TheNewspaper.com reports that several cities in South Texas are ratcheting up the money and property they seize from motorists:

In the South Texas city of San Juan, population 26,200, police have begun seizing ever greater amounts by taking both cash and vehicles from motorists. In 2005, officers collected $4400. This year, however, the force has collected $67,000. Pharr, with a population of 47,000, collected $422,000 last year. McAllen, a bigger city with 106,000 residents, collected $484,000. A federal appeals court ruling this week concluded that driving with a large amount of cash is sufficient justification for police to confiscate it, even if there is no evidence that a crime has been committed.

Guess what these cities are apparently doing with the money?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 11:28 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.