IN DEPTH: INTERDICTION PROGRAM CONTROVERSIAL, EFFECTIVE

Critics Charge Property Seizures At Airport Employ Racial Profiling

No Las Vegas police program is more controversial than its interdiction
program, designed to capture drugs and drug money en route through the
city.

And none is more effective, say the detectives who run it.

Recent hearings on a Senate bill to reform the Nevada forfeiture
statutes focused on the interdiction program's seizure of large amounts
of cash from travelers.

Las Vegas attorney Bruce Judd testified his law firm has defended
clients who were never caught with drugs or contraband, never even
charged with a crime. "Yet the law as written permitted law enforcement
to seize a bounty because they fit some kind of profile which law
enforcement has created, at least for the airport, which tilts based on
race."

Racial profiling?

"We don't," said Sgt. Larry McMahan of the narcotics interdiction team.
"Our records would show that we have come in contact with all kinds of
people."

But they do profile by behavior patterns, which are individually lawful
but are consistently associated with criminal behavior. And that kind of
profiling is legal according to the U.S. Supreme Court, Detective David
Tampio said.

The case law is based on a Drug Enforcement Agency arrest of one David
Sokolow. A ticket agent became suspicious because the traveler appeared
nervous as he paid cash for two round trip tickets from Honolulu to
Miami, used an alias, and gave a telephone number that appeared to be
false but did turn out to be his own. DEA agents stopped him as he
arrived back in Honolulu and ultimately found a kilogram of cocaine
inside his bag.

"Paying $2,000 in cash for two airplane tickets is out of the ordinary,"
ruled the court. "Most business travelers ... purchase tickets by credit
card or check so as to have a record ... and few vacationers carry with
them thousands of dollars in $20 bills. ... Surely few residents of
Honolulu travel from that city for 20 hours to spend 48 hours in Miami
during the month of July.

"Any one of these factors is ... quite consistent with innocent travel.
But we think taken together they amount to reasonable suspicion," wrote
the court in ruling the arrest valid.

McMahan said the Las Vegas officers similarly have checklists of lawful
behavior associated with the mules who unlawfully carry drugs or drug
money. "It's common knowledge that along the southwest border is one of
the highest concentrations of drugs being brought into the United
States. ... If we see somebody getting off an airplane from say Tucson,
and we hear them ask for the gate of a flight going to a user city. ...
That's normally one of the first things we look at."

Plainclothes officers will approach such a traveler, identify themselves
by badge and voice, and ask the traveler if he or she is willing to talk
to police voluntarily. The officers say they always tell travelers, in
the first sentence or two, that the travelers don't have to talk if they
don't want to. But most do agree.

What follows then is a series of questions designed to fill out the
profile or eliminate the traveler from suspicion. Where is the traveler
going? Why? Could the officers see a ticket?

If they get the wrong answers, they'll ask the traveler for permission
to search carry-on luggage, maybe even permission to pat-search the
traveler.

"We will not prevent somebody from getting on their flight," said Lt.
James J. Dillon. "Before we do a bad seizure we will let it go. But we
might call Chicago and say. `You might take a look at this person.'"

The process is accurate enough that by the time officers get around to
asking consent for a search, it's not unusual to find illegal drugs.

Should officers find no drugs, but a suspicious amount of money, more
questions are asked before that money is actually seized, said Tampio.
"A lot of people don't realize we return a lot of money. I can think of
$80,000 that we returned. It never left their possession."

McMahan remembers a man who gave permission for a pat-down search at the
airport. "He had $12,000 sewn into his underwear." Yet it turned out to
be legitimately obtained.

If the police do seize money, their job is only beginning. There's a
prompt follow-up investigation to determine if there's some legitimate
explanation for it being there. According to McMahan, it's a mandatory,
by-the-numbers procedure worked out between the officers and the Clark
County district attorney's office.

One reason they're very careful is because they don't want it to be said
- -- as they didn't like it said in hearings in Carson City -- that they
abuse Nevada's forfeiture statutes. McMahan is reminded of what happened
to arrest procedures when police interrogated a hood named Miranda
without calling his lawyer first.

"History shows that when police abuse a law, they lose it," he said.