Politician’s Followers Wage Battle Against Local Law Enforcement on Social Media
Criticism of Incidents Cause Sheriff’s Dept. to Pull Plug on Popular Facebook Page
The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office deleted its Facebook page last weekend after receiving a mass of comments criticizing its enforcement of the drug war.
The episode unfolded on Friday after Spike Cohen, the 2020 Libertarian Party candidate for Vice President, left a comment on an old Sheriff’s Office Facebook post from June 20. The post reported an arrest from the day before in which two Sheriff’s deputies and a pair of Schulenburg Police officers arrested a man in Schulenburg for three outstanding warrants. While searching the man, deputies found him in possession of methamphetamine and marijuana. The man was arrested for the warrants and charged with possession of a controlled substance and child endangerment.
The Sheriff’s Office Facebook post included a photo of the drugs, a needle and a crinkled one dollar bill with a white substance on it.
“You took the man’s dollar,” Cohen commented on the post. “In addition to making sure that he stays addicted to meth (convicted addicts are exponentially more likely to remain addicted than addicts who are given treatment instead of prison time), you took the man’s dollar. Goodness knows what kind of harm he could have done with a single dollar bill.”
Cohen went on to question what the warrants were for. As it turned out, the man was wanted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. According to records at the Fayette County District Clerk’s Office, the man brandished a handgun and threatened to kill a woman during an incident in May.
Cohen’s comment, however, spurred legions of his followers to flood the Sheriff’s Office Facebook page with comments criticizing drug enforcement and associated cash seizures. The Sheriff’s Office deleted their Facebook page over the weekend.
Lt. David Beyer of the Sheriff’s Office initially said they took the page down because the deputy who maintains the page was resigning to take another job elsewhere but when asked about the flood of critical comments, Beyer said, “We did pull it down for that reason.”
“I don’t think we did anything wrong,” Beyer said. “(They) want to put out the negative stuff, but when do they say anything positive about law enforcement?”
Beyer said the Sheriff’s Office plans to re-launch the page in the near future.
The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page had served as a valuable source of information for residents of the County. The page was followed by more than 10,000 people. The Sheriff’s Office used the platform to not only publicize arrests, but also to warn residents of dangerous weather, floods, roads to avoid during accidents and other emergency alerts. The Sheriff’s Office page also raised awareness about important causes such as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the Deputy Santa Program during the Christmas season. All of that information is now gone.
Cohen raised questions about the fairness of Texas drug laws and the state’s civil asset forfeiture process.
Law enforcement officers in Texas routinely seize cash and other assets belonging to people arrested for drug offenses. The legal process is known as civil asset forfeiture.
Other states handle forfeitures in the criminal court system where defendants have a right to an attorney. Texas defendants in forfeiture cases have no such right since such proceedings are considered a civil matter and not criminal in nature in Texas. To get their property back, defendants must either hire an attorney or attempt to navigate the legal system on their own. Moreover, law enforcement officials only have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the assets they seize were involved in criminal activity, unlike a criminal case where the standard of proof is much higher – beyond a reasonable doubt.
Many times in Fayette County, these forfeiture cases involve suspected money laundering by drug cartels. A prime example happened on Sept. 20 of last year, when a deputy stopped a bus traveling westbound on Interstate 10. Other deputies arrived and they found $186,070 in cash packaged and stored in hidden compartments inside the bus. The driver, a 55-year-old man from Mexico, was charged with money laundering.
Other times officers seize smaller amounts of money. Around 1 a.m. on July 8, a Fayette County deputy stopped a 20-year-old woman driving on SH 71 for a window tint violation. The deputy searched the car and found a small bag of marijuana, a vape pen “believed to contain THC oil” and a stack of currency totalling $4,005. The deputy arrested the woman for felony possession of a controlled substance and seized the cash. The woman bonded out of jail after the arrest. The only case against her in Fayette County courts is the forfeiture charge. So far, she hasn’t been charged with a drug offense. An affidavit in the forfeiture case, filed by the arresting officer, states that the woman told the officer the money was from tips she made that weekend at work.
The Record reached out to Cohen this week and asked him to elaborate on his local activism and support for criminal justice reform. Here is some of what he had to say:
“The war on drugs needs to end for the same reasons the war on alcohol was ended:
• It empowers cartels and gangs by giving them a multibillion dollar industry to run.
• It increases violence from those cartels and gangs, who fight over turf to push their product.
• It increases corruption in government due to the cartels appointing their favored politicians and police to look the other way for them.
• It makes it harder for addicts to get help without risking jail time.
• It makes the drugs less safe, due to lack of transparency from providers.
• It gives government an excuse to militarize, break into our homes with no-knock warrants, and violate our right to due process.”