One evening last month, as custodian Tracy Martin took in a Detroit Pistons game at the Palace of Auburn Hills, her cell phone rang. “They’re towing your car,” her husband, who is paralyzed, told her. Later, when Martin arrived home, she found a flyer left behind by the Highland Park Police, which along with the police departments of neighboring Ecorse and Hamtramck, belonged to the COBRA Multijurisdictional Auto Task Force.
The leaflet, placed where her 2004 Ford truck had been parked, explained that Martin’s vehicle had been towed as a result of auto insurance fraud; it also listed a number for her to call.
“They said I couldn’t get my vehicle back, I have to wait to get it at auction,” Martin said, recounting that first conversation. “Then I talked to someone else who gave me an appointment to talk to a detective, but [he said] my best bet was to be ready to buy it back at auction.”
A task force representative told Martin her vehicle was towed after an insurance company reported her fraudulent policy to the Michigan Secretary of State, which checks proof of insurance when it issues license plates. The Secretary of State, in turn, was required to contact the police after it was notified of the fraud. So Martin called the Secretary of State’s office, and spoke with someone who told her the office “doesn’t tow vehicles for insurance fraud.”
With no apparent recourse to retrieve her car, Martin has resigned herself to buying it back at auction. Authorities have not given her an auction date.
“I called Progressive,” she said, “and they’re like, it’s a whole lot of you all in Detroit. There are many victims there.”
Martin was taken in by a widening scam in which crooks, posing as auto insurance agents, prey on working people struggling to find affordable policies. Under the scam, the perpetrator offers auto insurance for a low price — low because the scammer, posing as a broker, will buy an authentic policy using fraudulent means of payment, keeping the policy just long enough to collect a proof of insurance card.
The racket is a growing problem in New York City and South Florida, according to an insurance industry group, but seems most prevalent in Michigan, where premiums are inflated by a state mandate that drivers purchase insurance plans which have unlimited lifetime medical benefits, among other features. Victims in Michigan are thrown even deeper into crisis when police, as is common there, accuse victims of being in on the scam and seize their vehicles and other assets under civil forfeiture laws.
The scam and seizures show how crooks and cops can end up working in concert to further imperil those already on the economic brink. Indeed, in this case, low-income residents are pinched at every turn. They start off with especially high insurance premiums, consumer advocates argue, because insurance companies sometimes charge people in low-income communities more for auto insurance in a practice some have labeled modern redlining.
Robbed twice: First by criminals, then by cops
The forfeiture of Martin’s truck would hardly be worth noting if not for the widespread practice, on the part of Michigan authorities, of seizing the vehicles and other assets of innocent Michiganders. The Institute for Justice ranks Michigan among the worst states in the union when it comes to the controversial practice, known as civil forfeiture, which is ripe for abuse by state law enforcement agencies.
Police frequently pressure victims of insurance fraud to “admit” they were a party to the fraud — which would be a felony offense. Detroit resident Tracey Rodriguez claimed this happened to her; she said COBRA seized her car and attempted to coerce a confession of insurance fraud out of her.
She resisted, but under pressure “signed a settlement waiving her rights and paid $345 to the task force and $445 to get her car from B&G Towing in Detroit,” according to Fox 2 News. Rodriguez claimed she had little choice with four children who needed to get back and forth to school.
Michigan’s aggressive use of civil forfeiture laws goes well beyond the tales of Martin and Rodriguez. Between 2001 and 2008, according to state documents, Michigan seized more than $149 million in property and cash. In 2013 alone, police agencies reported $24.3 million in asset forfeitures. Some agencies, however, refused to submit figures, meaning the amount could be even higher.
One 2008 incident perfectly demonstrated how Michigan authorities both abuse forfeiture laws and terrorize innocent people.
In May 2008, during a party at Detroit’s Contemporary Art Institute, police seized the vehicles of 44 patrons because the museum hadn’t acquired a license to serve liquor after 2 a.m. The police claimed they believed the patrons to be complicit. The ACLU described a harrowing scene where police, dressed completely in black and armed with high-powered weaponry, stormed the museum and forced terrified partygoers to the ground.
After the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against the police over the incident, Detroit dropped the charges against the revelers, though many victims were still forced to pay nearly $900 to retrieve their seized vehicles.
In 2012, a federal judge declared the museum raid and seizures unconstitutional because revelers were unaware the museum lacked the proper alcohol permit. Earlier this year, the city settled with the remaining “CAID Raid” victims for $175,000.
Forfeiture is common in Michigan in part because it’s so easy for the police to seize assets and property; state laws do not require a court hearing for seized assets worth less than $50,000. And in many cases, despite no charges being filed, the property is not returned.
“They take your $#@! and then ask questions later,” said Charmie Gholson, a local activist with Michigan Moms United, a group working to reform the state’s civil assets forfeiture laws.
“A lot of these southeast Michigan cities have become more clever when it comes to fleecing people.”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2...-fleeces-poor/
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Originally Posted by moostraks
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