From Moreh BDK, Counter Current News
Last December, a couple drove down to Colorado from their home in South Dakota for a little vacation. Admittedly, the legalization of marijuana was a big draw for the two.
The 33-year-old driver Margaret McKinney was pulled over by a Parker City police officer who confiscated $25,000 in cash from her and her boyfriend, Dion “Tony” Anderson, 46.
The cop asked to search the car when he said he “smelled marijuana.” He apparently did not get the memo about the state’s legalization of the plant in question.
“I thought, ‘For what?’ ” McKinney recounted. “I had no reason for not allowing the search. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
After spending two hours detained on the side of the road, the Parker police officer called a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was able to charge them with possession of marijuana federally.
But after all was said and done, the DEA agent didn’t even charge them with a crime. Instead, the cop and agent found $25,000 in one of their suitcases. The law enforcement officer and agent decided that instead of enforcing the law, they would just pocket the money and let them keep their marijuana and pipe.
“I saw her pipe on the hood of her car, and she got to keep it while my money went in the other direction,” Anderson continued. “That burned my tail feathers.”
Why did they have so much money? Anderson explains that he had just received the money from a legal settlement and they were planning on having a good time, taking a road trip and vacation.
Anderson’s lawyer acknowledges that he did in fact receive $28,000 in a personal injury case. Andy Damgaard of the Janklow Law Firm in Sioux Falls, South Dakota said that his client did not have a bank account, and never had. He took the money with him because, in his own words, “I figured the place could get burned down or burglarized. I felt safer with it on my person.”
Now, without any money, Anderson has lost his car and been evicted from his home.
“I really don’t know what to say,” Anderson said, breaking down in tears “It really has affected my psyche.
“I don’t have the ability to provide for myself right now with the kind of work I do.”
Attorney Mark Silverstein, the director of the ACLU-Colorado, said that “it literally sounds like highway robbery.”
Between Oct. 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2014, federal agents in Colorado seized $13.5 million, according to statistics from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado. About $2.8 million of that filtered down to local law enforcement agencies.
Jim Tsurapas oversees investigations and specialized units in the area. He said he was unable to comment on the incident involving the law enforcement theft of Anderson and McKinney’s money.
