Washington Post: DEA seizes life savings of senile old man without the slightest pretext of a suspicion or belief that the money was involved in any crime at all.
Every dollar Terry Rolin had saved over a lifetime was stacked in a large Tupperware container: $82,373. At 79, he was aging and worried about keeping so much cash on hand, his daughter said, so during one of her visits he asked her to open a joint bank account.
Rebecca Brown was catching a flight home from the Pittsburgh airport early the next day and said she didn’t have time to stop at a bank. She confirmed on a government website that it’s legal to carry any amount of cash on a domestic flight and tucked the money in her carry-on.
But just minutes before departure in late August, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent met her at the busy gate and questioned her about the cash, which showed up on a security scan. He insisted Brown put Rolin on the phone to confirm her story. Brown said Rolin, who is suffering mental decline, was unable to verify some details.
“He just handed me the phone and said, ‘Your stories don’t match,’ ” Brown recalled the agent saying. “ ‘We’re seizing the cash.’ ”
Instead of rotting in prison where they belong, the criminals here get to parade around calling themselves heroes and wearing their little cop and judge costumes and making six figures at your expense.
If you support drug prohibition of any kind, go ahead and punch yourself in your stupid face as hard as you can about 5 or 6 times right now. Thanks.
