Texas police shake down drivers, lawsuit claims

updated 2:40 p.m. EDT, Tue May 5, 2009

The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car.  But Daniels couldn't go to the police to report the incident.  The men who stopped him were the police.

 George Bowers, Tenaha's longtime mayor, says his police follow the law. And through her lawyers, Shelby County District Attorney Lynda Russell denied any impropriety

 According to public records obtained by CNN using open-records laws, an account funded by property forfeitures in Russell's office included $524 for a popcorn machine, $195 for candy for a poultry festival, and $400 for catering.

In addition, Russell donated money to the local chamber of commerce and a youth baseball league. A local Baptist church received two checks totaling $6,000.

And one check for $10,000 went to Barry Washington, a Tenaha police officer whose name has come up in several complaints by stopped motorists. The money was paid for "investigative costs," the records state.

Washington would not comment for this report but has denied all allegations in his answer to Guillory's lawsuit.

 Bowers, who has been Tenaha's mayor for 54 years, is also named in the lawsuit. But he said his employees "will follow the law."

One of the most controversial statutes in the federal criminal code is that entitled "Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations," known familiarly by its acronym, RICO. Passed in 1970 as title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, RICO has attracted much attention because of its draconian penalties, including innovative forfeiture provisions; its broad draftsmanship, which has left it open to a wide range of applications, not all of which were foreseen or intended by the Congress that enacted it; and the sometimes dramatic prosecutions that have been brought in its name. 
http://www.ipsn.org/court_cases/rico-crime_of_being_a_criminal.htm

“This is where I get my cigarettes.”

“Do you have to buy them?”

He shook his head no:

“The man gives me a packet, and when I have sold all of the cigarettes, I return to give him his share of the money, and get more.”

The store proffers a wide range of convenience goods.  Even the owner’s Mercedes is for sale.  The store faces an ad hoc open air market where an even wider variety of articles, including pharmaceuticals and art, can be had in a place where, paradoxically, no one has any money.

“I met Okidi, the young war orphan, when I was charting ‘robber barons’: those who trade for immense profits, most visible in international exchanges of resources (gold, diamonds, timber, humans, etc.) for arms.  Military supplies are so expensive the few countries’ tax bases can provide sufficient funds to purchase them.  National currencies in war zones are generally shunned by financial markets: they tend to be weak and unpredictable monies that few urban industrial centers can accept.  Natural resources become the ‘hard currencies’ of choice to raise the capital to run wars and countries.  Given the pressures of international laws, sanctions, and national industry regulations, much of this commerce crosses the line of the law in the journey from source to profit.”

            “The illegal is also sustained by a human desire for beauty.  In these places, people congregate to seek or sell pitifully small amounts of food or a handful of live-saving medicines, often carried over-mined fields and under gunfire.  Amidst these critical necessities, there often something of beauty for sale, a delicate piece of cloth, a pair of counterfeit Nike shoes, or the recording of a beloved musician, carried across the trenches of hell and outside the law, one, it would seem, to remind us of our spark of humanity.”  (Nordstrom, 9)

The convenience store was momentarily unattended and Nordstrom waited to meet and interview the owner.  Inside was an open bucket for cash as people bought small items on the honor system – again a paradox, seemingly of deep sociological consequence, but which Nordstrom observed and reported without further comment.