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Making the same old mistakes on asset forfeiture: Profit motive has no place in law enforcement strategy

Back during the fight to shut down Texas' network of Tulia-style drug task forces, one of the key revelations that discredited those now-defunct pseudo-agencies, and which prompted a new rule at the Department of Public Safety narcotics division, was that many were focusing their traffic interdiction efforts almost exclusively on southbound lanes, ignoring drugs going north in hopes of snagging more cash, of which they'd get to keep a portion under asset forfeiture laws.At the time that tactic was seen as discrediting the task forces, and DPS created a rule requiring task forces to spend equal time in the north and southbound lanes, a stipulation that caused many of them not to accept DPS supervision and ultimately led to Governor Perry's decision to de-fund the lot of them, shifting federal grants that used to pay for them to other priorities from drug courts to border security...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on February 26, 2011 (boomark / email).