DEA Agents Ambush Amtrak Passengers With Controversial Searches and Seizures
More of the article in the link.
FEW HOURS characteristically behind schedule, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief rolls into Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the small station that it shares with the Greyhound bus service on the edge of downtown.
Most people step off to stretch their legs or have a cigarette during the layover, the longest smoke break in the entire trip. That’s when two plainclothes agents come aboard the train on a rainy day in March 2019.
One agent walks to the back of the aisle in the first coach car and waits, quietly observing. The other is tasked with getting people to talk and open their bags. His name is Jarrell, or Jay, Perry, and he’s done it hundreds of times before.
Today, he seems confident that he will find someone on board carrying drugs — or at least a substantial amount of money. He flashes a smile and a badge. A young, disheveled man in a seat by the entrance to the car agrees to let Perry search his three bags. The agent flips through the man’s luggage with tactical speed
Perry is white and looks like he’s in his fifties. He’s bald and slightly overweight, with a weightlifter’s build to compensate, and he’s dressed in a baseball cap, a gray sweatshirt, and jeans. He’s not carrying a visible warrant or a train ticket and has no drug dog with him. When passengers reboard, they seem oblivious to his presence.
“Thank you, sir, I appreciate it, have a good trip,” Perry tells the young man after he concludes the search, walking away empty-handed.
A previous International Narcotics Interdiction Association’s Agent/Officer of the Year, Special Agent Perry with the Drug Enforcement Administration is behind as many as 1,600 criminal cases against drug couriers, according to court documents touting his credibility as a star government witness. His secret weapons are a train and bus depot in his district that seem to attract an inordinate amount of drug trafficking, and a capacious interpretation of the Constitution’s tolerance for stops and searches.
His secret weapons are a train station in his district that seem to attract an inordinate amount of drug trafficking, and a capacious interpretation of the Constitution’s tolerance for stops and searches.
When Perry approaches, it’s hard for passengers to say no.
“Because he told me he was an officer,” the young passenger in Albuquerque later said, explaining why he agreed to the search.
It’s legal for Perry to search people without probable cause, a warrant, or a dog because travelers supposedly realize that they have the right to decline to submit to his searches. Perry and others in his interdiction unit have testified that they receive manifests ahead of time listing the passengers who will be arriving in Albuquerque. The courts have ruled this is also legal — functioning like a helpful tip sheet on whom to question.
More problematically, Perry has been captured on surveillance footage boarding empty Greyhound buses and pulling bags out of the checked luggage bin. One clip captures him pressing on a bag so aggressively that he appears to be tackling it. But he stops short of opening the bag, which would be blatantly unconstitutional. Several people that Perry has seized cash from insist that they are not drug couriers and, in fact, were never criminally charged as such, though that didn’t help them get their money back.
Perry is not the only cop riding the rails. His tactics offer a case study in how law enforcement targets mass transit in the war on drugs, generating thousands of busts and a steady stream of revenue from seized assets.
More of the article in the link.
FEW HOURS characteristically behind schedule, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief rolls into Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the small station that it shares with the Greyhound bus service on the edge of downtown.
Most people step off to stretch their legs or have a cigarette during the layover, the longest smoke break in the entire trip. That’s when two plainclothes agents come aboard the train on a rainy day in March 2019.
One agent walks to the back of the aisle in the first coach car and waits, quietly observing. The other is tasked with getting people to talk and open their bags. His name is Jarrell, or Jay, Perry, and he’s done it hundreds of times before.
Today, he seems confident that he will find someone on board carrying drugs — or at least a substantial amount of money. He flashes a smile and a badge. A young, disheveled man in a seat by the entrance to the car agrees to let Perry search his three bags. The agent flips through the man’s luggage with tactical speed
Perry is white and looks like he’s in his fifties. He’s bald and slightly overweight, with a weightlifter’s build to compensate, and he’s dressed in a baseball cap, a gray sweatshirt, and jeans. He’s not carrying a visible warrant or a train ticket and has no drug dog with him. When passengers reboard, they seem oblivious to his presence.
“Thank you, sir, I appreciate it, have a good trip,” Perry tells the young man after he concludes the search, walking away empty-handed.
A previous International Narcotics Interdiction Association’s Agent/Officer of the Year, Special Agent Perry with the Drug Enforcement Administration is behind as many as 1,600 criminal cases against drug couriers, according to court documents touting his credibility as a star government witness. His secret weapons are a train and bus depot in his district that seem to attract an inordinate amount of drug trafficking, and a capacious interpretation of the Constitution’s tolerance for stops and searches.
His secret weapons are a train station in his district that seem to attract an inordinate amount of drug trafficking, and a capacious interpretation of the Constitution’s tolerance for stops and searches.
When Perry approaches, it’s hard for passengers to say no.
“Because he told me he was an officer,” the young passenger in Albuquerque later said, explaining why he agreed to the search.
It’s legal for Perry to search people without probable cause, a warrant, or a dog because travelers supposedly realize that they have the right to decline to submit to his searches. Perry and others in his interdiction unit have testified that they receive manifests ahead of time listing the passengers who will be arriving in Albuquerque. The courts have ruled this is also legal — functioning like a helpful tip sheet on whom to question.
More problematically, Perry has been captured on surveillance footage boarding empty Greyhound buses and pulling bags out of the checked luggage bin. One clip captures him pressing on a bag so aggressively that he appears to be tackling it. But he stops short of opening the bag, which would be blatantly unconstitutional. Several people that Perry has seized cash from insist that they are not drug couriers and, in fact, were never criminally charged as such, though that didn’t help them get their money back.
Perry is not the only cop riding the rails. His tactics offer a case study in how law enforcement targets mass transit in the war on drugs, generating thousands of busts and a steady stream of revenue from seized assets.