Michigan

Demeter

(85,373 posts) Tue Feb 24, 2015, 07:21 AM Feb 2015

Police seize property and cash in questionable raids

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/02/22/civil-asset-forfeiture-michigan-seizures-aclu-heritage-foundation-institute-justice/23737663/

Police seized more than $24 million in assets from Michiganders in 2013, under asset forfeiture laws. In many cases the citizens were never charged with a crime but lost their property anyway.

Thomas Williams was alone that November morning in 2013 when police raided his rural St. Joseph County home, wearing black masks, camouflage and holding guns at their sides. They broke down his front door with a battering ram.

"We think you're dealing marijuana," they told Williams, a 72-year-old, retired carpenter and cancer patient who is disabled and carries a medical marijuana card.

When he protested, they handcuffed him and left him on the living room floor as they ransacked his home, emptying drawers, rummaging through closets and surveying his grow room, where he was nourishing his 12 personal marijuana plants as allowed by law. Some had recently begun to die, so he had cloned them and had new seedlings, although they were not yet planted. That, police insisted, put him over the limit.

They did not charge Williams with a crime, though.

Instead, they took his Dodge Journey, $11,000 in cash from his home, his television, his cell phone, his shotgun and are attempting to take his Colon Township home. And they plan to keep the proceeds, auctioning off the property and putting the cash in police coffers. More than a year later, he is still fighting to get his belongings back and to hang on to his house.

"I want to ask them, 'Why? Why me?' I gave them no reason to do this to me," said Williams, who says he also suffers from glaucoma, a damaged disc in his back, and COPD, a lung disorder. "I'm out here minding my own business, and just wanted to be left alone."

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"It's straight up theft," said Williams' Kalamazoo attorney, Dan Grow. "The forfeiture penalty does not match the crime. It's absurd. They grow an extra plant and suddenly they're subjected to forfeiture. A lot of my practice is made up of these kinds of cases — middle-aged, middle-income people who have never been in trouble before. It's all about the money."

Police targeted Williams because he had been on the board of directors of a "compassion club" in Battle Creek, an hour away, and his name had turned up in records in a raid there, Grow said, even though he had not been involved with the club since 2011. The seizure, Grow contends, was particularly vicious.

"He is disabled and lives alone. They took the man's cell phone and his car, and left him out there alone. He doesn't have a landline. He was stranded out there for three days until somebody stopped by."