If you are drivin’ down Hwy. 59 through Teneha, Texas, son, you better be broke or you may soon be that way.
Anderson Cooper’s “AC 360” has aired some news reports that, while the stories are news in a sense, are old news to people who have lived for the past 20-to-30 years in East Texas.
CNN’s Gary Tuchman and Katherine Wojtecki revealed that some motorists are going to court to retrieve their money which was seized by police in Teneha, Texas, although being charged with no crime. One speeder said $8,500 and his jewelry was taken from him after police threatened him with money laundering charges if he didn’t sign papers giving up the property.
Such practices, provided they are followed in the spirit of the law, are perfectly legal. Police who use racial and ethnic profiling, which still isn’t legal, nonetheless pull over people they feel fit the profile for carrying drugs or wads of cash to buy drugs. A seizure and forfeiture law gives cops the authority to take such large sums of money, cars or other property. In what is the height to ridiculousness, the individual must “sue” his or her property in court, and go through a long and costly process to win their belongings back.
Although the CNN story states a number of those who had their money taken in Teneha were black or Latino, it also notes the name of police officer Barry Washington continues to surface with regard to the cases. Washington, a black cop who looks like a tall pine tree topped off with a cowboy hat, has long been known to media in East Texas and in police circles for the uncanny number of roadside drug busts he made in that vicinity when he served as a Texas State Trooper. Although the report notes a check uncovered in which Washington received $10,000 for “investigative purposes,” he has not been accused of any crime or wrongdoing.
So-called “drug task forces,” often operated in multi-jurisdictions in the small towns and counties throughout East Texas, have milked a cash cow for at least the last 20 or so years playing the seizure game. This has especially been the case along U.S. Highway 59, which runs from the border in Laredo through Houston and out of the state in northeast Texas. Other local police also have drug interdiction programs on various highways in Texas which have busted literally tons of drugs. But you can almost bet if they find a big chunk o’ cash in your car that they are searching, it will be seized.
One retired police chief from an East Texas city once characterized for me such law enforcement activities as “highway robbery.” But none of these money-lifting exercises exhibited the absolute horror of practices of those perpetrated along U.S. 59 some 25-to-30 years ago by deputies in San Jacinto County, just north of Houston.
The deputies under corrput Sheriff James “Humpy” Parker would target cars bearing Houston rock station KLOL-FM bumper stickers as likely (damned) “hippie” targets to stop and search for drugs. In some cases, if no drugs were found deputies would “magically” make some appear. Parker also — and recall this was circa 1983 — employed techniques including what is now known as “waterboarding” to get suspects to confess crimes even though they had committed none. Parker died in 1999 after serving 10 years in prison. His son, who was a deputy during Humpy’s reign of terror, was indicted on charges of kidnapping two women from a home with a butcher knife. Gary Parker, who was also sentenced to prison for violating prisoners’ civil rights while a deputy for his father, was later convicted of attempting to obtain drugs without a prescription.
A little karma upon the disgraced deputy’s head? May-be. But if you have to travel to Nacogdoches perhaps you should consider taking State Highway 21.