Probing for drugs

Violations, both personal and Constitutional. [Link]

No current government agency keeps track of the overall number of civil-rights violations that occur or are alleged during traffic stops. Although they have not passed, the two pieces of proposed federal laws show an increased awareness of the cauldron of race, immigration and drug searches brewing at traffic stops. Kennedy, Eckert's lawyer, believes another force is in play.

"What's motivating these law enforcement officers in small towns is that they can seize drug money, and they get federal grants for these task forces," he said.

Case in point: between 2006 and 2008, as many as 1,000 black and Latino drivers were pulled over in Tenaha, TX, where police officers illegally confiscated an estimated $3 million in cash and property. Motorists faced a choice: they could sign over a form forfeiting cash and valuables or be arrested, in which case, children in the car would be taken and placed in the custody of child protective services. A class-action lawsuit against Tenaha and Shelby County, TX, was settled in August 2012.

While Vanita Gupta, the deputy legal director at the ACLU, said Tenaha was an egregious case of unconstitutional behavior, she said the civil-liberties organization had found multiple instances of similar schemes in other states. "They incentivize police agencies to engage in unconstitutional behavior in order to fund themselves off the backs of low-income motorists, most of whom lack the means to fight back," she said.

Kennedy was more blunt.

"The drug war has become a war on people," he said. "And the courts don't protect civil liberties like they used to."