Lawyer here (but FWIW, i donate to IJ so, uh, not exactly on the government's side here):
Take what i'm about to say as a description of the process rather than any support for it :)
So, it's not quite that.
Here, they are claiming it because a dog "alerted" on the package, so they then claim it's related to criminal activity. regardless of whether they find actual drugs in it.
This part:
"Even though Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department dogs alerted handlers to the smell of drugs in the box, no contraband could be found once it was opened."
The first part is why they were involved and allowed to seize it.
The second is mostly irrelevant, legally (whether it should be or not). You don't have to prove it contained drugs to prove it was proceeds of a crime or otherwise part of criminal activity. This part is actually right, whether it gets used in an insane fashion or not. This is civil and not criminal, so the standard is not "proof beyond a reasonable doubt".
They file a suit against the money itself. It ends up with a funny case title like "United States v. An Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls," or "United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins"
(both real, but federal seizures. If a state seizes it, it's like State of Indiana v., and often less funny)
Even if the person is not charged with a crime, if they successfully argue the money itself is criminal proceeds or was involved in criminal activity, they can confiscate it.
So, it's not sending cash that enables them to seize it. It's whether the money is used in criminal activity. The thing that enables them to be involved is that the dog alerted to it.
Now, for as much bullshit as exists in dog alerts, in this case, fedex often goes through about 100k packages an hour in this site, and they have seized 100 of them in the past year.
That's a really really small percent of the packages.
> Now, for as much bullshit as exists in dog alerts, in this case, fedex often goes through about 100k packages an hour in this site, and they have seized 100 of them in the past year.
Such a vanishingly small percentage that it suggests some sort of parallel construction. Surely the dog (and handler) aren't just standing there all year waiting to hit on a package..
Doubtful - for the simple reason that fedex has cameras everywhere, and unlike the police and bodycam footage, they have no dog in this fight, so they aren't going to mysteriously lose the footage.
So my guess - they set aside the very small percent of very funny smelling or leaking or ... packages (since lots of packages never see human hands, it would be a very small percent anyway) and then the police dogs sniff them.
If i remember, i'll see if i can find some earlier docketed cases and see if they describe whether they have police there all the time or not.
I honestly would not be shocked.
I live near a mcmaster carr warehouse that is about a million square feet (one of their larger ones), and they have local k-9 police out front 24/7 just sitting in their car near the entrance to the facility (AFAICT - they have been there every time i have ever done will-call, and when i asked the guy, he said they were there 24/7)
It would not surprise me that fedex's indy hub (which is 2.4 million square feet, and more important than this mcmaster carr warehouse) had local police k-9 units around 24/7.
Last but definitely not least, the indy hub is, IIRC, at the indianapolis airport. In that case, there would definitely be k-9 units and local police just hanging around.
Not to be that guy but all packages are touched by human hands. Probably 3-4 people on average at each stop on a tracking status page, and that's assuming small items like flat envelopes and small boxes are grouped together into giant bags throughout the process.
Its been like that since the drug war. Any large amount of cash is seized whenever it is found and considered the procedes of criminal activities unless you can definitively prove that that exact pile of cash had zero involvement in any past crime or future crime.
> These attempts at limiting the content of the mail were upheld by the Supreme Court, but in the 20th century, the Court took a more assertive approach in striking down postal laws which limited free expression, particularly as it related to political materials.[7][8] The First Amendment thus provided a check on the Postal Power.
And SCOTUS these days also tends to equate cash as a form of political speech. Of course mailing cash is a bit different than mailing political materials but you could make the case that it’s part of a political organizing campaign or payment for political materials. And mailing cash itself through the USPS is actually perfectly legal as long as it’s for a legal purpose.
> how that wasn’t in effect the ruling in citizens united?
Donating to a candidate or sponsoring an ad that says things about a candidate are protected political speech, requiring a strict standard for the Congress to regulate. Citizens reasoned that if that’s true individually it should be true for a group, on the basis—in part—of freedom of assembly, whether that be an advocacy group or corporation.
Money = speech is a colloquial but wrong summary. Money donated to a candidate or used to buy speech is protected, whether done individually or as a group. The simplest resolution is to read the opinion.
(Logically speaking, it makes sense. It’s just absurd to construct the freedom of assembly as automatically making all rights natural persons enjoy commutative.)
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. It’s one thing for it to be against policy and FedEx to be seizing it (which itself would unlikely to be a legal action vs returning it and fining the recipient), a totally different matter for the police to be doing it.
Someone (I'm assuming it's only one person) must have gotten a downvote and now has spun up a bunch of new accounts to complain about bot armies and astroturfing.
Moreover, they're complaining that the tone here is too pro-police, despite what I see is a majority of comments being critical of asset forfeiture.
The feds do quite a lot these days that isn't actually part of their enumerated powers.