Episode Eight: Legalized Takings

In Donald Scott the eccentric owner of a large Malibu estate was killed in his home by an ad hoc club of raiding cops The Los Angeles County Sheriff s Department led the raid but a panoply of state and federal police agencies participated too Police claimed Scott was operating a large marijuana grow on the property Scott who dependably feared the executive would take his land definitely repudiated the use of illegal drugs No marijuana or any illicit drugs were revealed on his property A subsequent review by the local district attorney verified Scott wasn t paranoid The LA County Sheriff s Department was motivated by a desire to take Scott s property under civil asset forfeiture laws auction it off and keep the proceeds for the department Bizarrely Scott s home wasn t even in LA County Despite latest modification efforts the promise of forfeiture continues to be a major motivating force in drug strategy across the country Transcript Radley Balko In the early hours of October a wealthy eccentric Californian named Donald Scott and his younger artistic wife Frances were up late drinking as they often were The couple eventually passed out in the bedroom of their large cabin in Malibu at around or a m As they fell asleep they may have heard the waterfall that splashed down onto their sprawling -acre property They called it Trail s End Ranch And then just before a m Frances Plante Scott awoke with a start Frances Plante Scott We were in bed asleep and the house started shaking and the dogs were going crazy and sigh Radley Balko That s Plante in an ABC interview from describing the morning that ruined her life Frances Plante Scott I got up as fast as I could to get dressed And I was going to the door and I see this face looking at me At that point the door burst open and I just saw all these guns These men had guns and I didn t know who they were or what they were doing Radley Balko As Plante threw on a shirt and pair of overalls a gang of law enforcement officers loomed near the entrance to her home The raid group was an alphabet soup of police and regime agencies including officers from the Los Angeles Sheriff s Department the Drug Enforcement agency the California Bureau of Narcotics the U S Forest Organization the Los Angeles Police Department the National Park Amenity the California National Guard and there were even a couple of researchers from NASA s Jet Propulsion Lab Notably the raid unit didn t include a single police officer from Ventura County where the ranch was genuinely located The motley crew of heavily armed administrators had made their way up the winding road to the ranch in different vehicles Now they were inside Plante s home with their guns drawn Frances Plante Scott I just screamed Don t shoot me don t kill me and I was backing into my living room My husband heard me He came running out of the back of the house into the living room I heard him say Frances are you all right Radley Balko Unsure of what was causing all of the commotion Plante s husband Donald Scott grabbed the revolver on his nightstand He was groggy and his vision was likely still foggy from latest cataract surgery Frances Plante Scott He had his gun pointed above his head He looked at me and the next thing someone yelled Put your gun down put your gun down put your gun down Bang bang bang My husband fell down right in front of me Capt Richard DeWitt Looks like D here Dispatch At the location Capt Richard DeWitt Yeah Dispatch Particular bodies there Capt Richard DeWitt No we put em down Dispatch We killed him Capt Richard DeWitt Yeah Radley Balko That s Capt Richard DeWitt of the Los Angeles County Sheriff s Department on the phone with his commanding officer You can hear the surprise on the other end of the line as the commander learned that someone had been killed What had Donald Scott done What merited this sort of overwhelming police response Scott wasn t a murderer or an arms dealer He wasn t an escaped felon or a dangerous fugitive Instead the police claimed on their search warrant affidavit that he was growing marijuana Bill Aylesworth They couldn t care less about the weed if there was any there Basically they requested the land Radley Balko In the years leading up to the raid on his home Donald Scott s friends and family mentioned that he had grown increasingly paranoid that the regime yearned to take his property from him Frances Plante Scott He had a feeling that it was just a feeling that they were going to try to get the land from him somehow He thought that they demanded the land to the point of where they would kill him for this land Radley Balko It turns out that Donald Scott was right The authorities really did want his property A lengthy Ventura County District Attorney review established Scott s suspicions and concluded that seizing his ranch was one of the motivating factors for obtaining and serving the search warrant The lead LA County Sheriff deputy on the matter filed an affidavit claiming that there was a marijuana grow on the property If the agency uncovered it they might be able to seize all acres of Trail s End Ranch under civil asset forfeiture laws and then they could auction it off The millions of dollars in proceeds would go right back to the LA Sheriff s Department and the other participating agencies The raiding officers would be heroes It was the sort of bust that could make a cop s career Except that isn t what happened There was no major marijuana operation In fact there wasn t a single marijuana plant anywhere on the property Dan Alban At the end of the day they were just looking for an excuse to invade his ranch search everything and find chosen basis for the seizure which in this circumstance they didn t find Radley Balko For the next decade the dispute over what exactly happened that morning at Trail s End would fuel countless national news stories lawsuits and defamation indicates It would pit the Ventura County district attorney s office against the LA Sheriff s Department and the state attorney general s office Those latter two agencies would issue their own findings exonerating the sheriff s deputies for Scott s death It would also spur a furious debate over the procedures of civil asset forfeiture and would become just the latest in a series of corruption and brutality scandals to rock the largest sheriff s department in the country From The Intercept this is Collateral Damage I m Radley Balko I m an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than years The so-called war on drugs began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country s fervent commitment to defeating drug addiction but the war part fast became all too literal When the drug war ramped up in the s and s it brought helicopters tanks and SWAT teams to U S neighborhoods It brought dehumanizing rhetoric and the suspension of basic civil liberties protections All wars have collateral damage the people whose deaths are tragic but deemed necessary for the greater cause But once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs we were more willing to accept several collateral damage In the modern war on drugs which dates back more than years to the Nixon administration the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn t just tolerated it s inevitable This is Episode Eight Legalized Takings The Land Grab That Killed Donald Scott Collateral Damage Podcast Collateral Damage Donald Scott led a privileged life He was raised in Switzerland attended elite prep schools in New York and he lived off of a trust fund The Scott family fortune was fueled by his grandfather s invention Scott s Emulsion a cod liver oil supplement marketed as a cure-all It took off in the U S and Europe and it s still popular in parts of Asia Scott s Emulsion ad Scott s Emulsion I like you You help me to grow Mmm I like it Radley Balko Scott s jet-setting life was eccentric worldly tumultuous and saturated with booze He consorted with Hollywood stars and starlets raced Ferraris and generally relished the role of an international playboy He bounced all over the globe In the s he had a six-year relationship with the glamorous French actress Corinne Calvet That relationship ended badly as did his next marriage But later in life Scott settled down with Frances Plante an aspiring country music singer years his junior Frances Plante Scott s song Drunk on Pain plays I m drunk on pain It s driving me insane Bill Aylesworth Frances was from Texas Galveston She was a red-headed hot-fired wild high-energy lunatic and absolutely gorgeous as well Just an amazing person Radley Balko That s Bill Aylesworth Nearly a decade after Donald Scott was killed Aylesworth met and became romantically involved with Plante Scott s widow And from her Aylesworth became intimately familiar with the story of Trail s End Bill Aylesworth Spending that much time with her four and a half years I wrote a therapy for the whole thing All I would hear is her all day long talking about it She was obsessed with it Radley Balko Aylesworth also collaborated with Plante professionally and produced selected of her music Frances Plante Scott s song I Tried It plays I wanna shake more than your hand Tammy Wynette Radley Balko Donald Scott bought the lush Malibu property known as Trail s End in the s Over the years he d converted it into a hideaway transforming it into a surrogate of the grand mansion he grew up in Geneva It was also a sanctuary for his eclectic collection of books Persian rugs and ancient maps Friends reported Scott could also be incredibly generous to those he trusted For example gifting a collector s model Cadillac Eldorado to a friend and family attorney named Nick Gutsue But Scott was also worn down by years of legal fights with his ex-wives over money He grew reclusive and began drinking more heavily He also became increasingly distrustful of the administration Scott had stopped filing federal income tax returns and he was worried that the cabinet had designs on the property that had become such an pivotal part of his identity Bill Aylesworth So it s acres I mean just unbelievable right And it s so attractive that the park function National Park System owned all of the property on either side of Donald s property Radley Balko Trail s Ends Ranch was hidden by a dense thicket of heavily vegetated forest dominated by oak and sycamore trees It sat in the Santa Monica Mountains about miles from the Pacific Ocean Scott and Plante lived in a -square foot stone and wood ranch-style cabin about a quarter mile in on the property It also included a bunkhouse and a barn On three sides Trail s End was framed by towering cliffs streams and a -foot waterfall But amid all of that canopied tranquility the creeping margin of federal parkland was causing Scott persistent anxiety The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area had acquired parcels bordering Scott s ranch His relationship with the park s administrator the National Park Utility had been contentious Scott complained that visitors were harming his property He declared hikers would throw or kick rocks into the waterfall Scott also suspected that the ruling body needed to absorb Trail s End into the parkland Bill Aylesworth It wasn t paranoia because they were indeed coming up making offers to buy it That s not paranoid saying They want to take my land They want to take your land Radley Balko The National Park Arrangement denied it offered to buy the ranch or had any plans to seize or condemn it Additional reporting over the years hasn t supported that claim But a former park ranger and a superintendent of the park revealed Scott s land was of interest Bill Aylesworth They needed his land and he didn t want to sell it So they came up with a scheme to get it for free Just take it from him They longed his land and he didn t want to sell it So they came up with a scheme to get it for free Just take it from him Radley Balko And Scott s land wasn t just beautiful his acres in Ventura County was worth millions And according to a subsequent document by a Ventura County district attorney police agencies in the area had also taken notice Dan Alban This is pretty classic policing for profit Radley Balko Dan Alban is a senior attorney at the libertarian law firm the Institute for Justice He co-directs the firm s national initiative to end forfeiture abuse Dan Alban There was a million estate There was an eccentric millionaire who was suspected of somehow being involved in growing marijuana plants And the idea was if we can catch him in the act catch him with these marijuana plants then regardless of what the penalty would be for having to marijuana plants we could seize the entire estate and then sell it off to someone and pocket the million Radley Balko The LA County Sheriff s Office spent nearly a year studying Scott s alleged marijuana operation In the end they located nothing Not a single plant At the core of their strategy was a legal concept called civil asset forfeiture Dan Alban Asset forfeiture law has its origins in th-century English maritime law England was in a transaction war at the time with various other countries including Spain Radley Balko England passed laws saying they could seize ships or cargo that had been involved in smuggling or piracy Dan Alban And the reason was if a ship was smuggling goods into your port and you re England you want to prosecute the owner of the ship but the owner of the ship is very rarely on the ship The owner of the ship is back in Lisbon or Madrid or somewhere And so there s no way to in fact exact justice on that person or deter them from behaving badly in the future And so because you didn t have jurisdiction over the actual people committing the criminal acts or at least not all of them the way to resolve that and to enforce these various customs laws that England was trying to enforce was to seize the ship or to seize the goods or both and forfeit them to the crown Radley Balko The early American colonies adopted similar asset forfeiture laws And while the Supreme Court expanded them during the Civil War they were used only sparingly But that changed with alcohol prohibition in the s Dan Alban The originally very narrow concept of forfeiture that was used in maritime law was expanded during Prohibition Because during Prohibition people weren t just smuggling in rum and alcohol by ships but they were also bringing it over the Canadian territory line and the Mexican dividing line by trucks And so it was a natural analogy to say Oh well you know they aren t ships exactly they re sort of ships of land that have wheels on them We re going to seize those too And then when the war on drugs really began in earnest in the s and s forfeiture was pulled out again as Oh here s a tool that we can use to scoop up as much property as we can and anything that was somehow involved in drug trafficking or that we think was somehow involved in drug trafficking is now forfeit to the state Radley Balko And this is where asset forfeiture really starts to go off the rails Under the old common-law rules law enforcement agencies could take the property of someone who had been convicted of a crime on the theory that criminals shouldn t be enriched by ill-gotten gains Known as criminal forfeiture it thus required a criminal conviction The practice of civil forfeiture in which a conviction is not needed just probable cause was rarely used until the s The practice of civil forfeiture in which a conviction is not needed just probable cause was rarely used until the s That s when Congress passed bills that allowed police to seize narcotics and anything used to manufacture or distribute them As the drug war ramped up in the early s Congress introduced additional bills to expand civil forfeiture The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act signed into law by Ronald Reagan in allowed for a wider range of property to be eligible for seizure It also empowered law enforcement to confiscate property like cash vehicles and homes without even an arrest A property owner would then have to contest the seizure in court in order to get their stuff back Dan Alban They don t have to be charged with a crime They don t have to be convicted Radley Balko But even under that law any forfeiture proceeds still went into the U S Treasury s general fund It was in that Congress added an amendment that would dramatically change drug policing in the United States and ultimately would lead to the death of Donald Scott Under the amendment federal law enforcement agencies themselves could keep any cars cash or other assets that they seize Or they can auction them off The cash and proceeds from those auctions would then go back to both the federal law enforcement agency and to any state or local police departments involved in the matter In Donald Scott s incident because the LA Sheriff s Department was the lead agency in the study they stood to benefit the majority In President Ronald Reagan championed civil asset forfeiture arguing that it was a powerful weapon against drug dealers Ronald Reagan You can increase the price by cutting down on the supply by confiscation of the means of delivery and so forth The ruling body right now already owns quite a fleet of yachts and airplanes and trucks and so forth that have been involved in that pact and that we have already intercepted Radley Balko Police now had a clear financial incentive to seize property and to devote more tools to drug policing Every drug bust now brought the expected for new police gear office improvements and professional growth trips to conferences at sunny destinations Dan Alban The money is sent to a dedicated fund that s controlled by DOJ and the law enforcement agencies under DOJ like DEA and FBI and can only be spent on what they call law enforcement purposes which is essentially anything they want to spend money on because they re law enforcement Radley Balko This change to incentivize police to seize property has wrought a sea change in drug policing and it was the brainchild of a couple familiar names One of them was an up-and-coming U S attorney in New York This change to incentivize police to seize property has wrought a sea change in drug policing Dan Alban And so that change which yes was championed by Rudy Giuliani Radley Balko And another architect of the plan was a senator from Delaware named Joe Biden Joe Biden We changed the law so that if you are arrested and you are a drug dealer under our forfeiture statutes you can the executive can take everything you own Everything from your car to your house your bank account Not merely what they confiscate in terms of the dollars from the transaction that you just got caught engaging in They can take everything It suddenly became this free-for-all where any property that you could find that you thought was somehow connected to a crime you would seize and try to forfeit because at the end of the day your agency got the proceeds Dan Alban That law as well as a minimal others that were passed around the same time in the early to mid- s really changed how civil forfeiture was used in the United States Instead of it being this kind of obscure area of law that was very rarely used and only in exceptional circumstances when you can t truly bring the perpetrator within your jurisdiction it suddenly became this free-for-all where any property that you could find that you thought was somehow connected to a crime you would seize and try to forfeit because at the end of the day your agency or at least DOJ which your agency was under got the proceeds from that forfeiture And so this created this huge off-budget slush fund that DOJ and its agencies could use to fund all sorts of things And a multitude of states followed suit creating their own funds or allowing counties to create their own funds so that at the state and county levels this same profit incentive was replicated all across the country And that led to a huge explosion in forfeiture Radley Balko Forfeiture proceeds are basically slush funds for police and prosecutors In several jurisdictions there s little oversight or accounting Over the years police representatives have spent forfeiture funds on purchases that you might say aren t exactly critical to the practice of law enforcement One district attorney in Texas used forfeiture money to purchase kegs of beer bottles of rum and tequila and a margarita machine for his office A South Carolina sheriff s office spent assessing a strip club just good old fashioned police work involving lap dances and bottles of champagne When the scrutiny of Donald Scott began California police agencies were operating under this forfeiture-driven drug framework Whatever they could seize up to percent of it would essentially become theirs As reporter Lynn Sherr released in her inspection into Scott s death there were plenty of reasons for the sheriff s department to be looking for sources of revenue Lynn Sherr LA County was in a fiscal predicament With the upcoming budget a billion dollars short the sheriff s department was being hit hard So like other law-enforcement agencies around the country it relied more on the proceeds of drug investigations to supplement the budget Radley Balko The inspection of Trail s End unfolded over the program of a year But six months after Scott s death the Ventura County District Attorney s Office led by Michael Bradbury distributed a summary that began to connect the dots The ABC News show also played a key role in bringing constituents attention to the missteps by the LA County Sheriff s Department We ll refer back to that episode throughout this story not only because of its reporting but because it includes one of the sparse in-depth interviews Frances Plante gave at the time We made numerous attempts to reach Plante for this story but we were unable to track her down And then as we were producing this episode we learned that she had in recent times passed away Plante s interview will be the only account from her that you ll hear The inquiry of Trail s End began with an LA sheriff s department deputy named Gary Spencer District Attorney Bradbury s inspection exposed that Spencer claimed to have received an anonymous tip that a woman named Frances Plante had been acting suspiciously around town in Malibu Plante hadn t broken any laws but Spencer claimed that the informant advised him Plante was carrying lots of cash paying for small items with bills and had been tipping generously Of module Malibu is filled with eclectic and extraordinarily wealthy people So it seems unlikely that tipping well and flaunting wealth would be rare there But Spencer saw these as signs of manageable drug dealing Spencer would later falsely assert in an affidavit that Plante s car was registered to Donald Scott Plante s car was in fact registered in Nevada and Scott s name was nowhere in the paperwork In September months after the tip about Plante Spencer claimed he received another tip from an informant who was never publicly identified The informant stated him there were to marijuana plants growing on Scott s property Spencer also claimed to have learned that Frances and an associate were allegedly linked to investigations into heroin and other narcotics smuggling So Spencer started researching Bill Aylesworth The lead was Gary Spencer The whole thing was orchestrated by him And he s the guy who ended up killing Donald Scott It was this guy who thought it would be a feather in his cap his star would rise The department needed money at the time He was very ambitious Radley Balko On September Spencer and two deputies hiked to the top of the waterfall on Scott s ranch to look for those thousands of marijuana plants They exposed nothing Spencer then requested a California Air National Guard plane fly over the ranch to look for a pot farm and to snap photos Those photos didn t show much At best a DEA analyst named Charles Stowell noted there might be specific visual evidence of a small illegal water system But even an unlawful set of water pipes could have been used to grow any number of perfectly legal plants And as it turns out there was really no irrigation system at all On a second flight two weeks later DEA Agent Stowell claimed to have seen marijuana plants But for reasons that aren t clear he didn t take any photos Eventually Spencer questioned a Forest Ranger to assemble a ground company to hike onto Scott s property to find the plants And for particular reason they contacted the U S Territory line Patrol to assist This new ground band got within feet of Scott s house but stated Spencer that they saw no marijuana They also mentioned it was extremely unlikely that there were plants growing on the property According to Bradbury s examination as Spencer was building his event he also sent a park ranger and a sheriff s sergeant to Scott s property under false pretenses The ranger had previously responded to a complaint Frances Plante had made to the National Park Organization Spencer notified them to pretend to be interested in adopting a puppy from the Scotts Spencer described them to pretend to be interested in adopting a puppy from the Scotts In reality they were there to provide a threat assessment on the property In other words he demanded them to tell him what sort of force he would need to use when serving his search warrant Spencer certainly got his search warrant on October but only after telling the DEA that his mysterious informant s story had changed Forget the thousands of plants the informant now reportedly declared that Scott was growing only enough plants to yield about pounds of pot By DEA estimates that would have amounted to about plants So the new story conveniently aligned with what the DEA agent improbably claimed to have spotted during his flight The informant would later deny that this particular conversation ever happened though that was also disputed by the sheriff s department Bradbury s research revealed other problems with Spencer s search warrant affidavit For example Spencer had omitted the fact that two ground teams had visited the property and failed to spot any marijuana Spencer also wrote that DEA Agent Stowell had used binoculars when he claimed to have spotted the or so pot plants But there were no binoculars Stowell claimed to have seen them from feet in the air with the naked eye A Forest Facility employee with extensive aerial surveillance experience would later say that to do so from a plane like that would be like seeing a corn dog sticking out of the ground Michael Bradbury There is virtually no way that Stowell could have seen through that canopy of trees It s like a rainforest It s impenetrable Radley Balko That s Ventura County District Attorney Michael Bradbury picking apart Spencer s scenario with reporter Lynn Sherr So to summarize Spencer obtained a search warrant based on a DEA agent s improbable claim to have spotted pot plants from feet with the naked eye But he failed to photograph it and he wasn t certain about what he d seen Spencer then corroborated that with an unidentified informant who revised the number of plants he claimed to have seen on Scott s property from several thousand to just While Spencer claimed that the DEA agent had spotted the plants he failed to note that two ground teams failed to find any plants when they visited the property in person Michael Bradbury He provided misinformation to the magistrate and he left out a lot of very material facts that would have indicated to the magistrate that in fact marijuana was not being cultivated there Radley Balko But with the warrant in hand Spencer then began planning his raid Remember how he had previously sent those park rangers to visit the property and make a threat assessment Well those rangers concluded that a SWAT unit wasn t necessary Just drive up to the house and the Scotts would let them inside But that isn t what happened Bill Aylesworth This guy was a cowboy Gary Spencer He s not a guy who s gonna hang around and talk about procedures you know We re gonna go in we re gonna arrest him we re gonna take his weed and his property Radley Balko There s other evidence that forfeiture was a prime motivator in Spencer s scrutiny About a month before the raid deputies had also been given documents that included a property appraisal of the ranch and that included a handwritten notation that an -acre plot of land nearby had just now sold for It also pointed out that the Trail s End Ranch covered acres Break Radley Balko Just after sunrise on October people from at least eight establishment and law enforcement agencies gathered in the Malibu office of the LA Sheriff s Department for a briefing At least two people at that briefing heard it mentioned that if the raid produced marijuana plants the police agencies could seize Scott s entire property under asset forfeiture laws So the -vehicle caravan then made its way to Trail s End At a m they cut a padlock off the outer gate Several of the officers would later say that they had knocked and stated themselves for somewhere between and minutes According to police when no one answered a unit of five deputies then forced their way into the home with a crowbar and a battering ram Spencer was the first one through the door Bill Aylesworth And she starts screaming So you hear your wife screaming Obviously you re gonna grab your gun and go down and see what s happening Radley Balko According to Spencer Scott came out holding a -caliber snub-nosed revolver He was holding it above his head in his right hand as if he were going to hit someone with it not shoot it According to Plante Scott was still recovering from an eye surgery he d had a scarce days earlier and he couldn t see well Bill Aylesworth They tell him Put down the gun Put down the gun And so literally the order they gave him is also the reason they used for killing him Because he had a handgun as he was putting it down they blew him away Radley Balko Spencer explained he explained Scott to drop the gun three times though he admits he never identified himself as a police officer once Scott entered the room According to Spencer as Scott brought the gun down he rotated it until it was pointing at Spencer That s when Spencer fired Deputy John Cater fired next Then Spencer fired another round According to Spencer Scott lurched backward stammered and fell He died instantly Capt Richard DeWitt Captain DeWitt here Dispatch Yeah Capt Richard Dewitt I m on a search warrant with the Hidden Hills crew on this marijuana eradication thing Dispatch Yes Capt Richard DeWitt And they just Looks like D here Dispatch At the location Capt Richard DeWitt Yeah Dispatch Specific bodies there Capt Richard DeWitt No we put em down Dispatch We killed him Capt Richard DeWitt Yeah Bill Aylesworth They re basically saying Yeah we killed him And then you could hear how surprised they were on the other end They re like You mean the property owner They were just like shocked The property owner He s dead You shot him Radley Balko Frances Plante would later use that recording in a song she created and produced with Aylesworth They called it I m Going to Stop You Frances Plante Scott s song I m Going to Stop You plays Bill Aylesworth At the very beginning of the song before a song even starts we have the actual recording to the headquarters Verse from I m Going to Stop You plays We killed him we killed him We killed him Bill Aylesworth Malibu sheriff headquarters saying Yeah we killed the subject Killed the subject What do you mean on that record we recorded and distributed And I named the album Conspiracy Cocktail because all the songs she wrote were about the cabinet and what happened to her Frances Plante Scott s I m Going to Stop You continues playing I m going to stop you Do we defend ourselves from you Protect and serve you re supposed to do I m going to stop you Radley Balko There were a number of inconsistencies about where Donald Scott s hand and gun were pointing when he was shot What s undisputed is that the subsequent search of Scott s property not only turned up no marijuana plants or other narcotics it also turned up no remarkable or illegal irrigation systems There were no ropes There was nothing hanging from the trees that could have supported a grow operation Frances Plante would later say dryly that when the police appealed where the plants were she responded I m the only Plante here Spencer later claimed deputies exposed a cigar box with marijuana stems two charred joints and chosen residue that may have been pot But there s no mention of that on the evidence return sheet which is supposed to list everything seized during the search And Spencer later couldn t say where the box was revealed Trail s End was in Ventura County yet the study into Donald Scott s nonexistent marijuana farm and the raid that ended his life were conducted by the sheriff s office in neighboring Los Angeles County The fallout from his death would pit two veteran California law enforcement officers against each other in a way that became very nasty and very constituents Soon after Scott s death Ventura County District Attorney Michael Bradbury released that he d be launching an inspection Six months later he issued his scathing review It was about as damning a document as one law enforcement agency could publish about another Bradbury then defended his assessment in the media Barbara Walters This week investigators examining the development issued their review The findings are explosive as you are about to hear in the conclusion of Lynn Sherr s review Michael Bradbury Donald Scott did not have to die He should not have died He s an unfortunate victim in the war on drugs Radley Balko Bradbury s account declared that the U S Boundary Patrol had no jurisdiction to be involved in the situation and criticized its agents for trespassing on Scott s property He was also hard on DEA Agent Charles Stowell saying He was either lying or not sure that he saw marijuana But Bradbury saved greater part of his criticism for Deputy Gary Spencer writing This search warrant became Donald Scott s death warrant This search warrant became Donald Scott s death warrant After outlining the numerous discrepancies in Spencer s affidavit Bradbury s record concluded the misstatements and omissions discussed above are material and would invalidate the warrant Bradbury also wrote that there were numerous reasons to doubt Spencer s version of events Although he advised against perjury charges for the deputy He also questioned the LA County Sheriff s Department s motives When Bradbury s statement came out the Los Angeles County sheriff was a reserved man named Sherman Block In a written announcement Block condemned the review which he explained was filled with conjecture and supposition and reeked of sensationalism He also accused Bradbury of having a complete lack of understanding of the nature of narcotics investigations And Block questioned Bradbury s motivations pointing out that the review was distributed just as ABC News was airing that assessment on the Scott episode Announcer Tonight a Lynn Sherr scrutiny Why did Donald Scott die Radley Balko Block conducted his own internal inquiry into the raid which disputed all of Bradbury s findings He wholly exonerated Spencer his deputies and DEA Agent Stowell and argued that a -foot aerial naked-eye sighting of marijuana plants is both realizable and ideal According to Block Bradbury s own tape-recorded interview with the informant revealed that the informant never denied telling Spencer about the pounds of marijuana on the ranch Block concluded that Spencer did not lie to obtain the search warrant and wrote It is not true that the interest in forfeiture dominated or even rivaled the criminal concerns in this inspection He accused Bradbury of willful distortions of fact and of attacking the integrity of veteran law enforcement representatives But Bradbury wasn t the type to needlessly attack law enforcement He was a law-and-order Republican His memoir published a sparse years ago included photos of himself with Ronald Reagan George H W Bush Margaret Thatcher and various other conservative luminaries of the s and s What s majority of striking about Block s examination is that it lacks any introspections Three months before the Scott raid Block s department was strongly criticized for a series of fatal shootings A -page account commissioned by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors exposed deeply disturbing evidence of excessive force and lax discipline The assessment described a practices of lawlessness among sheriff s deputies and a reluctance by Block and his top aides to hold them accountable Now Block s deputies had killed another innocent man And even assuming everything his Deputy Gary Spencer put in the original affidavit was correct and we know that it wasn t Block s officers had gunned down a man in his own home over marijuana plants that they never discovered Block s officers had gunned down a man in his own home over marijuana plants that they never discovered After his review Block continued to reject Bradbury s conclusions He expressed no remorse or willingness to examine the policies that allowed the killing of an innocent -year-old man over what was at majority of a scant dozen pounds of cannabis He never questioned the appropriateness of deploying a huge raid band with personnel from several agencies who had never worked together Even if they had exposed the pot they claimed Scott possessed the manpower that morning would have amounted to one law enforcement officer for each marijuana plants Block even sent his statement to the California attorney general and requested an inquiry into Bradbury for abusing his powers Despite the botched raid and death of an innocent man the state attorney general backed Sheriff Block He also cleared Spencer and disputed Bradbury s statement accusing him of using unsupported and provocative language Law enforcement officers have killed a lot of people in the name of the war on drugs And it apparently goes without saying that preponderance of them aren t rich white eccentric millionaires Studies have consistently shown that the people targeted by these policies from forfeiture to aggressive home invasions by police are disproportionately poor and Black But it tends to be cases like Scott s that attract media and society attention because the residents tends to find them more sympathetic Dan Alban Although the Donald T Scott development is one of the maybe more extreme or memorable examples it s one that I think hits home for a lot of people because they realize That could have been me Like if police come charging into my house and I don t know that they re there and I hear my wife screaming am I going to try to come to her aid And if so am I going to get shot And could it be over something that I had no fault in Absolutely it could Radley Balko Civil asset forfeiture policies gave Deputy Spencer a strong incentive to conclude that Donald Scott was guilty It also incentivized him to look for evidence to promotion that conclusion instead of the other way around Bradbury called it a fishing expedition Throughout making this episode we tried to get a comment from Spencer but we were unable to reach him through publicly available information Donald Scott had no criminal record And after his death friends and acquaintances reported media outlets that he wasn t fond of illicit drugs That s something they might also have stated investigators if they had bothered to ask The possibility of civil asset forfeiture pushes drug cops in one direction to produce evidence of a target s guilt There s little incentive to search for exculpatory evidence especially once they ve invested a few time and guidance in the study Dan Alban So forfeiture absolutely distorts the priorities of law enforcement agencies and drives a lot of initiatives that they would not otherwise engage in Forfeiture diverts all kinds of guidance into things that have nothing to do with actual crime prevention and are instead are much more oriented toward revenue generation Radley Balko Alban says there s evidence showing that when law enforcement revenue increases due to forfeiture there s a corresponding decrease in the rate at which they close crimes like murder or robbery Dan Alban One of the things that folks who are really sort of pro-law enforcement or pro-law-and-order often fail to fully appreciate about the dangers of the profit incentive in forfeiture is it s not just something that gives the police more tools to fight crime It s something that distorts law enforcement priorities distracts them from what they re supposed to be doing and diverts all kinds of materials into things that have nothing to do with actual crime prevention and are instead are much more oriented toward revenue generation Radley Balko That means more unsolved violent crimes Which means less constituents confidence in the police And that only feeds the cycle of mistrust between cops and marginalized communities Dan Alban There are a number of studies that have shown that civil forfeiture and the aggressive use of civil forfeiture has caused distrust in minority and low-income communities because it s viewed as enabling the police to just steal from people and particularly to just steal from the poorest the people who have the least materials and who are most of vulnerable Not only are they the ones who are sort of hit hardest by it but they re also the ones least able to defend themselves because they have less access to attorneys or to the political system that might enable them to call a few of these things into question or have politicians start investigations Radley Balko The city of Philadelphia is a particularly compelling development inquiry That city has been home to a long-running forfeiture abuse embarrassment first exposed in CNN In two years nearly families in Philadelphia had their homes or cars taken away by city administrators according to Pennsylvania s attorney general They use a civil forfeiture law that allows them to Dan Alban The court allowed us to do a survey of the casualties of Philly s forfeiture effort the first survey that s ever been done of all of the casualties of a single forfeiture venture And in that development only about in respondents was definitely identified guilty or pled guilty to any wrongdoing yet they all had their property seized and forfeited Radley Balko Alban s organization brought a class-action suit in Philadelphia on behalf of thousands of local residents who d had their cars homes and cash seized by police Dan Alban The lead plaintiffs in that incident were the Sourovelis family whose son had gotten into trouble He was selling a limited hundred dollars worth of drugs and he was keeping it in a backpack in his bedroom And one day the Philly PD raided the house reported the family they had just a limited minutes to pack up everything and get out and that the house was going to be seized and sealed for forfeiture because their son had of class unbeknownst to them been selling relatively small amounts of drugs And this was of lesson horrifying to the family They thought they were going to lose their entire house over this Radley Balko Alban s group was able to save the Sourovelis family home But he says that incident is part of a pattern where small offenses can lead to life-altering losses often to people who had no involvement in the underlying crime Dan Alban Several of those instances were people who obviously had no idea that their grandson or whoever was staying with them was involved in illegal activity and certainly didn t condone it But they didn t have legal tools to fight back And so there were I think to properties that ended up being forfeited from people a multitude of of whom weren t indeed accused of committing that crime And that same sort of scenario plays out time and time again across the country Seemingly the preponderance common scenario is you know the mom lets their son or daughter borrow the family car or minivan They re at the park and get caught selling specific weed to their friends or something The police not only seize the weed of discipline and the money but also the family car And then mom is stuck in this terrible position where you know she of module wasn t allowing her kid to use the minivan for illegal purposes but now doesn t have a car can t get to work can t get the kids to school can t get to the grocery store to run other errands but isn t veritably a person accused of the crime Radley Balko In Congress passed particular reforms to federal forfeiture law including an innocent owner defense that owners of seized property can use But it s almost impossible to prove a negative Dan Alban It s proving something like I didn t want my son to use the family minivan to deal drugs How do you veritably prove that It s not like you seemingly sent him a text message saying Now son I don t want you to use the family minivan to use drugs So satisfying that burden of proof is very laborious Radley Balko The bill also failed to mandate a conviction for asset forfeiture or curb the profit incentive driving it Weaker federal reforms and sharing agreements have allowed police to evade tougher state forfeiture laws There are long-standing questions about how law enforcement agencies use the proceeds of civil asset forfeiture Critics say the lure has pushed police to become more aggressive and more militarized Dan Alban We ve seen lots of those sort of surplus military vehicles Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and other sorts of things purchased with forfeiture funds Lots of military or pseudo-military equipment In Philadelphia for example the Philadelphia police department used forfeiture funds to buy I think about two dozen submachine guns and to pay for a range that they were using for those automatic weapons If you know that your city council or county board or the state legislature isn t going to approve you buying a BearCat armored conveyance or something similar you can nonetheless purchase that same automobile using forfeiture funds And that sort of thing happens all the time Related Do Not Resist The Police Militarization Documentary Everyone Should See Radley Balko And once cops have this gear they want to use it So the equipment then gets used in more drug raids which results in more seized property which results in more revenue to buy more gear It s a self-perpetuating cycle It can also just be a waste of inhabitants materials Dan Alban A lot of the time with the armored vehicles the various militarized equipment the submachine guns that kind of stuff those are things that are tremendous fun to play with may not have much practical use or practical value to numerous police departments Radley Balko The use of civil asset forfeiture isn t limited to drug crimes But the drug war is by far the biggest driver of the protocol In about the time between Congress loosening asset forfeiture laws in and Scott s death law enforcement agents nationwide had seized roughly billion in assets In Los Angeles County alone about million was taken by law enforcement In the five years before Donald Scott s death in the county averaged more than million a year in seizures PBS Frontline In the sheriff s department seized more than million in drug money another million in Radley Balko In the PBS show Frontline aired an analysis about how the drug war was corrupting police officers throughout the country Dan Garner You see that there s big money out there you want to seize the big money for your department For our unit that was a sign of whether you were doing good or poorly was how much money you seized and the kind of cases you did And my supervisor made it extremely clear that big money cases were a lot more favorable for your overall evaluation than big dope cases Radley Balko In a interview the head of narcotics at the LA sheriff s department advised the LA Times that the salaries of of the unit s officers were funded entirely with forfeiture proceeds And the top forfeiture prosecutor in the state attorney general s office stated drug war asset forfeiture can become addictive to law enforcement He then added apparently without irony It s a little like crack The addiction isn t just institutional That much loose cash can also be a temptation for police officers to slide into corruption seizing and keeping property for themselves Donald Scott s death in fact followed a larger department-wide shame in Los Angeles PBS Frontline Seven sheriff s deputies are now on trial in Los Angeles charged with stealing million in drug money More than narcotics officers here have been implicated in the largest current police corruption controversy in the country Radley Balko The bulk of the charges were related to deputies skimming the cash they confiscated in drug busts which they then used to buy cars vacations and even new homes And the LA County sheriff at the time It was Sherman Block Sheriff Sherman Block I think we had individuals who succumbed to temptation who somehow I m sure in their own minds they ostensibly were able to rationalize what they were doing was not really wrong since the individuals who they were dealing with were not honorable people in themself Radley Balko None of the police officers involved in the killing of Donald Scott were ever disciplined for the raid itself Deputy Gary Spencer sued Bradbury the Ventura County DA for defamation When the suit was dismissed he was ordered to pay Bradbury s legal fees of about Spencer later declared bankruptcy I was made out to be this callous reckless Dirty Harry kind of guy and I wasn t able to say anything about it Spencer recounted the Los Angeles Times in Spencer did express regret for Scott s death And he would go on to say that the raid ruined his life He narrated the LA Times that he developed a twitch in response to stress from the occurrence and that his children had to defend his reputation to their classmates Still Spencer continued to defend the raid saying that he didn t consider it botched because that would say that it was a mistake to have gone in there in the first place and I don t believe that Michael Bradbury deserves a lot of credit in this story He was a rising star in Republican politics when the Scott raid went down He saw a obstacle in law enforcement that had caused a tragedy and he tried to do something about it Here s Bradbury again speaking to Michael Bradbury When you keep that information out of a warrant you deprive the judge of making an informed decision And in fact that can and in this affair did in our opinion invalidate the warrant Radley Balko When I first reached out to Bradbury who is now in his s he initially agreed to be interviewed for this podcast But after consulting with his attorney he notified us that he would have to decline It seems that Spencer is still around too and Bradbury s attorney feared that Spencer could still sue Bradbury for defaming him But in our initial phone conversation Bradbury also reported me something that hasn t been widely stated about this development In the George W Bush administration contacted Bradbury and demanded if he d accept a nomination to be U S attorney for the district of Southern California For a DA like Bradbury this was a major promotion Bradbury reported he d be honored and he traveled to Washington to meet with White House administrators But when he arrived he was advised that the administration had changed its mind According to Bradbury the LA Sheriff s Department had complained citing the Scott event and scuttled the nomination Bill Aylesworth Frances is the one who really became like a political activist and stayed on the property and armed herself and they kept coming doing harassment raids all kinds of crazy stuff Radley Balko Things would get worse for Frances Plante After Donald Scott died Plante inherited only a portion of Trail s End And she struggled to buy out the portion that went to his other family members A little more than a year after the raid the Malibu fires of then ravaged every manmade structure on the property The fire also destroyed an urn containing Donald Scott s ashes Broke and heartbroken Plante vowed to press on Bill Aylesworth They thought well she s going to leave now for sure And she didn t She bought a tipi from like a tribe up in Oregon or something You can see pictures of her online in front of her tipi holding a shotgun in her wedding dress And she really got into it the whole political activism thing about the asset forfeiture And she wished to get it out there that this is happening and stop it So she was on Lynn Sherr In contemporary times Frances takes little pleasure from this land The memories of her husband and his love for these hills have now dissolved into the painful reality of one morning in October Frances Plante Scott I m not sailing off into the sunset with Donald Scott so I m stuck here and I m going to stay here and keep the land just like Donald did all these years Radley Balko In Plante Donald Scott s estate and his children filed a civil rights lawsuit against the various police agencies and deputies involved in the raid The functionaries dragged out the lawsuit for years causing Plante to rack up massive legal debts Dan Alban And so while Donald Scott the raid on his house and his ranch was over years ago It s something that we haven t fixed We haven t really addressed and that s one of the reasons why there necessities to be substantial reforms made at the federal level made at the state level Radley Balko Alban s organization the Institute for Justice launched an End Forfeiture Initiative in And since then there have been major changes Three states New Mexico Nebraska and Maine have abolished civil forfeiture totally And that s in addition to North Carolina s ban which dates back to Thirty-seven states plus the District of Columbia have reformed their civil forfeiture laws to specific degree One of the the bulk popular changes include requiring a criminal conviction before seizing property a measure that arguably should have been a foundational principle from the outset But a great number of of these piecemeal changes have fallen short of fully protecting people s money and property According to the Institute for Justice in alone the federal governing body and states have collected more than billion in seized assets Over the last roughly years that number jumps to about billion And that s likely an undercount since not all states fully statement their forfeiture information When it comes to changes at the federal level the courts have been going back and forth on the issue PBS NewsHour A unanimous decision in the modern day from the U S Supreme Court limits the ability of states to seize private property and impose excessive fines Radley Balko That was back in in a decision authored by former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg But as the court s ideological leanings have swung so has its remedy of the issue Here s another scenario decided in May of Fox News The - ruling held that states aren t required to hold a preliminary hearing shortly after police seize property or money The matter involved a Georgia woman who challenged the seizure of her van by police Radley Balko Modification efforts have also stalled in Congress It would take seven years but in April Los Angeles County conclusively settled with Donald Scott s estate paying out million The federal establishment also settled with the Scott estate for million For majority of of this time Frances Plante had been living in that tipi that she had put up at Trail s End Because she inherited her husband s valuable land but not his wealth she fell behind on property taxes And in the end after paying attorneys fees and the shares to Scott s children Plante s share of the million settlement wasn t enough to save Trail s End And after news of the settlement hit the press the IRS came calling claiming that Plante owed million in inheritance taxes from when she obtained the ranch from Scott So in August almost nine years after an LA County tactical band had killed Donald Scott a federal SWAT organization complete with two helicopters descended upon Trail s End Ranch to evict Frances Plante from the property They then did precisely what Donald Scott dependably feared the governing body would do They seized his land sold it at auction and kept the proceeds for themselves Collateral Damage Podcast Collateral Damage That s it for Collateral Damage Collateral Damage is a production of The Intercept It was written and shared by me Radley Balko Additional writing by Andrew Stelzer who also served as producer and editor Laura Flynn is our showrunner Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief The executive producers are me and Sumi Aggarwal We had editing patronage from Maryam Saleh Truc Nguyen mixed our show Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and David Bralow Fact-checking by Kadal Jesuthasan Art direction by Fei Liu Illustrations by Tara Anand Copy editing by Nara Shin Social and video media by Chelsey B Coombs Special thanks to Peter Beck for research assistance and to Ali Gharib for editorial feedback on this episode This series was made practicable by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund If you want to send us a message email us at podcasts theintercept com And to follow my work and reporting check out my newsletter The Watch at radleybalko substack com Thank you for listening The post Episode Eight Legalized Takings appeared first on The Intercept