And the scanner maker gets a 7% cut. What could go wrong: "the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes"
And if the courts decided that the asset forfeiture was incorrect and reimburse the person it was stolen from—does the scanner maker still keep their cut? Or are they still due their cut?
Highwaymen don't go away, they just get new uniforms and tools.
Particularly egregious is Lt. Vincent's take:
>"If you can prove can[sic] prove[sic] that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," Vincent said about any money seized.
In other words, "if we think you could sue us and set a precedent, we will give you your money back. But if you're poor, we won't respond to your phone calls."
"What states does ERAD currently have contracts with? With what states does ERAD anticipate contracts to be signed in the next 180 days, and for all of these states, what percentages will ERAD be earning on funds seized?"
I'd need to FOIA every police department in order to do this :/ Not scalable. I can create a template that can be used whenever its discovered which police departments are using their services.
I'm in touch with the news station that has the contract, so I should be able to get it without an additional FOIA request. Once I have that, I'll recurse further if necessary.
1) ERAD training materials disseminated to law enforcement agencies (LEAs).
2) Correspondence between those LEAs and DHS, or occurring in DHS forums, regarding ERAD technology.
3) DHS reports, studies or memoranda mentioning ERAD usage in the field by DHS or any other agency.
I figure DHS Science & Technology Directorate might not be the right target. Should I just aim at DHS directly, or is there a specific group that would handle those connections between DHS and other law enforcement?
Should I structure this as three separate requests?
I found their website, and a page describing the service I believe these police are using. https://www.erad-group.com/fci
Also, I noticed that site:www.erad-group.com doesn't return anything on google, but it does on other search engines. Did ERAD request that it be removed from search results? Why would they do that? Why would they also not have a robots.txt if that is the case?
