I really don't understand how this practice persisted for so long next when we have the right to due process.
For people who think it only happened to drug dealers who were difficult to prosecute; it happened to my elderly parents.
My grandfather died suddenly in Georgia and we were the closest family at the time. My parents packed up their car in a hurry and started from Texas down I-10. In Mississippi they ran into a drunk driving checkpoint. They, being elderly conservative Republican business owners driving a luxury sedan that never conceived that the police would not be on their side, consented to a search of their car. The police found an antique revolver (my dad is an avid collector) locked in its case in the trunk. That plus the $800 he had in his wallet as travel money was enough to get them thrown in jail for the weekend and their property seized as suspected drug dealers.
$8000 in local lawyer fees later they got their car back but the antique gun had 'gone missing' along with the cash. Their lawyer said they were lucky to get the car back.
I'm curious- did it change your parents' views about DUI inspection stops? If they found them innocuous (or at least constitutional) before the incident, do they still feel the same way?
I am pretty sure my dad didn't like them to begin with but the question at the time was 'do I give the cops a hard time and spend even more time out here or let them take a look and get on my way'.
Drunk driving is a serious problem, no doubt about it, but stopping everyone on an interstate to talk with them is insane overreach.
I am surprised no one's figured out the problem of analyzing traffic camera data to flag people who are driving erratically so enforcement can be both more comprehensive and targeted. I'd be wary of that solution, too, but it is far better than stopping everyone.
>but stopping everyone on an interstate to talk with them is insane overreach.
Especially when they aren't really looking for drunks, but people like your father to victimize as police fundraiser.
Anything that monetizes police action will lead to massive abuse. It blows my mind people won't accept that. The cops and the unions aren't stupid. They want that money for salary, pensions, and toys. The politicians want that funding without having to raise taxes.
So now the electorate is literally being bullied and mugged by the police. I'm really starting to like the lame-duck version of Obama. His recent moves are very much needed: encouraging municipal fiber, workers leave rights, sanctioning Russia, immigration amnesty, etc.
Unfortunately as executive orders, rather than laws, they can easily be undone by the next executive.
I think it's overly diplomatic to call this action a police fundraiser. These were highwaymen. Note they aren't doing this to their locals, they know better and that's why they're on the interstate, they're doing it on behalf of the locals. The rot is with the town itself.
Last time I went through a DUI checkpoint, they wrote more than 100 tickets for lack of proof of insurance—the most frequent citation from that event. DUI arrests? 2.
Either the insane overreach isn't effective, or DUI is a miraculously solved problem here.
Of course, it might've hurt that this was at a sane hour on an unremarkable Wednesday night.
Clearly this particular instance wasn't about catching drunk drivers or apprehending drug dealers. This is blatant arrogant thievery, while also accusing both transient travelers and their local constituents of being morons for falling for this veneer of an excuse: oh it's for drunks N drugs, OK! At the very least the police could have restricted this to race and class as subterfuge, but no this was absolutely brazen: give us your fucking money grandpa! That's what really happened.
I will bet they had a lot more resources for doing searches than they did sobriety checks for those who refused the search. The search would therefore seem fast, while you probably had an insane line waiting for a sobriety test. This is a town with significant corruption and nepotism problems, and is operating like a cartel itself.
> I really don't understand how this practice persisted for so long next when we have the right to due process.
Can someone clarify for me- I read the article, and it SEEMS to be saying "the feds will no longer be participating in this process, which will of course still be carried out by state and city police". It's more about where seized money gets allocated, than about limiting the actual seizures.
Under federal rules, the departments got to keep the forfeitures. IE: the cop who pulled you over could literally pocket the cash. 0 oversight.
Under State rules, in almost all states, the money goes into the general fund. And there is due process to actually seize the asset. We're essentially removing the incentive from the police officers to pull people over. It does them no good to take your stuff if it just goes into one big pot that they'll never see again.
The Missouri Sate constitution requires that any proceeds from seizures go to an education fund. In Missouri, not a penny should go to the local cops. Unfortunately, local cops would frequently violate the state's constitution by turning over the seizures to the feds, who would then keep a percent and give the rest back to the local cops. Of course, the local cops should have turned it over to education, as that is clearly what the state constitution requires, but they would routinely violate the constitution and keep the proceeds for themselves.
Ah yes, Missouri. The state where, as a teenager, a highway patrolman bragged to me that he pulled a guy over and arrested him because "he was Mexican and looked at me wrong." Oh, and that guy was on the school board. And he was a church youth pastor, telling this story to the youth group.
If true, then I know of at least one local police force in Missouri that's in egregious violation of this. Can you drop a link to the relevant state code?
This policy adjustment is in regard to a federal program that shared the seized proceeds with the state and local police that made the seizures using federal laws.
That is, the laws that were 'suspected' broken were federal laws, and properly the seized goods belonged to the feds. The feds then shared a large portion of that back to the state and local cops. They will no longer do so.
This removes a great deal of the incentive for locals to use federal laws for seizures.
Many states require seizures go into the state general fund, so there's no incentive there for cops to overstep, at least not financial incentives.
So in theory this should result in a pretty big reduction in unwarranted seizures.
This was the easiest way for most of the proceeds to get laundered^H^H^H^H^H^H^H sent back to the police who made the seizure. Many states have clauses where any seizures go to the General Fund, not the Police budget.
This is the biggest problem - police officers have a huge incentive to seize money when most of it goes directly to their department, and often times there is there is little to no oversight on how this money is spent: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-police-bought-with...
"One audit examined about $3.4 million in Equitable Sharing funds that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol spent from July 2009 to June 2012.
The audit found $1.9 million in unallowable and unsupported expenditures relating to salaries, overtime pay, construction, fees paid to contractors and the use of two Ford F-150 pickup trucks by non-law enforcement personnel."
There are both state and federal laws for the practice. So this will slightly decrease the situations in which the state/local police can do this. Likely to be compensated for by new state laws. And of course this doesn't stop the Federal law enforcement from doing this. Civil forfiture needs to be abolished period. It boggles my mind, as a layman, that this is considered to satisfy the requirement of "due process" and is therefore constitutional. Sure, there's a process, but it's not the due process.
Police departments may lobby for "agency keeps the proceeds" state laws, but because states usually are constitutionally required to balance their budgets, they are reluctant to move general fund things out to dedicated funds, and if the feds are moving in part due to public outcry over the practice, the same pressure out to be able to be brought on states if they start to consider mirroring the discontinued federal practice.
It might be true that a large number of self-proclaimed libertarians are idealistic, but it's certainly not true that idealism is necessary for libertarian views.
Libertarians need someone to enforce property rights. Police/Private security firms have always been the strong-arm of the ruling class, nothing about the ideology contradicts that. As that strong-arm, they will be granted special privileges and authority that they will abuse.
There are more libertarian-proposed solutions to such problems than there are libertarians. Most of these slot neatly into the category of things that could work in theory, but have never been attempted.
Once you go beyond the political mainstream, alignment between individuals drops drastically. If you can't get anything you want by compromise, you don't have to compromise on anything.
You may be surprised by the number of varying and mutually incompatible ideas that different libertarians will have regarding any particular issue, each one insisting that their idea would totally work, if only conditions X, Y, and Z could be met.
Someone whose life is affected by having a car and a few grand taken from them v. Xe Domestic Security, Ltd
Prosecution: Xe stole my car and rent money and now I have no way to earn enough credits to buy my insulin and keep my apartment.
Defense: The offender was found travelling in an erratic and suspicious manner. As per the agreement made by travelling on Private Road Supranational's private road, the traveler is subject to searches of their person and vehicle if suspected of engaging in certain dangerous activities outlined in Section VI of the contract. In addition, any property suspected of use in a criminal or dangerous activity will automatically have its ownership transferred to Private Road Supranational, as detailed in Section V. Furthermore, we have no record of ever confiscating any of the offender's property.
Judge, brought to you by Lockheed Martin: This seems to be a pretty open and shut case.
I'm not a self-identified libertarian, and I never said it was necessarily a good idea, just that public (or publicly contracted) enforcement entity with special priveleges isn't an essential feature of a libertarian system; some suggest that citizens should contract with their own enforcers, and that enforcers should have no special privileges beyond those of all citizens.
By "public adjudication" I meant that government courts -- or at least a government function of licensing and assigning adjudicators -- would continue to exist to adjudicate disputes, even though enforcement would be private.
(Many libertarians also see the government courts as last-gasp fallbacks and prefer private adjudication, but most that I've seen discuss the issue recognize the possibility of impasse in getting parties to agree on a private adjudicator, and see that some government involvement here may be essential.)
Yes some libertarians go to the extreme of anarcho-capitalist where everything is settled by insurance companies, including murder. If you, or one of your thugs kills someone, then your insurance company pays the surviving family's insurance company to compensate the family and your insurance rates go up. You don't actually go to jail, you're punished monetarily.
If you're really wealthy you have such good insurance that they negotiate sufficiently low compensation that you can in effect have anybody killed. And it's called feudalism. Or in early U.S. times, this was the American frontier, a.k.a. the wild west, and hired guns.
Libertarians think they have some new bright idea that's never been tried before to counter the fact we're ignorant violent primates. We want something enough, get pissed off enough, we become irrational. Having the irrational hire enforcers is old hat. And it leads to things like the gangs of New York, butchery in the streets, the warlords of Somalia.
These same libertarians are the first to propose both open and conceal carry (of guns) which are the #1 enemy of free speech and civil discourse. It says, "if you argue better than I do, I might just have to let my gun do the talking, so keep your mouth shut smarty pants." So I think libertarians are idiots and not to be trusted, especially if they're armed.
These same libertarians are the first to propose both open and conceal carry (of guns) which are the #1 enemy of free speech and civil discourse.
Because clearly the same cops you've been roundly criticizing as "highwaymen" elsewhere in the thread should have a monopoly on the possession of firearms.
I've got a better idea: you guys move to Somalia. I'm fine where I'm at.
The property is considered guilty, not the people whose property it is. There are even court cases against the property. John Oliver did a really good segment on it. "It is really legalised robbery by law enforcement".
A "property right" is an intangible thing where you can run to a court and say: "X took my Y." You can only assert this if you show ownership of Y. How civil asset forfeiture works is that if an officer has probable cause to believe that property is not lawfully yours, because it's the proceeds of illegal activity, he can seize it. If you contest the seizure, in court, the government has the burden of proof, by preponderance of the evidence, to show that the asset is subject to forfeiture. Preponderance of the evidence is the same burden of proof used in any civil case where the ownership of property is disputed.
The styling of the case, "Florida v. Wool Socks" has nothing to do with the "property being guilty." It's just how in rem proceedings are designated. Such a proceeding is simply one in which the lawful owner of some property is not a party. In the case of civil asset forfeiture the styling is used because the theory is that you're not the rightful owner of the property to begin with. Other contexts where it might be used is if you're enforcing a money judgment against someone who refuses to show up in court by attaching property he owns in your state. It's not that the "property is guilty" just that the case is about the property and the actual owner is absent.
if an officer has probable cause to believe that property is not lawfully yours, because it's the proceeds of illegal activity, he can seize it.
It's more than that, based on my past reading of instances of abuse of this. If the officer believes that the property could in any way be related to a crime, it can be seized. That has nothing to do with whether or not it's lawfully yours. Pretty insane, and could cover basically anything.
Exactly, people have been evicted from their homes because a drug deal took place on the front porch. It doesn't matter that the homeowners' names are on the deed. All that matters is that the house was "used in the commission of a crime". The police often times evict people with only an hour notice, so if you aren't home when they come to evict you, expect every worldly possession you own to disappear forever.
The video backs you up in many different cases. Money is seized from drivers based on the police officer's (preposterous) opinion that it will be used illegally in the future (eg to buy drugs), ignoring the reason and evidence the driver has for the money in the first place.
In Philadelphia they seized houses because of $40 of heroin (son of the owners). And then have courtrooms where this stuff can be contested, but without a judge - only the prosecutor who was involved in the first place.
There's a huge difference between ownership not changing when property itself is stolen, and the preposterous idea that ownership ceases to exist because an item was peacefully obtained using "proceeds of an illegal activity". (I'm not saying that you aren't parroting "logic" espoused by some court somewhere, I'm just pointing out that said court itself is essentially corrupt)
As for the original topic, call me when the perps are in jail. Until then, the "justice system" amounts to nothing more than another gang to be avoided.
Unless you can show me a "property right" under a scanning-tunneling microscope, I submit to you that they're an arbitrarily-defined concept. And as such, it's not "sophistry" to assume one definition of the concept, and proceed from it in a series of logical steps. In this case, the assumption is that the law creates the property right, and the law can take it away, under certain conditions. That's the "forfeiture" part.
"Corruption" refers to when a public entity doesn't follow its own rules. Following a self-consistent set of rules, the premises of which you reject, is not corruption.
Your argument essentially boils down to "words in power mean what people in power say they mean". The entire point of law is to create distributed consensus. By morphing definitions away from their plain meanings, that entire basis of law is undermined.
Which is exactly what is happening here. In a just society, one is comforted by the belief that if they're stolen from, then the institutions of society will act against (or at least condemn) the perpetrator. In the modern US, the uniformed gangs act with little concern, and then legions of legal "scholars" compose reams of justification for how what occurred was "legitimate".
Either the justice system needs to be reformed and the uniformed thugs sent to jail, or the social contract continues to degrade and we end up with revolution and collapse.
> Your argument essentially boils down to "words in power mean what people in power say they mean". Your argument essentially boils down to "words in power mean what people in power say they mean". The entire point of law is to create distributed consensus.
No, the point of law is to provide notice of the way the ruler intends to apply power. (Which is, of course, also undermined by lack of clarity in meaning of the law, but in a different way.)
Distributed consensus is the point of democratic government, which is a newer thing than law.
Unlikely. When the contractual change is sufficiently tolerable, society adapts and the idea of property rights morphs along with it. That's less expensive and demeaning than revolutions and collapse. It's an advantage compared to god's law, which is rather a bit harder to change than man's law.
When god's law changes, it classically means war, killing all the males above a certain age, marrying the women and girls off while changing their language and religion - i.e. cultural, and hence deity, decimation. So yeah, watch out for that one.
hence, if the officer decides he doesn't like you he has probably cause. After all he likes "GOOD" people
fuck, I don't care how its worded, its theft and theft by a government to big to give a fuck what you think. they have the police, they have the courts, and you have the right to shut up and eat it.
Originally, lawsuits like these against inanimate objects were a legal convenience used when the courts had no idea who the owner was. Using them for asset forfeiture is a nasty piece of sophistry used to dodge normal due process requirements.
What is there not to fear about sharia law? Personally I'd be terrified of living under a legal system in which many of the basic rights I take for granted simply cease to exist, and in which my wife and any daughters I have are considered second-class citizens.
> "Forfeiture has its basis in British admiralty law"
British admiralty law is the bane of the American legal system:
"Next to revenue (taxes) itself, the late extensions of the jurisdiction of the admiralty are our greatest grievance. The American Courts of Admiralty seem to be forming by degrees into a system that is to overturn our Constitution and to deprive us of our best inheritance, the laws of the land. It would be thought in England a dangerous innovation if the trial, of any matter on land was given to the admiralty."
-- Jackson v. Magnolia, 20 How. 296 315, 342 (U.S. 1852)
This quote is not originally from 1852; it's from Boston in 1769, where the colonists were complaining about the abuses of George III. It has nothing to do with the modern American legal system; the US does not have separate admiralty courts and all maritime cases fall under the jurisdiction of federal district courts.
Admiralty courts used to only have jurisdiction over the sea as far as the tides ran up the rivers. Somehow that all changed. I think it first got extended to the Great Lakes because of action during the war of 1812. Then they took it up river and then covering all land drained by rivers and all wetlands. It was one way of getting Fed jurisdiction over state jurisdiction land. The Feds used to have only jurisdiction over forts, magazines and post offices inside states. This is why the Fed owns so little land in the first 13 states.
> to deprive us of our best inheritance, the laws of the land
"Laws of the land" refers to English Common Law, and if that's what the battle was to save, it's already lost. We've already wrecked our own common law system pretty thoroughly with the proliferation of bodies of civil law. Legislators can't leave our court systems well-enough alone.
I remember seeing this on John Oliver and thinking that it was no different than highway robbery.
I've literally seen shakedowns in third world countries that weren't as bad as what the police have been doing in the US. They just take a bribe and move on, you'd still have your car and most of your wallet.
The acts of the police in the US make me wonder why they even joined the police force in the first place?
I think all of the cynics on here (including me) should pause for a moment and reflect on what is happening in this case: the government is going to do something that will cost it revenue, just because its the right thing to do and the people wanted it.
If you want to be cynical, here is a good reason. Maybe they are revoking cops "privateer" license for now in order to have a carrot to negotiate with later. Say, in a year the justice dept needs police to "opt in" to some new initiative. They can simply dangle seizures in front of them to get compliance.
Also, the policy allows exceptions. So they could do it on a "case by case" basis, with individual departments and so on. And, if they did change the policy outright, well it hardly requires a press release.
I'm tentatively excited. But I cannot see anything in it for anyone with power. So I just don't see how this would become law.
They're shutting down a program that let them steal $3 billion without due process. Hey that's great and all but I don't classify it as cynical to wonder why it ever started in the first place.
I think it started out with good intentions, but like so many
great ideas it was abused. I am very leary of any new law
because they take years to get off the books, and many innocent people are punished. Three strikes--great, until
guys are put away for stealing a candy bar. Seat belt laws--great, until cops actively looked for any violations, and the
fees went up. Drunk driving crackdown--fine until cops started pulling over everyone(profiling) who is out past 10 p.m. on a friday--looking for that rare person over .10%. Even
building code statues should be throughly reviewed before making them standard practice.(The average person has no idea
just how any codes are involved in building a structure.) Yes, there was a time I could get in my car and not worry about getting pulled over, or having to go over a check list(
insurance, lights working, licence plate light working, right
time of night, checking Trapster before a long trip, right people(yes-it's what you think) in my car; and it was beautiful!
If anything that makes me a bit better. Somehow a $3B industry has been stalled somewhat by The Process. I mean, that is a hekuva lot of money to pull the brakes on.
>Holder said there is also less need for the Equitable Sharing program.
>“Today, however, every state has either criminal or civil forfeiture laws, making the federal adoption process less necessary,” Holder’s statement said.
> ...police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments.
In other words, no longer will your rights be violated vis-a-vis the forfeiture of assets - without proof of a crime - under Federal Law. Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
Reading between the lines (e.g. following the money), it is clear the State's are behind this change and not the outrage of law makers at the notion police forces are strong-arm robbing ordinary citizens. Whereas under the Federal law money goes direct to the police agency and under state laws the money goes to a State fund where presumably the State law makers can get their greedy little hands on the money.
Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
Fortunately, it's less attractive for local police now: a good number of states apparently have laws on the books that require the proceeds of asset seizure to go to the state's general fund (or in some cases something specific like the state education fund), rather than allowing police to pocket it for their own uses. The federal "sharing" program allowed police to skirt around this and keep the assets themselves. I suspect there will be far fewer instances of seizures once the police realize they aren't going to see any of it.
> In other words, no longer will your rights be violated vis-a-vis the forfeiture of assets - without proof of a crime - under Federal Law. Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
The reason local police have been using federal law to do this is that seizures under federal law belong to the feds, but federal law has a proceeds-sharing system which gives most of it back to the seizing agency, where state laws usually reserve seizure proceeds under state law to the state general fund. Without the agency-specific revenue enhancement provided by federal seizure rules, there is far less incentive for police to pursue seizure.
(That doesn't mean they won't still when they have other motivations, like "punishing" a target that they don't have sufficient evidence to criminally charge. But by removing the federal option, a powerful incentive for the use of seizure has also been removed.)
This quote is why I will never go back to the USA unless somethings radically change:
“It seems like a continual barrage against police,” said John W. Thompson, interim executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association. “I’m not saying there’s no wrongdoing, but there is wrongdoing in everything.”
This is the head of a police organisation basically saying stop picking on us because other people rob citizens too. By the way I am an American and left in the years after 9/11 because shit like this was starting to become more and more common. It was bad for me there because I had a strange accent - I was raised in London, and I am half black.
Before 9/11 conversations would be like "Where are you from? Oh, Europe! Why I you here? I've always heard wonderful things about the place?" Afterwards it turned to "WHERE ARE YOU FROM AND WHY ARE YOU HERE!?!
It was sad to see a lot of Americans I met go from a totally open, inquisitive nature to closed paranoia. Really makes me depressed about the future of my country.
Republicans are going to blow this because they hate Obama and Holder. Police departments and their unions are a huge component of the pension liability blowing a hole in state budgets. With all the blowback recently, now is the perfect time to knock them down a peg or two in a way that's going to get bipartisan support if the message is crafted right.
Plus, who's going to buy all that nifty "war on drugs" gear when the police no longer have "free money" to purchase? Republicans will definitely shoot this down for the reasons you mentioned, and I'm sure will also hear from local constituents concerned that they're neighborhood will now be overrun with drug dealers due to this policy change.
Holder’s action comes as members of both parties in
Congress are working together to craft legislation to
overhaul civil asset forfeiture. Last Friday, Sens. Charles
E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with
Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers
Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end
Equitable Sharing.
It actually seems to be a bipartisan thing right now.
> It actually seems to be a bipartisan thing right now.
Virtually everything these past few years has been bipartisan, up to the point it became higher-profile and associated with Obama who (rightly or wrongly) is an incredibly polarizing figure.
It goes all the way back to Obamacare, which was solidly bipartisan (I mean in Congress, not merely in concept) and which Republicans in committee had a veto pen over, particularly in the Senate.
Until it fell directly into the spotlight and became too associated with Obama's platform.
This has happened over and over and over since 2008.
>Plus, who's going to buy all that nifty "war on drugs" gear when the police no longer have "free money" to purchase?
The federal laws that grants military surplus to local police is very, very generous. The sunk cost is next to nothing. Maintenance costs are pretty much it. The militarization of police continues even without this money.
My uncle was a police commander and some of these donations actually became onerous. The one I remember him mentioning were gas masks. As I remember the force was required to have them and while they were given the masks through some grant there's some part of the mask (filter cartridge) had to be replaced every N months and actually cost the department a considerable sum
Obama is killing it as a lame duck President. If he would have nutted up and acted this way throughout his Presidency, Democrats would be golden right not and not fighting for their political lives.
Agree completely with th exception that it was the whole Democratic party and not just Obama. For six years they kept on putting things off until "after the election" so as not to hurt their chances for winning. In the end it made it obvious that they were guided by self interest and not by serving the people.
I've been noting this dynamic for a ways now, the earliest reference I can find is last May, though I thought I'd mentioned it earlier (on G+).
Throughout his presidency, Obama has been constrained by a legislature he at best could only partially rely on -- his initial filibuster-proof Senate lasted less than three months as I recall. His initial approach was working with the Republic party, though that failed. He was then concerned with both midterm and his own re-election, with very narrow margins to preserve.
With his final mid-terms out of the way, he's in an interesting place: not empowered (his party controls neither house of Congress), but neither impotent. He has a Senate which can either filibuster or uphold a veto, he has veto authority himself, and can act to impose regulatory measures within his Executive authority. I predicted, and he seems to be acting, with great conviction since the last election than in the six years prior.
I anticipate another two years of this. Not smooth sailing, but far more decisive action.
I am happy about this, but note that besides the (fairly narrow) "public safety" exception mentioned in the article the order also exempts joint task forces and joint federal-state investigations [1]. I don't know how those work, but my cynical expectation is for those activities to increase to make up for some of the lost revenue.
So... how long is this going to last? The article says Holder's leaving his office. When he leaves, what stops the next person from simply reinstating this policy?
Congress has been feeling a ton of heat since the big newspaper exposés of a few months ago. Plenty of people are pissed, irrespective of political party.
From the OP here:
Holder’s action comes as members of both parties in Congress are working together to craft legislation to overhaul civil asset forfeiture. Last Friday, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing.
Grassley praised Holder’s decision on Friday.
“We’re going to have a fairer justice system because of it,” Grassley said. “The rule of law ought to protect innocent people and civil asset forfeiture hurt a lot of people.”
He said he planned to continue pressing for legislative reforms.
“I commend the department for this step and look forward to working with them on comprehensive forfeiture reform that protects Americans’ property rights,” Sensenbrenner said. “Equitable sharing has become a tool too often used to bypass state law. Forfeitures should be targeted and must have appropriate procedural protections.”
This seems reasonably bipartisan, but I'm not sure how broad the support is. Of course there's also the risk that even if it is bipartisan with broad support that singeing will overreach and use its popularity to get something else passed and that effort will kill the broader bill.
> When he leaves, what stops the next person from simply reinstating this policy?
You mean how to keep politicians from stealing from their constituents? I have been asking statists for an answer to that question for a long time. Don't hold your breath. It's a flawed system and you just found the core issue that has no solution inside statism. If anyone disagrees with this statement, instead of down-voting please kindly point to an existing example of a State that has solved the problem of corrupt politicians.
Now that you found the core problem of statism, you owe yourself some reading. It's a fun journey. Good luck.
Nope, circular logic. Who enforces the transparency? The state?
edit: re: edit:
The point is that the call for transparency as a solution presupposes the whole "consent of the governed" idea, which is laughable. Consider accident of birth and majority tyranny.
I remember a radio show on Canadian CBC, which talked about the danger of having goods, cash or otherwise being confiscated by less savoury deputies of the law in U.S.
It aired just last year, but I don't remember the exact name of the broadcast.
Of course, Holder does this as he is leaving, to score some brownie points. What was stopping him from doing this earlier? Nothing. The WaPo did a huge expose a few months back about the abuses in this system, but nobody cared. And others have been complaining about it for many years.
So now that he doesn't need the backing of the LEO community, but wants to line up speaking engagements after he retires, he throws the people a bone.
I know this is good news, but when I read it, the first thing I thought was "this would have saved quite a bit of trouble for Clay Davis' driver in The Wire". Which is not actually true, to be fair -- it could still happen in the same way, the only thing changing is what happens to the money after it's seized (well, the bits that Herc and Carver won't stuff in their pockets, at least).
The whole problem with this is when he is gone, it could be back again, ie. 2016
Justice for all is such an complete illusion in this country and the worst part is the people who breathlessly defend police until suddenly one day they get an eye opener and then it is too late.
To see both sides of this issue, you have to understand the thinking that brought this sort of legislation into use. Let's say you have some bad guy, whether he/she's a low-level crack dealer that sells on the streets or a gang leader who has all kinds of stuff going on.
When you arrest this person, what happens to their assets that they've (assumingly) illegally obtained? The hundred thousand in drug money? The guns, high end electronics, luxury cars, etc?
You weaken the individual criminal and their gangs by taking their money away. It's far to easy to just pass those assets on to another person and they can simply assume the role. And after the person does their 5-10 years in prison should they be released back to what they had obtained through illegal activity?
Leaving aside the specific laws in question (to avoid derailing this into a discussion on the sanity of drug laws), it seems completely reasonable to seize assets generated by illegal activity, if such activity has been proven in a court of law. The accused remains innocent until proven guilty, and the seizure should be tied directly to a guilty verdict and included as part of sentencing. (In the case of a crime involving one or more victims, most notably theft, the proceeds should go directly to those victims.)
Today however, the processes for property seizure occur almost independently from the procedures of the criminal justice system; seizures can occur without any guilty verdict, and there's no guarantee that property will be returned to innocent people.
You hold the assets until the accused is either found guilty or innocent. If they are innocent you return the assets. (Never mind that they are now doing exactly that to prevent people from using their own money to pay for their own defense.)
When we grant law enforcement authority, we are extending them trust not to abuse it. They have failed to not abuse it, therefore the authority should be revoked. So yes, drug dealers should keep their money, so that random people don't get robbed by the police. If the police whine, tell them it's their own fault for abusing their power. (Of course this is idealistic garbage, the police are politically entrenched and rarely ever lose any power.)
If you believe in the Constitution, there really is no "other side" to this issue. The intent of the 4th amendment is clear. It says, in plain English, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
There is no reasonable way to reconcile this with taking things from people on little to no evidence based on a lawsuit against the items rather than the owners.
I would argue that there should be no drug prohibition to begin with since it's all non-violent transactions among consenting people, but that aside, I would rather the crack dealer keep his spoils (which he didn't steal, unlike the cops) and live with that than innocent people getting pillaged.
I have had a car seized from me without even being arrested or charged with a crime. The complete lack of due process is the problem, not seizure from people who have actually been tried and found guilty of a suitable offense. I don't think most people would complain about assets being seized from bonfide drug lords or the guy down the street with fancy rims and gold chains.
I am not clear, but I suspect laws existed to confiscate ill gotten gains from convicted criminals before this forfeiture began in the 80s. RICO perhaps?
Regardless of inspiration or intention, this process is highly flawed and it's far past time to end seizures from people who have not even been charged with a crime.
The second major issue is distributing the money to individual police officers. This combined with the lack of due process creates far too much incentive and ability for crooked police officers to seize funds motivated by their own self interest.
Awesome, and we can resume doing that--assuming it needs doing--once we've stamped out the repeated cases of some random person being pulled over for the "crime of DWB" with a few thousand dollars in his car being taken by the local police department because he "looked guilty."
In your example, there is a person that is arrested and convicted of a crime. I don't believe this is changing. The part of civil asset forfeiture that people are upset about is when the property is seized without anyone being convicted of a crime.
I believe problem is lack of due process (i.e. it is civil matter) + incentives for local police do this due most of proceeds awarded to agency who confiscated it.
I'll have to watch to make sure that this isn't something sneaky, but if he's really putting a stop to it this could be significant.
Some states have already legislated to prohibit this, but the federal program allowed their own police forces to sidestep the prohibitions... effectively making it impossible to fix at the state level.
Don't get me wrong, Obama and Holder are both shitbags, but this makes them slightly less shitbaggish, even in my own eyes. Two or three more things like this, I might even be forced to change my opinion of them.
Won't change a thing. All it will take is the good old standby of "disorderly conduct" to determine that a crime has been committed as justification for a seizure. Look at a cop the wrong way and your cash is as good as gone.
Except "disorderly conduct" is not a federal charge, and thus can't be used to skirt around this decision. Holder's decision obviously does not affect state and local seizure laws.
I really don't understand how this practice persisted for so long next when we have the right to due process.
For people who think it only happened to drug dealers who were difficult to prosecute; it happened to my elderly parents.
My grandfather died suddenly in Georgia and we were the closest family at the time. My parents packed up their car in a hurry and started from Texas down I-10. In Mississippi they ran into a drunk driving checkpoint. They, being elderly conservative Republican business owners driving a luxury sedan that never conceived that the police would not be on their side, consented to a search of their car. The police found an antique revolver (my dad is an avid collector) locked in its case in the trunk. That plus the $800 he had in his wallet as travel money was enough to get them thrown in jail for the weekend and their property seized as suspected drug dealers.
$8000 in local lawyer fees later they got their car back but the antique gun had 'gone missing' along with the cash. Their lawyer said they were lucky to get the car back.