weird story...

Amtrak’s Bad Trip
If our national passenger rail line can't turn a buck running trains, maybe it can by enlisting in the drug war.

By Michael W. Lynch

In addition to its high prices, weak coffee, bad food, and horrible service, here’s one more reason to avoid Amtrak: It gives federal drug cops your travel itinerary.

If the narcs don’t like how you paid for your ticket (helpful hint: avoid cash), or find a digit wrong in your phone number (or find none at all), or don’t like the spelling of your name (any guesses which ones are most suspect?), you may get a visit from a DEA agent and his friendly dope-sniffing pooch when your train pulls into the station. Even if the feds don’t find any drugs, they may relieve you of any extra cash you may be carrying, figuring the only use for large amounts of greenbacks is drug transactions.

Consider the experience of Sam Thach. In February 2000, a DEA agent showed up at his sleeper cabin after his train pulled into Albuquerque, New Mexico. According to court records, Amtrak provided the drug cops with info from their computer terminal. The cops learned that Thach was traveling from Fullerton, California to Boston Massachusetts. "The $702.50 ticket was purchased with cash on the day of travel," notes a government court brief. "Thach was traveling in sleeper room 6, car #430. No call back number was given on the reservation. Based upon his training and experience, [the DEA agent] Officer Salazar knew that drug traffickers commonly purchase a one way ticket for cash (sic) shortly before the train departs."

Thach, who was born in Vietnam and who barely speaks English, had a friend purchase his ticket, explains Thach's attorney, D. Penni Adrian. That partly explains the lack of a return number. Here’s another reason: Thach, like other United States residents, didn’t see the need to give Amtrak his phone number and, assuming he was in a free country, didn’t think failing to do so, combined with purchasing an overpriced ticket, would place him under police surveillance. When the officer approached him, Adrian says it was clear from an audiotape that his language barrier prevented communication. When asked his age, for example, she says he gave the officer the ages of his three daughters.

Still, Salazar is a trained government agent, a regular Eliot Ness, so he just knew Thach was up to no good. "Salazar observed that Thach’s eyes were opened wide, he swayed and shuffled his feet, and his hands shook while he placed them in and out of his pockets during the conversation of his travel plans," the court brief notes. That, and the fact he had a cell phone and a backpack in his sleeper, was enough for Salazar to start a search of the cabin. Thach was carrying $148,000 in cash, which he claims were proceeds from a lucky gambling streak. Salazar was dubious, and when Thach couldn’t produce receipts, he brought in a drug *** to sniff the cash. The first *** found no evidence of drugs on the money, says Adrian, so they brought in another, one with an apparently more refined nose. It caught a whiff of cocaine, as it probably would if it put its snout in your wallet, since much U.S. currency has been thus "contaminated" since before Miami Vice went off the air.

Under then-current civil asset forfeiture laws (which were changed later in 2000), the *** 's discovery provided probable cause for Salazar to just take the money. He didn’t arrest Thach -- that would have meant he had to actually charge him with a crime. Instead, the good officer just boosted $147,000 of Thach's money and sent him on his way, graciously leaving him $1,000 for the rest of his journey. (Considering the prices in what passes for a dining car on Amtrak, a grand would have been just enough for two soggy microwave pizzas and a warm can of Budweiser.)

Now it’s up to Thach to prove a negative--that his money wasn’t the result of a drug transaction. He is suing the government to get his money back.

This isn't the America they teach us about in grade school; hell, it's probably not even the America they teach kids about in Vietnamese grade schools. Thach’s misfortune -- and that of other people dumb enough to ride Amtrak -- is Amtrak’s fortune, and about the only way the railroad has of making one. The DEA and Amtrak refuse to release figures on seizures, although DEA agent Steven Derr, who runs the Albuquerque operation, told the Albuquerque Journal, which broke the story, that both arrests and seizures were "substantial."

Amtrak is an old economy company with a dot-com business plan. Which is to say that the more people buy Amtrak’s product, the more money it loses. This past fiscal year, the railroad, which has consumed nearly $24 billion in taxpayer money since 1971, reported a record loss of $944 million. Like many dot-coms, it spends money advertising products it can’t deliver. Witness the $20 million it used last year to tout its new Acela service from D.C. to New York. Alas, the train rolled out a year late and, although advertised as high speed, it makes the trip exactly two minutes faster than a private railroad did in 1969, according to the U.S. News & World Report. And that's on the rare trip without delays. Amtrak loses money on every route it runs except the Metroliner Train from D.C. to New York City and the heavily subsidized Heartland Flyer, a train that gullible state governments underwrite. (If forced to make it simply on passenger revenues, the Heartland Flyer would lose millions.) "Amtrak loses $2 for every ticket dollar it sells," notes the Heritage Foundation’s Ronald D. Utt.

Yet unlike dot-coms, which were underwritten by private investors -- and are therefore done and gone--Amtrak is underwritten by tax money, and hence will probably be around forever. Still, in exchange for a $2.2 billion bailout in 1997, Congress told the company that if it’s not in the black by 2002, it has to develop a plan to privatize. Needless to say, Amtrak's not going to be in the black by then.

That helps explain the motivation for the rail line's partnership with the DEA. While Amtrak lost money on Thach’s $702.50 ticket, it made plenty--$14,700--on his trip. In exchange for access to its booking system, the skilled negotiators at Amtrak’s New Mexico operation negotiated a 10 percent cut of any money seized.

Since Amtrak’s deal was first reported in the Albuquerque Journal, the railroad has been on the defensive. It has claimed the deal is one of a kind, but in an email to the Albuquerque Journal, Amtrak said it "will, on request, participate in and provide information for law enforcement." (Amtrak didn’t return my calls for clarification.)

For its part, the DEA, sees nothing wrong with the arrangement. "I don’t consider it an invasion of privacy," one agent told the Albuquerque Journal. An agency spokesperson, Rogene Waite, says the agency has similar deals with bus companies and airlines but won’t discuss them, citing the need for law enforcement secrecy. Waite’s also mum on whether the DEA’s infiltration of Amtrak’s reservation system is nationwide or limited to New Mexico. Evidence suggests the former.

"Upon reviewing public domain information," Joseph Vranich, a former Amtrak mouthpiece who is now the company’s most dogged critic, writes in a April 17 memo, "the Fourth Amendment violations do not appear to be chance occurrences but indeed indicate a pattern of violations, which suggests that a national Amtrak-DEA program is in effect."

Last November, for instance, the Albany, New York Times Union reported that "Amtrak has begun to police its skies with a helicopter leased with money forfeited by drug dealers." The account adds, "The money comes to Amtrak from a Justice Department program that rewards state and local authorities that have helped solve drug trafficking cases." In keeping with the real job of government public affairs people, DEA spokesperson Waite refused to comment on the source of funds for the helicopter.

Vranich has compiled numerous news stories of train station drug busts, and it’s clear that the cops must have access to inside information. For instance, a September 1999 story in the Newark, New Jersey, The Star-Ledger explains how investigators in Washington, D.C. know who to target. Investigators told the paper, "Suspicious signs include people who pay cash for expensive, one-way tickets at the last minute, or whose phone number turns out to be bogus. Getting a sleeper car but not checking any luggage is on the list." Without access to travelers' booking information, how would the cops know any of this information?

The ACLU worries that the cops are targeting minorities (which the cops of course deny). Still, sometimes they target the wrong minorities. Carlos Hernandez, a former Newark policeman, knew his rights when he returned to his sleeper cabin on a train from Miami and found cops inspecting it on July 22, 1999. According to The Star-Ledger, the cops told him they wanted to search his luggage because they had been tipped that he had a large amount of narcotics (they'd already been searching his cabin without permission).

"I’ll bet my kids’ life they looked at the train’s manifest, saw an Hispanic riding first class, $694 round-trip ticket, and they just wanted to shake me down," Hernandez told The Star-Ledger, noting that they broke the law by entering his cabin without a warrant and without his permission. "You went into my cabin, that’s burglary," he said.

It certainly is, except when the burglars have badges--and conductor’s watches. It's also one hell of a way to run a railroad.

While I am generally a fan of Amtrak, it has done some boneheaded things over the years, and this is one of them.

Amtrak Pulls DEA Computer

By Jeff Jones
Journal Staff Writer
Amtrak has pulled the plug on a controversial computer that gave the Albuquerque office of the Drug Enforcement Administration direct access to the train's ticketing system.
However, Amtrak police said this week they will continue to provide information they glean from the ticketing system to other police agencies across the United States to help catch train-riding drug couriers.
Amtrak police also will continue to receive a portion of the assets that drug agents seize off trains around the nation.
"We cooperate with law enforcement agencies, including the DEA, and will continue to do so in the future," Amtrak Police Chief Ernest R. Frazier Sr. said in a letter to the Journal, dated Monday.
"I have reviewed the issue of computer access because of concerns raised and have ensured that my personnel will maintain direct control of computers on our property and access to Amtrak information," Frazier said in the letter.
The computer ticketing information could provide drug agents with details such as passengers' last names, where they were traveling from, when they bought their tickets and whether they used cash or credit to pay for them. Agents used ticketing information to narrow down who they wanted to speak with — and therefore whose luggage could eventually be sniffed by a drug-detecting *** — when the trains rolled into Albuquerque.
Critics have said that using the passenger information could lead to singling out people based on ethnicity or financial status. The DEA and Amtrak have said they do not engage in racial profiling.
Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the national ACLU, said Tuesday that even if the DEA does not have direct access to Amtrak's computer files, "there's a pretty strong argument" that the information-sharing arrangement violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.
"Amtrak police ... shouldn't be trawling through customer information without good cause," Steinhardt said.
Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico, said it's a "significant improvement" that the computer in the DEA office is no longer online. But he said the ACLU still is pondering legal action.
"... It's still disturbing that any police agency is using customer records to conduct investigations," Steinhardt said.
Steinhardt said the arrangement may violate the Federal Privacy Act, which he said prohibits one federal agency from sharing personal information with another.
Amtrak spokeswoman Lynn Bowersox said this week that "the Federal Privacy Act does not apply to Amtrak, and we have not violated the law. If the ACLU pursues an action, we will respond in due course."
The computer-system arrangement between Amtrak and the DEA came to light last month after a DEA agent outlined the practice while being questioned by a defense attorney. The questioning took place during a pretrial interview in a pending drug case stemming from an Amtrak stop.
Agent Kevin Small said during the pretrial interview that the Albuquerque DEA office has had access to Amtrak's ticketing computer system for several years.
Small said in the taped interview that agents looked for the "consistent factors" in drug-seizure cases. He said those factors were usually one-way cash tickets bought within three days of the departure date.
"We're the only law enforcement agency outside of Amtrak, this office, that has that computer," Small said in the interview. He added that tips are passed out "all over the country."
Small's supervisor, Steven Derr, has defended the practice, saying it does not involve racial profiling, adding "the whole idea of why we do it this way is so we're not randomly stopping people."
Amtrak Police Chief Frazier said that although Amtrak police do share in the proceeds of forfeited property, the proceeds "must be used for law enforcement purposes only. ..." The letter added that "this is not a unique program, but one in which many state and local police departments throughout the country have participated for years."
The Journal last week asked both Amtrak and the DEA about how much money Amtrak receives in drug forfeiture money each year. The DEA has not responded, and Bowersox said Tuesday she did not yet have the answer.
Amtrak is not considered to be a federal agency, Bowersox said, but she said it is receiving $521 million in federal money this year.
Bowersox said that the Federal Privacy Act doesn't apply to the train service. Steinhardt said the ACLU is still researching the issue.
"Amtrak ... is federally funded. It is, in most respects, indistinguishable from a federal agency," Steinhardt said.
Bowersox said people who buy Amtrak tickets are not informed that the information they're providing could be used for law-enforcement purposes. But she said within the next month, passengers who purchase tickets via the Internet will see a "privacy statement" that will inform them of that possibility. She said people who purchase their tickets over the counter also will soon see some similar wording on their Amtrak tickets.
Copyright 2001 Albuquerque Journal
Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 3.4676.315491)

The information we are being told maybe distored to aline itself with the authors point of few.

On the other hand it maybe true. We really don't know.

What I do know is that the Amtrak Police provide a very important role in our safety while traveling. Their motto, "protecting a Nation in transit" is true. Crime, including narcotics offenses, happens everywhere, even on Amtrak. Knowing Amtrak has a professional Police force protecting it's riders is very important.

Everyone makes mistakes, whether they, the DEA, or anyone else did in this case is subject to much debate. Notice that all the "victims" (?) have hired lawyers and are now suing ? Maybe with cause, or maybe, simply, "ambulance chasers". We, really, just do not know.

It is obvious that one of the Authors doesn't like anything about Amtrak. Call that a "clue" to his "possible" point of few.

Part of the criticism may be due to REASON's general opposition to the "War on Drugs". That "War" is viewed as a colossal waste of taxpayers' money. (It is pointless to criminalize possession or distribution--Prohibition is considered to be a "failure")