“Drugs” is one of the backdoor passwords to the Constitution, unfortunately, so we have ‘Civil Forfeiture’. Even when the law(sometimes an exciting patchwork of federal and state, with local police forces sometimes nominally attached to a jurisdiction other than the one you would expect, because it offers more convenient seize-and-keep-for-yourself powers) is actually followed, it is largely an absurd caricature of due process; and it’s not exactly a secret that certain people get, and certain places offer, a…less than ideal… implementation of even what shoddy law exists.
In this case, the sheriff made the mistake of not even going through the motions of legality (and the bigger mistake of choosing a target who was able to get legal representation, with ‘criminal’ forfeiture, the defendant gets a lawyer, even if not necessarily a good one. ‘Civil’, though, purely on their own on that one.); but just stopping people and seizing property that kinda looks like it came from selling drugs or something is disturbingly close to being entirely legal, if you are just slightly less sloppy than this guy was.
