Seward County sheriff responds to allegations of missing money

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Channel 8 received a statement from Seward County Sheriff Mike Vance regarding serious allegations made against his deputies.

The allegations surround two articles written by the Flatwater Free Press.

The first was released in June, outlining a practice called civil asset forfeiture.

If a deputy pulls someone over and finds a large amount of cash and they believe the money centers around drug activity, they offer a form to the driver.

It allows the motorist to make a decision between handing over the money and driving away, or possibly being jailed and charged with a felony.

In Seward County, law enforcement has collected $7.5 million from these forfeitures within the past five years.

SEE ALSO: Using loophole, Seward County seizes millions from motorists without convicting them of crimes

The second article, released on Thursday, centered around allegations made by three motorists who signed the form.

The drivers said the government records showed a discrepancy between the amount they had forfeited and the amount that was reported.

Channel 8 reached out to Vance for comment.

Included below is his statement in full:

“As you are aware of, Criminal Interdiction is conducted throughout the United States by many Law Enforcement agencies, several of which are in Nebraska such as Lancaster and Douglas Counties. We are members of a Federal Criminal Interdiction Task Force with Homeland Security Investigations and D.E.A. I can assure that all of our traffic stops are conducted legally and professionally, or the Federal agents would neither allow us to be part of the Task Force or would the Agents work with us as they do on many of our cases. The number of drug currency seizure cases are small in number compared to the amount of illegal narcotics we seized from the Criminal Interdiction traffic stops. The over 40 million dollars in illegal narcotics we have seized in the past four years was not mentioned in the Flat Water Free Press article which they were made aware of prior to the article. The large amounts of Fentanyl, cocaine, Heroin and methamphetamine that we have seized was never mentioned nor was the numerous illegal and stolen firearms we seized from traffic stops and the two missing and endangered minors we recovered from traffic stops was never mentioned as well as numerous wanted felons captured such as the man wanted for murder in Pennsylvania recently.

The article was very misleading when it came to the lack of prosecution of these suspects, persons involved in the justice system know that the decision on whether to prosecute or not is made by the Prosecutors office not the Deputy or the Officer on the road. Under Nebraska Law the prosecutor’s office can only prosecute for the criminal offense or seize the proceeds from the criminal offense. They can only do both when there is enough illegal drugs with the currency to charge the person with possession with intent to deliver. The prosecutor’s office makes that decision. No prosecutor neither state or Federal would take a seizure case before the courts without proof the seized currency was proceeds from narcotics sales. The judges would never allow those proceeds to be seized without clear proof. As far as the gentleman from Virgina the reporter focused on as she stated he lost his case in District Court, The appellate Court and then the Supreme Court. This should tell anyone that if all three courts upheld the seizure we had enough proof that the currency seized was proceeds from illegal drug sales.

As far as the second article alleging money being taken from the traffic stop and money seized. this is just not true at all. Our process as I explained is that once currency is discovered it remains where it was discovered under camera until a minimum of three Deputies one being a supervisor arrive on the scene. The currency is then removed while on in car camera and body camera and placed in a vault in the rear of the patrol vehicle and the key to the vault is kept by the supervisor, so the seizing Officer has no access to the seized currency and the supervisor has no access to the vault in the vehicle. The currency is then transported to the office where the currency is removed under camera and taken into the count room with a minimum of three people present and a supervisor then counted while on camera. The machine used to count the currency takes a photo of the front and back of each and every bill recording the serial number of each bill. The currency is then placed into locking bank bags and placed in the night deposit box at the bank. The evidence Tech maintains the keys for the bank bags until the currency is counted by the bank employees. Two of my staff meet as soon as possible with three bank employees at which time the bank employees bring out the bags and we give the bank employees the keys to unlock the bags and conduct the official count.

I take these allegations seriously and even though I know they are unfounded I have called in an outside entity to review the cases and conduct an investigation. I’m sure most people are aware that every Criminal Interdiction case conducted the Videos from the cases are automatically turned over the Prosecutors office whether it is a state or federal case. On the Federal cases the Homeland Security Investigations Agents receive a copy as well as the US Attorney. On the state cases the County Attorney’s Office receive a copy of all videos pertaining to the cases. These videos from the stops are reviewed prior to either the prosecution or the seizure hearings by the prosecutors. If there was any wrongdoing by the officers this would have been discovered by prosecutors and Federal Agents. The videos also contain the probable cause for the stop and the seizure of drugs and drug proceeds, for their use in the seizure hearings and court proceedings during prosecution.”

SEE ALSO: Motorists allege seized money went missing; Seward County sheriff refuses to reveal footage of stops