Federal drug agents may be racially profiling and unjustly seizing cash from travelers in the nation\u2019s airports, bus stations and train stations. A new report released by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Justice examined the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)\u2019s controversial use of \u201ccold consent.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a cold consent encounter, a person is stopped if an agent thinks that person\u2019s behavior fits a drug courier profile. Or an agent can stop a person cold \u201cbased on no particular behavior,\u201d according to the Inspector General report. The agent then asks people they have stopped for consent to question them and sometimes to search their possessions as well. By gaining consent, law enforcement officers can bypass the need for a warrant.<\/p>\n
But after reviewing the DEA\u2019s policies, the Inspector General concluded, \u201ccold consent encounters and searches can raise civil rights concerns.\u201d In one incident, DEA agents cold-stopped an African-American woman at an airport and allegedly subjected her to \u201caggressive and humiliating questioning\u201d; the woman was a Pentagon lawyer and travelling on government business.<\/p>\n
Little wonder research by the U.S. Department of Justice found that cold consent encounters are \u201cmore often associated with racial profiling than contacts based on previously acquired information.\u201d Cold consent has even been compared to stop-and-frisk.<\/p>\n
Moreover, agents can seize cash they find during a cold consent encounter. According to data analysis conducted by the Institute for Justice, half of all DEA cash seizures from 2009 to 2013 were under $10,000. Thanks to civil forfeiture laws, law enforcement can take cash and other valuable property, based on an officer\u2019s often subjective determination of probable cause, even from those who have not been charged with a crime.<\/p>\n
Disturbingly, the Inspector General found that DEA interdiction task force groups have been seizing cash from travelers and then urging them to sign forms disclaiming their own cash and \u201cwaiving their rights.\u201d<\/p>\n