Nevada sheriff defends confiscating thousands of dollars from innocent drivers

The top sheriff in a rural part of northern Nevada told residents this week that one of his deputies acted appropriately by confiscating tens-of-thousands of dollars and a handgun from two men who were never charged with crimes.

Humboldt County Sheriff Ed Kilgore defended his department during an open meeting on Tuesday this week in Winnemucca, NV, where around 40 residents of the region turned up to talk to law enforcement about two headline-making lawsuits that have propelled the area into the national spotlight as of late.

The federal suits — both filed last month in United States District Court — allege that Deputy Lee Dove of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office acted unlawfully when he pulled over two drivers in September and December of last year for routine traffic violations, only to confiscate large sums of money and, in one instance, a handgun, without ever charging either individual with a crime.

In each case, the plaintiffs were stopped by Dove for minor infractions and eventually released without being booked. Both times, however, he came upon large amounts of cash in their vehicles and confiscated it by evoking a controversial “civil forfeiture” provision that lets law enforcement take money if an officer thinks it was either obtained illegally or will be used for illicit means.

Both cases attracted the attention of Associated Press reporter Scott Sonner, who profiled the lawsuits earlier this month in a story that set the stage for Tuesday’s meeting in the county center.

“Two men who were traveling alone through the high desert last year offer strikingly similar accounts of their stops by the same Humboldt County deputy near the town of Winnemucca, about 165 miles east of Reno,” Sonner wrote last week. “Neither search produced drugs or an arrest, but in one case Deputy Lee Dove took a briefcase filled with $50,000 and in the other he seized $13,800 and a handgun, according to the lawsuits filed in US District Court in Reno.”

READ MORE: http://rt.com/usa/nevada-lawsuits-forfeiture-kilgore-610/