," Jacobson said of Knutson. "It's just not the police department's decision to make."
Richie said police told him they smelled marijuana on the bills and that a police dog confirmed their suspicions. Jacobson acknowledged that a police dog detected an unspecified drug.
But Richie said at least one of Knutson's co-workers took a deep whiff of the bills to jokingly see what that much money smells like, and the man didn't detect any scent of marijuana.
And even if the bills did smell of drugs, Richie said that doesn't give police the right to keep them. Jacobson declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
The lawsuit says Knutson is not being accused of having anything to do with drugs herself.
Knutson said she was convinced about what really happened: that the windfall was God's way of answering her family's prayers.
"It is a complete miracle to see our prayers answered," she wrote, "but then difficult to face the reality of the struggle it is to obtain it (the money) from the Moorhead Police Department."

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/04/04/3535770/12000-left-at-restaura...

 

Losing your assets to those pledged to protect and serve

 

Like the police dog, I detect an odor, and it’s not marijuana.

Asset forfeiture rewards corruption. It is happening all over the English-speaking world. It has been since the mid-1980s. Police departments love the asset forfeiture laws. It’s like money in the bank.

It costs the property owner on average $10,000 in legal fees to get their property back. The cops kept $12,000 in this case (they  had offered her $1000 of her own money as a 'reward'at the 90 day mark). That makes good economic sense.

Just don’t count the cost of the public’s loss of trust in the criminal justice system when this happens. That doesn’t count. Doubt me? Ask the police dog.  But there is a good ending to this story, reported just after the lawsuit was filed:

 

Epilog:  LEOs Change their Minds

 

...At first, police said the cash would be hers if it remained unclaimed for 60 days, according to the lawsuit Knutson filed against the department.

At the end of the 60 days, however, the department told Knutson she would have to wait another 30 days to get the money.

Then police told her she would not receive the money at all because it smelled of marijuana and had been seized under a state law.

Police offered Knutson a $1,000 as a reward for turning the cash in. She refused the reward and filed suit.

In affidavits filed as part of the lawsuit, Knutson and two other restaurant employees said they detected no odor at all.

On Thursday, Craig Richie, Knutson's attorney, said the department had changed its mind and will return the $12,000 to her.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/us-usa-minnesota-tip-idUS...

 

[Sweater Cows!]

Well, 4 of every five bills in circulation in the US have cocaine residue on them so will the gubmint use that to confiscate all our money. (actually snopes proves this old wives tale true and it is the fanning of bill counting machines that spreads the fine powder at a rate of 16 millionths of a gram per bill on average).

4 of 5 US paper money have cocaine contamination

[XLFD]

I read something like that before-- so if you get $12,000 in small bills it would actually be suspicious if those bills did not smell of cocaine.  Time to get yourself a badge and a police dog.

Actually, I read an article recently that chronicled the targeting of out-of-state plates by an Illinois SP officer who had his own dog, who would stop cars under the pretense of some civil infraction (such as swerving or not signalling properly for a lane change) and use the stop to search and impound vehicles, money, and property by making his dog react when it was beyond the dashcam range. 

There is the potential of some serious misuse of the asset forfeiture laws of states, and it deserves to be reformed when honest people like the waitress and motorists with out-of-state plates can be bilked of their property under the language of such laws unless they spend even more fighting it.

[AQUAMAN]

Sad real life experience, and one to take note of right here at home too. Overstepping legal authority has become a fashion all too often nowadays. Good for her, stand up for your rights, irregardless of the pressure and intimidation to do otherwise.

[Willy]

The police figured that the bad publicity wasn't worth the 12 grand.