South Carolina Cops Target Out-of-State Drivers for Highway Robbery
No arrest necessary as South Carolina police hunt for cash

To the untrained eye, there was nothing unusual on October 5, 2022, near mile marker 77 on Interstate 85. But when two deputies from Greenville County, South Carolina, saw a blue Tesla come into view, they sprang into action.
The vehicle was not speeding or driving recklessly. It had no broken lights or expired tags, nor had the car been reported stolen. What it did have was out-of-state plates on a rental car.
This is enough to trigger a traffic stop during Operation Rolling Thunder, the annual five-day law enforcement blitz that turns a 20-mile stretch of freeway between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, into a gauntlet for travelers.
No Drugs, No Problem
Finding a pretext for pulling a driver over is easy. "If us officers stay behind you long enough, we can find a reason to pull you over," a Washington state officer explains in a viral video that got her suspended. The excuse to stop the Tesla in South Carolina was "driving in the left lane while not actively passing."
The next goal, after stopping the Tesla driver, was to articulate probable cause to search it. This requires more than a traffic violation. Officers need a reasonable belief that a crime has occurred, so they claimed they could smell marijuana through the vehicle's open window.
Once inside the car, they found no marijuana or narcotics of any type, nor did they find stolen merchandise, fake IDs, weapons, or anything else illegal. All the deputies found was an unspecified amount of cash, which is not a crime to carry.
The driver and her passenger tried to explain, saying they were moving to Atlanta to start a hair business, and they would later fly back to Charlotte to pick up a car in the shop. If the deputies doubted this story, they could have continued investigating. But law enforcement agencies that want to keep cash do not need proof of wrongdoing.
Highway Robbery
A maneuver called civil forfeiture allows the government to take and permanently keep any property it seizes—no arrest or conviction necessary.
Agencies don't even have to identify a suspect. They are supposed to link seized property to criminal activity, but most of the time, they don't even have to prove anything by any standard in court.
Unlike criminal cases, civil forfeiture requires property owners to pay for their own attorney, which many cannot afford. Most cannot navigate the system by themselves either. Because of these hurdles, people frequently cut their losses and walk away, allowing the government to win. This is the case 98.6 percent of the time at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which waits on standby to take possession of cash seized during Operation Rolling Thunder.
Even if property owners make it to trial, they still face long odds. It's their word against that of law enforcement officers, who typically testify that property owners fit the drug courier profile for boilerplate reasons such as carrying cash in envelopes or vacuum-seal pouches.
Almost anything can justify civil forfeiture. One Florence County deputy cited rubber bands as suspicious during a bus search in October 2022. Another officer faulted a driver for simultaneously talking too much and not enough. "While being vague about his trip, [the driver] would overexplain other things," the officer wrote.
Lighting a cigarette during one stop was considered suspicious. So, too, was smelling like cologne, avoiding eye contact, being "preoccupied looking for the rental agreement," and having a cluttered vehicle that appeared to be "lived in."
Participating agencies can keep up to 100 percent of the proceeds seized through civil forfeiture. If the federal government gets involved, through a process called "equitable sharing," their cut is typically at least 20 percent.
The Tesla travelers did not even receive a traffic citation but still lost her property. The travelers were free to go after Homeland Security arrived, but not with their money.
See Something, Seize Something
This incentive to police for profit is huge. Participants from 11 agencies grabbed $968,611 during Operation Rolling Thunder in 2022. This comes to $194,000 per day or more than $8,000 per hour. This is the pattern during Operation Rolling Thunder.
Officers took four bundles of currency from one driver after searching his vehicle and finding nothing but THC vape pens. The police let him go without charges after he signed a roadside abandonment form, relinquishing his claim to the money, which he said came from gambling.
In two other cases, officers found cash on buses and seized the currency without arresting anyone. The police claim to be fighting the War on Drugs, but they grab cash wherever they can find it without any investigation into possible drug crimes.
When the clock is ticking, the police policy is simple: If you see something, seize something.
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Same two authors
That one dealt with the FOIA troubles getting the info. This one is the info. Tomorrow …. who knows? Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel!
The excuse to stop the Tesla in South Carolina was “driving in the left lane while not actively passing.”
They deserve everything they got.
Ha. Said the same below.
Traveling while driving a Tesla.
“driving in the left lane while not actively passing.”
Is something I don’t have to worry about in my home state (Wisconsin). The law is written differently here and the left lane is NOT reserved exclusively for passing.
There’s a fix for this.
Step 1: That is perjury, or as I call it, “authoritative misrepresentation”. The cop is an authority, and lied in an authoritative manner.
Step 2: Think of a search warrant as a bet. “I swear I smell marijuana coming from that car. I bet we find marijuana in that car.” Well, ossifer, you lost that bet, you were wrong, now pay up. Every bet has consequences for losing. What’ll it be, ossifer, maybe you pay me a lot of cash, in fact, as much cash as it would have cost me if you’d been correct? Or maybe you’d like to pay my expenses while I spend the next few days tailing you, and pull you over for no reason, spend a goodly amount of time searching your car, and all with the real possibility of me rolling the dice, and if it comes up snake eyes, I haul you downtown in the back of my car, in handcuffs, and let you stew in jail. Meanwhile the tow trucks impound your car and I sell it at auction and pocket the proceeds.
How’d you like them odds, ossifer? Maybe you’d settle for tar and feathers. Make a mess out of your uniform, dang what a shame.
Monopoly government sucks.
Waiting for AT to show up and defend every action by the police, while simultaneously blaming citizens for having the audacity of questioning the police for stopping them.
I had thought at first he was merely making the pragmatic observation that sometimes it’s best to avoid the ride; just as anyone has the right to walk down a dark alley in an expensive suit, wearing a Rolex, and counting his roll of $100 bills, it’s still a good idea to not do so.
Yes, it would be easier to comply and win a court case later. BUT …
* This is cops. He isn’t going to win a court case later.
* Cops need act like human beings. They won’t as long as people cower in fear of them. That kind of obeisance is addictive to the kind of people who want to be monopoly government cops.
And he kept piling on the “suck it up” long past its sell-by date. I wondered for a while if that cop from years ago had returned (I’ve forgotten his name).
> ” I wondered for a while if that cop from years ago had returned (I’ve forgotten his name).”
Dunphy.
I would bet everything i own that if we held officers accountable for failing to find marijuana after swearing they smelled it in a vehicle, their response would not be to stop those searches but rather would be to ensure they always had some extra marijuana on hand to plant in the vehicle.
incentives matter.
Of relevance.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/16-122_1b7d.pdf
I am skeptical that this historical practice is capable of sustaining, as a constitutional matter, the contours of modern practice, for two reasons. First, historical forfeiture laws were narrower in most respects than modern ones. Cf. James Daniel Good, 510 U. S., at 85 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting that “ambitious modern statutes and prosecutorial practices have all but detached themselves from the ancient notion of civil forfeiture”). Most obviously, they were limited to a few specific subject matters, such as customs and piracy. Proceeding in rem in those cases was often justified by necessity, because the party responsible for the crime was frequently located overseas and thus beyond the personal jurisdiction of United States courts. See Herpel, Toward a Constitutional Kleptocracy: Civil Forfeiture in America, 96 Mich. L. Rev. 1910, 1918– 1920 (1998); see also id., at 1925–1926 (arguing that founding-era precedents do not support the use of forfeiture against purely domestic offenses where the owner is plainly within the personal jurisdiction of both state and federal courts). These laws were also narrower with respect to the type of property they encompassed. For example, they typically covered only the instrumentalities of the crime (such as the vessel used to transport the goods), not the derivative proceeds of the crime (such as property purchased with money from the sale of the illegal goods). See Rumson, supra, at 121–122, 125 (plurality opinion) (Forfeiture of criminal proceeds is a modern innovation). Second, it is unclear whether courts historically permit6 LEONARD v. TEXAS Statement of THOMAS, J. ted forfeiture actions to proceed civilly in all respects. Some of this Court’s early cases suggested that forfeiture actions were in the nature of criminal proceedings. See, e.g., Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 633–634 (1886) (“We are . . . clearly of [the] opinion that proceedings instituted for the purpose of declaring the forfeiture of a man’s property by reason of offenses committed by him, though they may be civil in form, are in their nature criminal”); but see R. Waples, Treatise on Proceedings In Rem 29–30 (1882) (collecting contrary authorities). Whether forfeiture is characterized as civil or criminal carries important implications for a variety of procedural protections, including the right to a jury trial and the proper standard of proof. Indeed, as relevant in this case, there is some evidence that the government was historically required to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. See United States v. Brig Burdett, 9 Pet. 682, 690 (1835) (“The object of the prosecution against the Burdett is to enforce a forfeiture of the vessel, and all that pertains to it, for a violation of a revenue law. This prosecution then is a highly penal one, and the penalty should not be inflicted, unless the infractions of the law shall be established beyond reasonable doubt”).
Thomas is spot on, and has often spoken up against civil asset forfeiture.
The excuse to stop the Tesla in South Carolina was “driving in the left lane while not actively passing.”
Not even mad. Just kidding… maybe.
Fuck those people who drive in the passing lane, often at the same speed or slower as the right lane.
There is no “passing lane” in my state.
https://wislawjournal.com/2023/05/24/reasons-why-people-drive-recklessly-in-wisconsin-possible-solutions/
OK… was this that state?
No? Then get the fuck back in the right hand lane if you aren’t passing.
AT will be by shortly to defend the police from all you Losertarians.
Highway patrol = highwaymen.
As funding for our police state gets tighter, expect more entrepreneurial activities by local officials. Just like in Mexico and most of the world.
That’s just it; the alternative is raising taxes to fund the programs that people want. The American people want lots and lots of government programs, and they apparently assume that the money fairy just drops a big pile of cash to pay for it. So long as there is this expectation by the public that government benefits can go up while taxes stay steady or go down, the government will raise revenue by other means.
And no, I’m not defending it. I have the same opinion of civil asset forfeiture laws as everyone else here. Just explaining the dynamic.
“The American people want lots and lots of government programs,”
Not all of us.
If funding is getting “tighter” it’s due to inefficiency and irresponsible spending, just like other bureaucracies. Funding for police has steadily increased for decades, and despite propaganda to the contrary, “defunding” never occurred with barely any exceptions.
From data compiled from the US Census Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances “From 1977 to 2021, in 2021 inflation-adjusted dollars, state and local government spending on police increased from $47 billion to $135 billion, an increase of 189 percent.”
Of course, we must correct for population, too. The US population in 2021 was 332M, yielding a per capita expenditure of $406.63 (just police, not including courts and corrections which also grew), in 1977 it was 220M, yielding a per capita expenditure of $213.64, a per capita increase of over 90%, nearly doubling.
No, this isn’t about a budget squeeze, it’s about an unaccountable government spending tax money stupidly and finding unethical ways to increase spending further.
The worst and most disrespectful drivers are those who stay in the passing lane, never pass and refuse to go to the right lane after I’ve repeatedly flashed headlights on them from behind.
I’m very pleased that at least some police are beginning to enforce the law against these jerks who think they own the passing lane.
Perhaps even worse than car drivers who refuse to get out of the passing lane (while refusing to pass) are the truck drivers who insist upon driving in the passing lane.
Virtually every traffic jam on interstate highways (outside cities) is caused by a truck driver in the passing lane (who slows down to 60 or even 50 when going up hills) and refuses to go to the right lane.
There is no “passing lane” in my state.
https://wislawjournal.com/2023/05/24/reasons-why-people-drive-recklessly-in-wisconsin-possible-solutions/
The vehicle was not speeding or driving recklessly. It had no broken lights or expired tags, nor had the car been reported stolen. What it did have was out-of-state plates on a rental car. This is enough to trigger a traffic stop
Clowns. You contradict yourself in the very next paragraph:
“driving in the left lane while not actively passing.”
SC isn’t the only State in the union with a Stay Right Except to Pass law/rule. You can whine about the merits of such a law or traffic rule being on the books, but it’s there. And ignorance of it is no excuse when you’re passing through another State.
But to complain about that would undercut your narrative, wouldn’t it. Because that’d make it a legislative problem, not a cop problem. And that’s no way to write an ACAB article.
Clowns.
Officers need a reasonable belief that a crime has occurred, so they claimed they could smell marijuana through the vehicle’s open window.
Once inside the car,
Clowns. Omitted something important between those two paragraphs, didn’t you, clowns. Something really really important that allows you to distort the truth into a bogus clown-world ACAB narrative.
Would you like to tell them, or should I?
Clowns.
Unlike criminal cases, civil forfeiture requires property owners to pay for their own attorney, which many cannot afford. Most cannot navigate the system by themselves either. Because of these hurdles, people frequently cut their losses and walk away, allowing the government to win.
Clowns.
You plainly admit that the owners don’t care enough about it to do anything about it. They know where the game is being played, they know the rules, they know when kickoff starts – all they have to do is show up. But, by your own admission, they don’t.
You can’t cry foul on a government “win,” and blame them for it – not when the other team doesn’t even show up to play. Clowns.
Another officer faulted a driver for simultaneously talking too much and not enough.
Yea, suspects have a tendency to do that. It’s sketchy. The average person doesn’t do that in everyday environments. Plus, cops love it when suspects talk unprompted. Who knows what they’ll voluntarily give away.
Lighting a cigarette during one stop was considered suspicious. So, too, was smelling like cologne
Obscuring other scents, contaminating a potential crime scene or evidence of a potential crime. Ask the forensics guys.
avoiding eye contact, being “preoccupied looking for the rental agreement,”
Google “kinesics.”
having a cluttered vehicle that appeared to be “lived in.”
Don’t know if that’s a crime in SC, but it belies a claim like, “I’m moving to Atlanta to start a hair business” doesn’t it.
The police let him go without charges after he signed a roadside abandonment form
Every time I think your clown article can’t get any more clown, you clown it up some more.
Look, are there Constitutional issues with CAF? Arguably. But you’re so hellbent on your ACAB narrative that you actually empower the very thing you’re against, by turning your criticism towards the cops instead of CAF/DHS.
Because you’re a bunch of bigots that just hate cops because they’re cops. You’re obsessed with that, to the point that it obscures your ability to engage in – wait for it – reason, and focus on the actual issue.
You did the same damned thing yesterday too, on the same subject. Multiple times in this very article, you refused to put a rightful share of the blame where it belongs: on the citizenry. A citizenry whose most basic civil duty can be summed up as simply as: “Know your rights.”
They don’t. They don’t even care to. Sometimes they even openly resent them and call for them to be scaled back. That’s a citizenry who has ALLOWED AND ENCOURAGED their government to stomp on their face forever.
But instead of talking about THAT, you just reflexively hate cops.
Clowns. Bigots. Morons.
Multiple times in this very article, you refused to put a rightful share of the blame where it belongs: on the citizenry.
Literal victim-blaming. “Look, if these sketchy AF drivers didn’t want the heroic self-sacrificing cops engaging in a warrantless search of the totally suspicious car and taking (again, without a warrant) whatever the noble and selfless police decided was contraband, the drivers should have been intimately familiar with all of the possible driving violations of a state and/or city, county, parish, etc. they probably don’t even live in.”
Isn’t the “victim” literally to blame for that?
And heck, you went microscopic on the subject. We’re talking about a citizenry where the vast majority couldn’t even name them generally.
Want to try something fun one day? Ask some friends, coworkers, or even total strangers – “Say, do you know what the 6th Amendment is?” If you’re afraid of putting them on the spot, pretend to be doing a trivia game on your phone or something.
You’ll be genuinely shocked at how many people won’t know it.
I was.
Isn’t the “victim” literally to blame for that?
And heck, you went microscopic on the subject. We’re talking about a citizenry where the vast majority couldn’t even name them generally.
“Generally” is pretty well covered already; you know what the speed limit is around you because signs are posted. One way street signs. Left Turn permitted signs. No Right on Red signs.
Stoplights and stop signs. Construction zones are noted. Lines on the roads indicate whether passing is permitted. What you’re talking about is people boning up on laws that are not clearly posted. No remaining in the left lane? Minimum speed limits in passing lanes? How many passengers in a car allow you to use a HOV lane? Is a seatbelt violation a primary reason the cops can pull you over? The list goes on for quite awhile.
I drove from Texas to New Hampshire and back for a vacation earlier this year, and the list of states I drove in went like this: Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire. Plus I went up to Maine for a day trip as well. Do you think I should have had encyclopedic knowledge of all traffic laws of all those states or it would have been my fault if some cops had pulled me over and taken everything they decided was contraband?
Do you think I should have had encyclopedic knowledge of all traffic laws of all those states or it would have been my fault if some cops had pulled me over and taken everything they decided was contraband?
I think you’d be a lot more likely to avoid such a situation if you took a minute to become versed on local rules and customs.
But why should I have to put any effort into learning anything, am I right? Screw those other states. I’m just passing through. Your laws don’t apply to me!
That where you’re going with this?
I think you’d be a lot more likely to avoid such a situation if you took a minute to become versed on local rules and customs.
‘Took a minute’?? Is that figure per state or would that minute encompass all dozen states in which I spent time this year? I think you’re grossly underestimating the sheer number of “rules and customs,” as you so quaintly put it, that the police can cite as a reason to pull someone over. Even at least once cop agrees, as the article noted.
But why should I have to put any effort into learning anything, am I right? Screw those other states. I’m just passing through. Your laws don’t apply to me!
That where you’re going with this?
Nope. If I thought that, I wouldn’t pay attention to speed limit signs and so forth.
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/title56.php
Can you memorize everything in the South Carolina Code of Laws for Motor Vehicles in a minute? Does that sound like a reasonable request? Now multiply that task times 12.
You don’t need to. Just look at the names. Virtually all of it is irrelevant to a motorist passing through. Really, the only thing anyone would care about is Chapter 5 – and even then, I skimmed the whole thing in like ten minutes. Take a good look at Section 56-5-1810. Which I wasn’t even actively looking for but bang – there it is right in your face. So, yea, literally – “took a minute.”
But thank you for illustrating my point. It’s ridiculously easy, in this day and age, to find the information you need when a tourist in another state’s roadways. There’s no excuse not to, and it’s certainly not the cop’s fault when they pull you over for something they have every right to pull you over for.
Again, if you have a problem with that – legislative issue. Not cop issue.
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/title56.php
There’s South Carolina’s entire Code of Laws regarding motor vehicles. You’d better know them backwards and forwards should you ever plan to travel there, otherwise anything bad that happens is your fault.
sin,
AT
Do you know which states you can be immediately arrested in for open carrying a loaded firearm?
Kinda something you might want to look into if you’re planning a trip and want to bring your pistol. Why should this be any different?
In fact, this is also something that rankles me about this clown world article. In all the effort to go full ACAB, they miss a great opportunity to explain to readers where they might find resources for interstate travel “need to knows”.
A random example might be the level of tinting on your windows. Acceptable levels vary state to state. Why is it so unreasonable to expect a person to put just a slight effort into understanding where they’re going and what changes to expect while you’re there?
We also see this supreme arrogance/ignorance when it comes to world travel. You know the peace sign? Flip it the other direction (so the underside of your fingers are pointing inward instead of out). See what happens in Ireland or Aussie/NZ. Or try a thumbs up in any Muslim nation.
But you seem to be of the position that foreigners should get a pass on account of their ignorance – ignorance, I might add, in this current day and age could be rectified with a few taps on that little computer in everyone’s pocket. Why?
A random example might be the level of tinting on your windows.
Which is irrelevant. Those laws are meant to guide people on permissible vehicle qualities in order to pass state inspection and become registered in a given state. None of them apply to vehicles from other states. Some years ago, I drove a vehicle in the state in which I lived at the time that eventually was more than two years overdue for inspection and never got pulled over by the police because it was a company vehicle registered in a completely different state. So your example is as flawed as your logic.
As an aside, the last time I was in SC I don’t think they had vehicle inspections at all because I remember more than one car driving around with the hood completely removed and the engine exposed.
Well pick whatever example you want. You listed a whole bunch of them in your other reply.
Point is, I repeat, you seem to be of the position that foreigners should get a pass on account of their ignorance – ignorance, I might add, in this current day and age could be rectified with a few taps on that little computer in everyone’s pocket. Why?
fuck off
slavercopsucker!Stop defending crime.
I mean, if these guys really were as horrible as you think, surely you should support them at least getting a citation or arrested, right? But instead, the police let them go! This must really shake your trust in the police to let such hardened criminals leave.
lol, what a clown. You have no idea what a “roadside abandonment form” actually is, do you?
“ so they claimed they could smell marijuana through the vehicle’s open window.”
Officer, I don’t smoke. So, if you smell marijuana, the only place it could be coming from is you.
Further, I witnessed you operating a vehicle, and as you’re the only one who could have possibly smoked marijuana, you are operating under the influence.
As this is a misdemeanor, and I have witnessed it, I place you under citizens arrest. Please remain calm and don’t leave the scene as I call for another department to take you into custody.