> They're essentially saying that no one has a legitimate cause to hold thousands of dollars in cash, so they must be doing something illicit, so we have cause to take it.

IANAL, but I'd suspect that
the usual logic goes: Usually
a person carrying a large
amount of cash is a criminal
who got the cash illegally.
So, anyone with a large amount
of cash is likely a criminal,
and we will treat them as such.

The gap here is that the person
so treated need not have done
anything wrong and are being
prosecuted due to the crimes
of others.

I doubt that there is a law
saying that having $20,000
in cash is illegal.

So,
if are going to
prosecute Joe, then need to
do so from something Joe did,
and prove he did it. That
most people with a lot of
cash got the cash illegally
doesn't mean that Joe
did anything illegal, and
there's no law against
having a lot of cash.

I've learned my lesson: Often
the police are enforcing
social norms and attitudes
instead of laws and are enforcing
these against people who
are not in the center of the
respectable middle class.

E.g., since I'm doing a startup,
I'm keeping down spending and
driving an old car. Since the
car still, with a lot of maintenance, is fine, I can
keep driving it.

But recently I had occasion to
go to a poor, largely Black,
section of town. On the
way out of that section,
I was followed closely by
a police car. I just
drove in a very legal and
normal way, and, by the time
I was out of that section of
town, the police car quit
following me. But, I learned
my lesson: At least with
an old car, stay the heck out
of a poor, Black area of town --
that's the real law.

More of the real law
is to participate in
church, JAYCEES, Lions,
school board, be well known
and liked,
make contributions to
political campaigns,
contribute to the Fraternal
Order of Police and any
police charity drives,
have some associated
decals on the windows of
my car,
drive a late model, family
car, dress well, no beard,
hair short, be known to the
local
political power structure,
etc. Be known to the police
in my neighborhood. Ah, they didn't tell me such things
in civics class.

For more, get rich and be
a very anonymous donor to
some legal efforts to
mount well funded challenges
to such highway robbery in
the courts.

AFAIK, that's just basically
how things work in the US.
In some other countries,
the citizen either (A) is too
poor to have anything
anyone would want to steal
or (B) has some money and
keeps paying off the political
power guys.

Apparently that we could
actually follow the Constitution
seems to be mostly a long
shot.

In the meanwhile, the power
structure wants (A) bend the
Constitution and slap down
the drug dealers, and likely
anyone else they don't like,
so that
when anyone looks at all
suspicious just steal any of
their valuables and (B)
put up with excesses by the
police, especially since the
excesses are mostly toward
poor people.

So, the real law
is, for any poor and/or Black stopped by
the police, look like the
old movie character stepin
fetchit, be passive,
submissive, subordinate,
subservient, obsequious,
act like a harmless child,
hang head, don't make eye
contact, keep hands in plain
view, make only slow motions,
and let the egotistical, bully thugs, with their dark, aviator sun glasses, SS like
uniforms with lots of
shiny metal attachements, get their jollies and let
the power structure be
happy with an orderly rhythm
to the community.

Otherwise
the police have wide latitude
to enforce the laws, act
as prosecutor, judge, and jury,
proscribe and execute sentences,
all on the street, based just on
anything, no charges, no due
process, nothing. So, all with
no due process at all, the police
can embarrass, insult, humiliate
innocent citizens, steal their
valuables, insert things into
their rectums and/or vaginas,
beat them with clubs,
shock them electrically,
and, for any reason or no real
reason, just shoot and kill them.

The power structure and the
police can expect that some
citizens will object.

Our Founding Fathers
understood kings, dictators,
secret police, bullies, thugs,
etc. and gave us a good
Constitution. We need to
stop making incredibly
contrived, complicated
rationalizations why
the very clear words in the
Constitution don't mean
what they very clearly do say.

Of course, the solution is
democracy: When enough citizens
get angry enough, there will
be changes.

Another solution is a lot
more video from smartphones,
dash cams, etc.

And, just now, that the
mainstream media (MSM)
likes ad revenue from
eyeballs and stories about
scandal so much, the recent
examples and video of police killing
unarmed citizens has gotten
a lot of attention.
Now in courts, commonly
a community with some police
who went way too far
gets slapped with a judgment
of several million dollars.

So, any layer of government with
a police force will need
an insurance policy, and the
rates will tend to show the
risks. A police chief whose
force causes such a several
million dollar judgment will
get to look for a new job
far from police work. Or,
money talks, and it will
be talking loud and clear
soon. And along the way,
the increased attention
may also stop the highway
robbery.