Archive for May, 2014

Finding out who you serve… too late

Posted in Uncategorized on May 25, 2014|

If your god or your government is an entity that has misrepresented it’s true nature, then you will experience the sad consequences that come of being deceived by a counterfeit… —Editor
John 4:22 (KJV) Who is the genuine God??? Who are the genuine covenant people???
… Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews…

Clip from video.latino.foxnews.com May 22, 2014

Miami VA Whistleblower Exposes Drug Dealing, Theft, Abuse

May 20, 2014 11:23 PM By Jim DeFede (miami.cbslocal.com)

Related Tags:
Abuse, CBS4 Investigates, Detective Thomas Fiore, Dr. Vincent DeGennaro, Jim DeFede, Miami, Miami VA Whistleblower Exposes Drug Dealing, South Florida, Theft, Veteran, Veteran Affairs

MIAMI (CBSMiami) – When asked why he would risk his job and speak publicly, Detective Thomas Fiore considered the question carefully before answering.

“People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”

Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.

“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.

Even inside the hospital, he says he was stopped from doing his job – investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy. When the amount of a particular drug inside the pharmacy doesn’t match the amount that the pharmacy is supposed to have, a report, known as a “discrepancy report” is generated. Normally it was his job to investigate the reports to determine if they were the result of harmless mistakes or criminal activity. But all that changed, he said, about two years ago.

“I was instructed that I was to stop conducting investigations pertaining to controlled substance discrepancies,” he recalled.

He said he was personally told to stop investigating them by the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Vincent DeGennaro.

“I have no idea why,” he said. “He’s the chief of staff he doesn’t have to tell me why.”

DeGennaro declined our request for an interview. A spokesman for the VA wrote CBS4 News: “The Miami VA is required to monitor all controlled substances and resolve inventory discrepancies within 72 hours. Any unresolved discrepancies are reported to the Miami VA Healthcare System Director and Controlled Substance Coordinator, VA OIG, DEA and VA Police for independent investigation.”

Fiore said he decided to contact CBS4 News following our report last month on the death of Nicholas Cutter, a 27-year-old Iraq War veteran with PTSD who died from a cocaine overdose inside the Miami VA’s drug rehab center.

Fiore said it was well-known that Cutter was someone who not only abused cocaine but also smuggled it into the hospital. He said he reported it to his superiors in the weeks before Cutter’s death last year but no action was taken. Fiore said he was amazed the staff continued to give him passes to leave the building.

“He would have been number one on my list of people I would want to stay at the facility, not just for his safety but for the safety of all the other veterans that are in the medical center,” he said.

When Cutter’s body was found on June 1st, Fiore said the staff inside the rehab center failed to immediately call him. Cutter’s room should have been considered a crime scene. Instead, the staff bagged up the body and cleaned the room. He said he only learned about the death two days later.

“I was very shocked to be honest with you that I wasn’t called,” he said.

Fiore claims the way the hospital handled Cutter’s death was typical of the way they try to handle most problems. He said they prefer to keep things as quiet as possible rather than fix the problem.

Referring to drug dealing on the hospital grounds, Fiore said, “It’s been a problem for a while, for a very long while.” But administrators refuse to address it.

Fiore said the dealing usually takes place near the front entrance to the hospital, where patients and other gather to smoke. Patients will sometimes sell portions of the prescriptions they just filled. Other individuals will bring illegal drugs onto the grounds to sell. He said he has seen individuals in the drug treatment program time their smoke breaks so they can do downstairs and meet their dealers.

The VA police, who are all sworn federal law enforcement officers, can do little to stop it. The handful of VA police officers who patrol the hospital grounds are easy to spot since they are always in uniform and are well-known to patients.

“The patients know us, they see us every day,” Fiore said. “So I had brought up a plan to bring in somebody from a different facility where these patients don’t know them and basically go undercover into this [drug rehab] program or into this area at least and try to give us some good leads, so we can try to eliminate or reduce the amount of drugs that are coming in there.”

He said it wasn’t simply a matter of trying to make arrests. He said his goal was “to protect the patients.”

Fiore said he even found someone with undercover experience who was ready to do it. He said he presented his plans to his superiors, but never heard back from them.

“I’m still waiting,” he said. “And it’s been a couple of years now.”

A spokesman for the VA said he is not aware of any “significant findings concerning illegal drugs at the Miami VA Healthcare System.”

Fiore said another reason drug dealing became a problem was the lack of working surveillance cameras inside and around the hospital. The lack of security cameras was an issue the Inspector General raised in its report earlier this year into Cutter’s death. They said the cameras had not been working for at least six months prior to Cutter’s overdose.

In fact, Fiore said, the cameras have not worked for at least four years. In 2010 he was assigned the responsibility of conducting a “vulnerability assessment” of the VA facilities in South Florida. He noted the problem with the cameras back then. As a result of his report, he said the Miami VA was allocated money to improve security. He said he believes the amount was somewhere between $2.5 million and $3.5 million.

But he doesn’t know what happened to the money.

“I can tell you it wasn’t spent on cameras or any of the other recommendations that were made in that assessment,” he said, “because they still have yet to be corrected.”

Fiore said in addition to ignoring the drug problem at the hospital, he also believes the hospital fails to address allegations of patient abuse.

“I know that I’ve seen patient abuse in the nursing home,” he said. “I’ve seen patients with just full black and blues, I’ve seen patients with hand marks on their chest; the hand mark doesn’t match theirs. It’s obvious that it is somebody else’s hand mark.”

He said rather than deal with these issues as criminal matters, the hospital handles them administratively. “A lot of times to make the problem go away they just take that individual staff member, they pick them up and they relocate them to a whole different area” of the hospital, Fiore said.

Asked if he agreed with the idea of handling patient abuse cases administratively, Fiore said: “I think any time somebody gets hit, especially an older person who can’t defend themselves, there should be a law enforcement investigation.”

A spokesman for the VA wrote to CBS4 News saying that all cases of patient abuse are taken seriously and staff members are often moved to other parts of the hospital while the investigation is conducted.

A final area of concern for Fiore is theft.

“Theft is rampant,” he said.

He estimates there are millions of dollars in theft every year from the Miami VA, everything from computers to medical equipment.

“We’re talking government property, we’re talking about things the taxpayers are buying,” he said.

Fiore, who served four years in the Marines before joining the VA police department, knows he may be fired for speaking publicly. He said he thought about maybe being an anonymous source, but believed people would be more apt to believe him if they saw he was willing to talk openly.

“Am I scared, absolutely,” he said. “I can’t begin to explain to you how retaliation works within just the Miami VA. They don’t like people who air their dirty laundry.”

He said he hopes his comments will encourage more congressional oversight.

“As a veteran myself,” Fiore said, “I’ll be honest with you I’m just sickened that they would allow this type of stuff to happen to people that have fought for this country.”

If you would like to contact CBS4′s Jim DeFede, his email is jdefede@cbs.com.

—

You can’t do business with people who don’t have any money…

Posted in Uncategorized on May 11, 2014|

A nagging truth that guarantees that eventually the destroyers will destroy themselves, and everyone else along with them… if they are not stopped…
Those who have not already given up trying to work, or have not already been forced out of their jobs and livelihoods by the parasitic system we live in, do not have the means to survive themselves and also raise children… —Editor
Revelation 11:18 (NLT)
… The nations were filled with wrath, but now the time of your wrath has come. It is time to judge the dead and reward your servants the prophets, as well as your holy people, and all who fear your name, from the least to the greatest…
IT IS TIME TO DESTROY ALL WHO HAVE CAUSED DESTRUCTION ON THE EARTH…

Fear Of Economic Blow As Births Drop Around World

by The Associated Press

May 07, 2014 1:53 PM ET

NEW YORK (AP) — Nancy Strumwasser, a high school teacher from Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, always thought she’d have two children. But the layoffs that swept over the U.S. economy around the time her son was born six years ago helped change her mind. Though she and her husband, a market researcher, managed to keep their jobs, she fears they won’t be so fortunate next time.

“After we had a kid in 2009, I thought, ‘This is not happening again,'” says Strumwasser, 41, adding, “I never really felt comfortable about jobs, how solid they can be.”

The financial crisis that followed the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 did more than wipe out billions in wealth and millions of jobs. It also sent birth rates tumbling around the world as couples found themselves too short of money or too fearful about their finances to have children. Six years later, birth rates haven’t bounced back.

For those who fear an overcrowded planet, this is good news. For the economy, not so good.

We tend to think economic growth comes from working harder and smarter. But economists attribute up to a third of it to more people joining the workforce each year than leaving it. The result is more producing, earning and spending.

Now this secret fuel of the economy, rarely missing and little noticed, is running out.

“For the first time since World War II, we’re no longer getting a tailwind,” says Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist at Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager. “You’re going to create fewer jobs. … All else equal, wage growth will be slower.”

Births are falling in China, Japan, the United States, Germany, Italy and nearly all other European countries. Studies have shown that births drop when unemployment rises, such as during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Birth rates have fallen the most in some regions that were hardest hit by the financial crisis.

In the United States, three-quarters of people surveyed by Gallup last year said the main reason couples weren’t having more children was a lack of money or fear of the economy.

The trend emerges as a key gauge of future economic health — the growth in the pool of potential workers, ages 20-64 — is signaling trouble ahead. This labor pool had expanded for decades, thanks to the vast generation of baby boomers. Now the boomers are retiring, and there are barely enough new workers to replace them, let alone add to their numbers.

Growth in the working-age population has halted in developed countries overall. Even in France and the United Kingdom, with relatively healthy birth rates, growth in the labor pool has slowed dramatically. In Japan, Germany and Italy, the labor pool is shrinking.

“It’s like health — you only realize it exists until you don’t have it,” says Alejandro Macarron Larumbe, managing director of Demographic Renaissance, a think tank in Madrid.

The drop in birth rates is rooted in the 1960s, when many women entered the workforce for the first time and couples decided to have smaller families. Births did begin rising in many countries in the new millennium. But then the financial crisis struck. Stocks and home values plummeted, blowing a hole in household finances, and tens of millions of people lost jobs. Many couples delayed having children or decided to have none at all.

Couples in the world’s five biggest developed economies — the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom — had 350,000 fewer babies in 2012 than in 2008, a drop of nearly 5 percent. The United Nations forecasts that women in those countries will have an average 1.7 children in their lifetimes. Demographers say the fertility rate needs to reach 2.1 just to replace people dying and keep populations constant.

The effects on economies, personal wealth and living standards are far reaching:

— A return to “normal” growth is unlikely: Economic growth of 3 percent a year in developed countries, the average over four decades, had been considered a natural rate of expansion, sure to return once damage from the global downturn faded. But many economists argue that that pace can’t be sustained without a surge of new workers. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the U.S. economy will grow 3 percent or so in each of the next three years, then slow to an average 2.3 percent for next eight years. The main reason: Not enough new workers.

— Reduced pay and lifestyles: Slower economic growth will limit wage gains and make it difficult for middle-class families to raise their living standards, and for those in poverty to escape it. One measure of living standards is already signaling trouble: Gross domestic product per capita — the value of goods and services a country produces per person — fell 1 percent in the five biggest developed countries from the start of 2008 through 2012, according to the World Bank.

— A drag on household wealth: Slower economic growth means companies will generate lower profits, thereby weighing down stock prices. And the share of people in the population at the age when they tend to invest in stocks and homes is set to fall, too. All else equal, that implies stagnant or lower values. Homes are the biggest source of wealth for most middle-class families.

Births might pick up again, of course. In France, where the government provides big subsidies and tax breaks for children, birth rates are back where they were in the early 1970s. In other countries, women who put off having children in the recession might play catch up soon, as they did after World War II. Demographers note that women were having children later in life even before the crisis, and so births are likely to rise anyway.

But even a snapback in births to pre-recession levels will leave families much smaller than they were decades ago, a shift that has already affected industries and economies around the world.

In Japan, sales of adult diapers will exceed sales of baby diapers this year, according to Euromonitor International, a marketing research firm. In Germany and Italy, towns are emptying as families shrink and there aren’t enough children to replace older ones who are dying. And in South Korea, where births have fallen 11 percent in a decade, 121 primary schools had no new students last year, according to Yonhap, the country’s government-backed news agency.

Park Hyun-kyung, a 34-year-old hospital administrator in Daegu, South Korea, says she would like to have three children, just like her parents. But she and her husband have decided to stick to one, if they have any.

“Most jobs are not secure enough to allow couples to have a baby and raise kids,” she says.

In China, where the working-age population is set to shrink next year, the government is relaxing a policy that had limited many families to one child. It might not help much. Chinese are choosing to stick to one on their own.

Lei Qiang, a logistics manager in Shanghai with a 2-year-old daughter, has ruled out another child. “I just couldn’t think how expensive it is to have two,” says Lei, 39.

Economists are worried not just because growth is stalling in working-age populations. Their numbers as a share of the total population in many countries is falling. Economists like to see this share of total population rise, because it means more people are earning money, expanding the tax base and paying for schools for the young and pensions and health care for the old.

Before the recession, the number of these potential workers as a proportion of total population was falling in three of the world’s six biggest developed economies — Japan, Germany and Italy. Now the proportion is also dropping in the United States, France and the United Kingdom, according to investment firm Research Affiliates, using data from the United Nations.

Economists say it is rare for the number of working-age people as a share of the total population to fall in so many major countries at the same time. It’s usually because of war and famine, although such proportions also fell in the 1950s as baby boomers were born and populations surged. The six countries with declining proportions of working-age people now, plus China, accounted for 60 percent of global economic output in 2012, according to Haver Analytics, a research firm.

The drops are small, a few tenths of a percentage point each year off proportions of working-age people, which had peaked in developed countries at 61.4 percent in 2009. But Research Affiliates expects the working-age share of total population to fall steadily for several decades, slowing economies each year, until they bottom at about 50 percent in 2040 or so.

A country can compensate for this demographic drag on economic growth by encouraging people to work longer or to use technologies to increase output. But most economists doubt that such changes are forthcoming or would be enough.

“You need incredible productivity growth,” says Michael Feroli, a JPMorgan economist. He says economic growth of 3 percent is unlikely on a “sustained basis” even for the United States, which is blessed with a flow of immigrants, albeit a slowing one, to soften the blow.

Robert Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates, thinks investors and policymakers don’t realize how much demographics will hurt economies now because they never appreciated how much they helped in the past. Payrolls rose as the oldest baby boomers started working in the mid-1960s — then kept rising as those born later took jobs. Retirees were relatively few because most workers were young. And many women joined the workforce for the first time.

It was an unusual confluence of beneficial demographic shifts, and perhaps unrepeatable.

“The developed world in the past 60 years has had the most benign demography in the history of man,” Arnott says. But economic growth in developed countries will “tumble” to no more than a tepid 1.5 percent a year, on average, until 2040 or so, he estimates. And Arnott says economic growth per capita, a rough gauge of living standards, may “swing negative.”

It’s already on its way.

From 1960-2000, GDP per capita rose an average 2.6 percent a year in the big six developed countries. Since then, it has grown less than 1 percent a year. Arnott thinks the demographic drag is going to worsen, subtracting roughly a percentage point from the annual rate in the next few decades.

That suggests living standards barely growing, or even falling.

Andrew Cates, senior international economist for UBS in Singapore, worries that people accustomed to living better each year won’t accept the new slow-growth future and will demand change through protests. “It’s a recipe for social instability,” he says.

Others note that smaller families are associated with some social benefits for societies. Births have plunged in countries where education has improved, the middle class has expanded and women have gained more freedom and rights.

Still, even optimists see the world at a delicate crossroads.

Reiner Klingholz, head of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, says societies are unsure of their goals now that easy economic expansion is over. “We have no plans for how to run a society without growth,” he says.

In aging societies, the big fear is that paying for benefits for the swelling number of retirees will weigh on economic growth. But even if benefits were fully funded, more retirees would practically guarantee slower growth for three reasons:

First, retirees don’t produce anything. So a country’s output falls unless new workers producing the same value of goods and services replace them.

Second, retirees don’t save, invest and spend as much as workers with paychecks. That, in turn, cuts demand and slows growth.

A third reason is less obvious: Productivity of workers, or output per hour, tends to peak as they reach their mid-50s. And the increases in productivity as they near that age tend to be small. And with economic growth, only the change in productivity from year to year counts, not the level.

In other words, you may be very productive at work, but unless you’re becoming even more so each year or work more hours, you’re not helping the economy grow. And older workers past their peak productivity, by definition, subtract from growth.

Births have sprung back after plunging in previous economic crises, like the Great Depression. But back then many women didn’t have careers, and they were expected to have big families. When the economy recovered and they could afford more children, they had them.

This time might be different.

“Now that I’m finally back to working full time I don’t really want to have another child,” says Christa Heugebauer, 39, as she watches her son, Finn, 4, race around an playground in Berlin. “Besides, I’ve got plenty of friends my age who don’t have any children at all.”

Some factors potentially could offset lower birth rates and help fuel economic growth. Lower unemployment rates would help. As hiring has picked up in the United States, people who had stopped looking for a job out of despair have started hunting again, thereby expanding the labor pool.

Countries can better educate and train their existing workers, attract more immigrants and encourage people to work past retirement age.

One hopeful sign: In April, the U.S. Labor Department reported that 19 percent of Americans 65 or older were either working or looking for work, up from a record low of 10 percent in 1985.

But many economists think demographic headwinds are just too strong to expect a jump in growth. The best hope is an unexpected innovation leading to a burst of efficiency in the workplace.

“Unless there is a technological miracle, demography alone points to 1 to 1.5 percent being the new normal,” Arnott says. And 3 percent? That’s “the new definition of boom times.”

____

AP researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai and AP writers Frank Jordans in Berlin, Colleen Barry in Milan and Youkyung Lee in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

____

You can reach Bernard Condon on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BernardFCondon .

—

Curse a police officer in the name of Jesus Christ???

Posted in Uncategorized on May 4, 2014|

Can it be done??? Should it be done??? If it should be done, does The Almighty approve??? Blessings and curses from God have everything to do with justice and mercy. The Almighty wants both meted out through the earth in compliance with His Laws, His Word, and His Will. His genuine church are supposed to want the same things as He does… “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

The short answer is yes, a police officer, or anyone else can be cursed in the name of God, which is Jesus Christ, as long as God wants that one cursed. They can also be blessed, as long as God wants them blessed.

There are consequences to incorrectly cursing and incorrectly blessing… “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee…” The Lord does not approve of friendly fire… or of giving aid and comfort to His enemies, the soulless, sociopathic, wicked tares that inhabit this earth, living along side His salt of the earth, good and well meaning people (the wheat and the tares).

For the Christian soldier to correctly aim and fire his weapons he must have the same targets in his sights as The Almighty. This is done through prayer guided by the Holy Spirit, praying with the same mind as Christ… “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” (Yes, it is possible to have the mind of Christ, through His Spirit)

Possible prayer a Christian soldier might pray, seeking only judgment on an enemy of God, or blessing, grace, and mercy on one of those He created…
“Almighty Father, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Who is above all rule and authority upon this earth, I ask you to take notice of the report of a law enforcement officer who is reported to be taking what does not belong to him, supposedly in compliance with legitimate law. In what I can know on my own without your help I do not know the truth in this case, whether the officer was in the right or not. I ask that you investigate and make a ruling. If the officer is one of the wheat I pray that he be shown mercy, though if he is in the wrong through ignorance, I pray he be bound and stopped from stealing in the name of the law. If the officer is one of the cursed tares, one who hates You and Your people I pray that he be cursed with a binding curse that he cannot escape. Bring the pain and misery he has inflicted upon the innocent back upon his own head until he be destroyed. I also pray that all tares allied with him share in his misery. For all of your people who may be in the wrong in this matter I pray you would grant them a way of escaping, that they no longer serve evil. Look at their hearts, Father, destroy those who hate you, save those who “know not what they do”. Let action on this be ordered from your throne in justice and mercy. Amen —Editor

I-Team: Lawsuit filed over freeway cash seizures

Posted: Apr 29, 2014 1:06 PM CST Updated: Apr 30, 2014 12:51 AM CST

By Glen Meek, I-Team Reporter – email

LAS VEGAS — A lawsuit has been filed against the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department alleging deputies there are unlawfully seizing cash from motorists traveling on I-80 toward California.

One of the questionable stops was captured on dash-cam video.

Deputy Lee Dove can be observed and heard on the video as he talks with a driver he pulled over.

Deputy Lee Dove: “I just smelled weed. I know I did. I know I smelled weed.”

The Humboldt County deputy never finds weed in the car he’s searching after a traffic stop on I-80, but he does find $50,000 in cash and $10,000 in cashiers checks.

Dove is suspicious because the driver gave him conflicting answers to his questions and he tells the driver he’s confiscating the cash.

Deputy Dove: “Everyday I do this. It’s all I do for a living. It’s drug interdiction and I get money.”

Deputy Dove doesn’t arrest or even cite the driver, but he offers him a deal. The driver can sign a release abandoning the cash and keep the cashiers checks and go on his way.

Deputy Dove: “With everybody, that’s what I do because they don’t want the problems or the headaches so they abandon the money. They take what they’ve got in their wallet, or in this case cashiers checks, and they bolt.”

“The public did not respond positively to this,” said Dee Holzel, a local blogger.

Holzel is a Winnemucca blogger who takes the temperature of the town at the Global Espresso coffee shop.

She’s keeping a close eye on these currency seizures along 1-80. She’s concerned that it’s not always people with large amounts of unexplained cash.

“Little numbers, amounts as small as six or seven hundred dollars that anybody might have in their pocket if they were taking a trip,” Holzel said.

“Some of them are drug dealers, some are innocent people, but that’s not the point. The point is — none of these people should be having their cash taken from them without having evidence of them committing a crime,” said Matt Lee, a target of a cash seizure.

Lee wrote about his experience on Holzel’s blog.

Though he was never charged or even cited for anything, Lee had $2,400 taken from him by Deputy Dove as he drove to California from Michigan to look for a job.

“I don’t think many people know what the asset forfeiture laws dictate. What’s allowed to be done? And I think if people knew, it would be overturned in a heartbeat,” Lee said.

Lee can’t discuss the details of his case because, like some others, he signed a confidentiality agreement with Humboldt County in order to get his money back.

“They’re buying their silence with their own money,” said John Ohlson, Lee’s attorney.

Deputy Dove: The only reason why you have that cash is because it’s related to some sort of illegal activity. You know it and I know it.”

“You got to differentiate between the drug trafficker and the guy who, you know, is going to gamble or likes to carry cash or doesn’t trust banks or something,” Ohlson said.

He helped Lee get his money back and got $50,000 returned to the driver shown in the dash-cam video. Ohlson has also filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of others who have had cash taken. He says he understands the logic of drug interdiction, but thinks the logic Humboldt deputies are using is flawed.

“They sell weed in California. These people were heading to California, therefore their intention was to buy weed. Even if that logic was true — which it’s not true — it doesn’t matter what your intention was,” Ohlson said.

Driver: “I mean, you have no right to take this money.”
Deputy Dove: “Yes, I do.”
Driver: “I haven’t done anything.”
Deputy Dove: “Yes, you have. I believe you have. I believe you have, ok.”

Holzel and others are calling for an investigation — of the cash seizures — that’s independent of the local district attorney and sheriff.

“If everything’s on the up-and-up, awesome, That’s great. But we would like, I think the majority of people would like, it looked at by an outside agency,” Holzel said.

—

I-Team: I-80 cash seizures by sheriff’s office raises questions

Posted: Apr 29, 2014 11:34 AM CST Updated: Apr 29, 2014 11:46 PM CST

By Glen Meek, I-Team Reporter – email

LAS VEGAS — If someone with a gun stops you and takes your money — would you call police? What if the person who takes your money also has a badge?

Some people in Humboldt County, tongue-in-cheek, call it “highway robbery.”

One deputy in particular is being singled out for his practice of pressuring travelers to abandon their money or face losing their cars as well. The I-Team has obtained exclusive dash-cam video from one of these drug interdiction stops. While no drugs were found, that didn’t stop the deputy from grabbing the cash.

“How much money you got?” Humboldt County Deputy Lee Dove can be heard asking on the video.

Dove can be seen dropping cash on the hood of the car.

Deputy Dove: “That’s not yours, is it?”
Motorist: “That’s mine.”
Deputy Dove: “Well, I’m seizing it.”

The dash-cam video gives insight into what some say is a pattern of questionable drug interdiction stops by Deputy Dove along I-80 near Winnemucca in northern Nevada.

The out-of-state motorist was stopped for doing 78 mph in an 75 mph zone. Deputy Dove finds $50,000 cash and $10,000 in cashiers checks during a search of the car.

The first issue is whether Dove obtained permission to search the car or whether he simply told the driver, Tan Nguyen, he was going to do it.

Deputy Dove: “Well, I’m gonna search that vehicle first, ok?”
Nguyen: “Hey, what’s the reason you’re searching my car?”
Deputy Dove: “Because I’m talking to you … well, no, I don’t have to explain that to you. I’m not going to explain that to you, but I am gonna put my drug dog on that (pointing to money). If my dog alerts, I’m seizing the money. You can try to get it back but you’re not.”
Nguyen: (inaudible) got it in Vegas.”
Deputy Dove: “Good luck proving it. Good luck proving it. You’ll burn it up in attorney fees before we give it back to you.”

But Dove never seizes the money under state forfeiture law, instead he offers Nguyen a deal. Abandon the cash and you can leave with the cashiers checks. Otherwise, Dove will confiscate the cash anyway and tow the car because Nguyen’s name isn’t on the rental agreement.

Deputy Dove: “It’s your call. If you want to walk away, you can take the cashiers checks, the car and everything and you can bolt and you’re on your way. But you’re gonna be walking away from this money and abandoning it.

“Our sheriff and our DA have said there’s no wrongdoing here,” said Dee Holzel.

Holzel is a Winnemucca blogger who wants an investigation of the I-80 cash seizures that’s independent of the local district attorney and sheriff.

“What they said initially was, ‘well, these are civil forfeiture programs. These kinds of things happen everywhere. There’s nothing unusual about Humboldt County.’ But that turned out to not be true. When you have people by the side of the road and you’re having them abandon their money so they’ll be allowed to get in their car and drive away, they don’t do that everywhere,” Holzel said.

Deputy Dove: “I don’t have all day to sit here debating it. You need to give me a decision what you want to do.”

Critics believe deputies have been avoiding court oversight by leaning on drivers to abandon their cash rather than seizing it and giving warnings rather than tickets.

“If they’re given a ticket, they got to show up in court and say, ‘hey, wait a minute, I wasn’t speeding and besides that, this guy took my dough,'” said John Ohlson, Nguyen’s attorney.

The I-Team caught up with Deputy Dove at a K9 training event in Winnemucca, but Dove declined a television interview. The sheriff’s office released a photo of Dove with Nguyen’s money following the traffic stop, saying the money would be used to help fight crime. However, the money was eventually returned to Nguyen along with $10,000 in attorney fees after Nguyen sued the department.

“An armed person stops a traveler and demands the traveler’s money and tells the traveler that unless he gets in his car and moves on down the road and forgets all about it, he’s going to take his car too. I would say that’s pretty close to what you’re describing as highway robbery,” Ohlson said.

Law enforcement agencies can bolster their budgets with cash they seize, but there must be clear and convincing evidence the money is connected to crime. The question is whether deputies pressed drivers to abandon the cash so the rules of civil forfeiture wouldn’t apply. It’s a technique that may work well on real drug dealers, but critics say it also ensnares innocent people who find themselves tapped out in the middle of nowhere.
Humboldt County Sheriff Ed Kilgore spoke with the I-Team and said proper procedures were not followed in a number of cases. He said, his officers no longer ask people to abandon their cash. If it’s suspected proceeds from a crime, the civil forfeiture process will be followed and people will be given their day in court, Kilgore said. He added, he thought the cases were being sent to the district attorney’s office and being handled as forfeitures, but some were not. That was the case with Tan Nguyen’s money.

“We want to do the right thing. I am a strong proponent of fighting the war on drugs, and I want to make sure everything we do here is on the up-and-up,” Kilgore said.
—

News for those with Eyes to See and Ears to Hear

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear… Matthew 13:16