Eric Holder Decision Could Help Poker Players Traveling Across The Country Sleep Better At Night

In what appears to be a last ditch effort to make his time at the helm of the Obama DOJ not seem completely morally bankrupt, Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday barred local and state police from using draconian federal law for the purpose of what some say amounts to theft from American citizens.

Formally, he ended was has been perversely called the “Equitable Sharing” program.

It took a lot of time and mountains of criticism, but the gears of the federal government finally turned far enough to allow this change to be set to become a reality.

The news is potentially good for poker players traveling across the country with lots of cash, who have had to worry about law enforcement seizing their bankrolls.

Last year, Card Player chronicled the case of two poker players who witnessed police in Iowa confiscate their $100,000 thanks to a traffic stop that they say began with a cop completely fabricating a claim that they didn’t use their blinker. Their car was later searched.

Their case came into the limelight because of their lawsuit to fight the seizure.

Holder’s move does have exceptions—such as for cases involving illegal firearms—but none of the exceptions seem to keep poker players in the cross hairs of cash-starved police departments.

According to reporting from The Washington Post, police have made cash seizures worth almost $2.5 billion from motorists and others without search warrants or indictments since 2001. The destruction this has caused to the lives of working class Americans has been well documented.

During that time frame, after the cops take your cash, you are responsible for proving that you got the money legally. Otherwise, it’s gone forever. Money seized from innocent motorists reportedly has gone toward the militarization of police forces in the United States.

According to the report, roughly 7,600 of the nation’s 18,000 police departments and task forces have participated in Equitable Sharing over the past 14 years.

The Post pointed out that asset forfeiture became big business for the government at the onset of the “War on Drugs”, which helped the state jail people of color at disturbing rates.

The 2008 financial crisis, which left state governments squealing, also likely has played a role in the need for law enforcement to pad their budgets in questionable ways, experts claim.

On Thursday, CNN covered the Holder decision and even focused in on the case of the poker players who received the bad beat of a lifetime while passing through Iowa.

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