In June of this year, Tonya Smith—a nurse from New jersey—and her friend Domitrios Patlias decided to use a bunch of promotional offers they had accumulated, dozens of $100 gift cards, and some cash, and head to Hollywood Casino in Jefferson County, West Virginia. The two left Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and everything was going fine for the couple until a West Virginia State Police trooper pulled them over. The couple spoke with the Charleston Gazette-Mailabout what happened next.
The trooper pulled them over, Smith said in an interview, and ranged from accusing them of smuggling cigarettes, to having drugs in the car, to gift card fraud. After searching the car, their persons, and Smith’s purse, the trooper let them go with a uniform warning citation.
However, he also took the $10,478 in cash, the 78 “gift cards” in the car, and Patlias’ smartphone, according to a property disposition report. Smith said 27 of those cards were gift cards, the rest of them were the kind of rewards program cards you get from any chain business.
That’s quite a haul for that West Virginia State Police trooper, considering that he handed out a “warning citation.” Smith and Patlias returned home with about $2. Smith, who had never heard of the law enforcement practice of civil asset forfeiture, is learning all about it now and thinks it “turns police officers into dishonest crooks.” That it does. There has been a never-ending stream of cases of clear abuses by law enforcement, robbing American citizens with nothing to go on except that those citizens had money or property worth stealing.