Another long standing attck on the Bill of rights

PLC1

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and no one seems to mind at all.

Asset forfeiture:

The police can take your house, car, boat, jewelry and cash, without paying for it, even if you haven’t been charged with a crime. They can keep your property for as long as they want. You’ll need to file a claim to try and get it back.

You don't have to be even charged, let alone arraigned or convicted, and they can take your property without paying for it. You can file a claim to try to get it back, but it won't be free, you can bet.

This outrageous abuse of power has been going on for years, and no one seems to mind.

The justification for it is to take the profits out of criminal activity, particularly the sale of drugs, but the kicker is that no one has to even attempt to prove that the property owner is guilty of jaywalking in order to take the property.

Now, somewhere I remember reading about not giving up life, liberty, or property without due process. That must have been in some old, dusty tome that doesn't matter in the modern world.
 
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This is why im for killing cops on the street. Cops can rob you they robbed me of $115 citation. Thats why when i hear a deputy or an officer gets shot on the news i cheer! And This guy is an Hero!
 
All because cops can get away with this shit
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PLC, such laws seem to only apply to the blue collar worker. Such individuals are not high profile, the do not have the political or public clout necessary to escape the steamroller of government. How many times have we heard about a multi-million dollar pro-baller that gets busted with weed/coke? These are very high profile busts yet such individuals never seem to fall prey to the asset forfeiture laws - despite having much more to lose - and I would posit that enforcing AF laws against such persons would result in massive public uprisings against the laws.

Basically, the government can take everything from a nobody and get away with it, but they know better than to try to take everything away from someone likely to have public support.
 
PLC, such laws seem to only apply to the blue collar worker. Such individuals are not high profile, the do not have the political or public clout necessary to escape the steamroller of government. How many times have we heard about a multi-million dollar pro-baller that gets busted with weed/coke? These are very high profile busts yet such individuals never seem to fall prey to the asset forfeiture laws - despite having much more to lose - and I would posit that enforcing AF laws against such persons would result in massive public uprisings against the laws.

Basically, the government can take everything from a nobody and get away with it, but they know better than to try to take everything away from someone likely to have public support.
That may be so.

It's time we, the "little people" did begin to pay attention to what they do to us "nobodies". There are a lot more of us than there are of the high profile spoiled rich kids.
 
PLC, such laws seem to only apply to the blue collar worker. Such individuals are not high profile, the do not have the political or public clout necessary to escape the steamroller of government. How many times have we heard about a multi-million dollar pro-baller that gets busted with weed/coke? These are very high profile busts yet such individuals never seem to fall prey to the asset forfeiture laws - despite having much more to lose - and I would posit that enforcing AF laws against such persons would result in massive public uprisings against the laws.

Basically, the government can take everything from a nobody and get away with it, but they know better than to try to take everything away from someone likely to have public support.

the laws are austensively aimed as grabbing assets thought to have been bought with ill gotten gains. I guess its debatable as to whether pro sports are ill gotten or not but millionaire drug dealers are similarly wealthy and if cash is the yardstick for somebodyness.....

I'm concerned about how the bar is set on the determination of the ill gotten thing. is any proof required ? how much etc
 
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Depends on your definition of the word "proof"...

The Forfeiture Racket

Police and prosecutors won't give up their license to steal.

It's a good article, worth a read if you're interested in learning more about how the law is used/abused.


That is an excellent article and it clearly proves the tyrannical nature of big government gone wild. It is appalling what the police, prosecutors, and the courts are doing with forfeiture laws. Police and prosecutors benefit from these unlawful takings. It is truly amazing.

My personal experience:
In the late 90s, one of my tenants in a two family rental house I owned, was chased by the cops back to my house where he was arrested for drug possession. The cops padlocked my house (the lower unit was vacant) and placed bright red stickers on the doors and several windows claiming this was crime scene and that the house was under forfiture because it was a drug house. WTF!!!

I was NEVER notified by the cops or the district court. I happened to drive by the house a few days after the event which was how I found out. I contacted the cops who told me what happened and more or less said tough sh*t...I should have known my tenant was a druggy...Landlords apparently are considered Godlike in that we are supposed to be all knowing....

Long story short, I luckily had a close friend who at the time was a city commissioner. I immediately contacted him and he spoke with the cops and prosecutor and got them to remove the forfeiture. Had I not had this friend, who knows what would have happened.


From the article...


Municipalities have come to rely on confiscated property for revenue. Police and prosecutors use forfeiture proceeds to fund not only general operations but junkets, parties, and swank office equipment. A cottage industry has sprung up to offer law enforcement agencies instruction on how to take and keep property more efficiently. And in Indiana, where Anthony Smelley is still fighting to get his money back, forfeiture proceeds are enriching attorneys who don’t even hold public office, a practice that violates the U.S. Constitution.

Because the property itself is on trial, the owner has the status of a third-party claimant. Once the government has shown probable cause of a property’s “guilt,” the onus is on the owner to prove his innocence. The parents of a drug-dealing teenager, for instance, would have to show they had no knowledge the kid was using the family car to facilitate drug transactions. Homeowners have to show they were unaware that a resident was keeping drugs on the premises. Anyone holding cash in close proximity to illicit drugs may have to document that he earned the money legitimately.
When owners of seized property put up a legal fight (and the majority do not), the cases are almost always heard by judges, not juries. In some states forfeiture claimants don’t even have the right to a jury trial. But even in states where they do, owners tend to waive that right, because jury proceedings are longer and more expensive. Federal forfeiture claimants are technically guaranteed a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, but can lose the right if they fail to reply in a timely manner to sometimes complicated government notices of seizure.

The Supreme Court this spring will rule on Alvarez v. Smith, a challenge to Illinois’ forfeiture statute, which mostly mirrors the 1984 federal law—property can be seized without a warrant, retained using only probable cause; the government can use hearsay, defendants cannot; the burden of proof rests largely on those who have their stuff seized; and even victorious defendants cannot recover court costs or attorney fees.

National Public Radio reported in 2008 that in Kingsville, Texas, a town of 25,000, “Police officers drive high-performance Dodge Chargers and use $40,000 digital ticket writers. They’ll soon carry military-style assault rifles, and the SWAT team recently acquired sniper rifles.” All this equipment was funded with proceeds from highway forfeitures.
Texas prosecutors benefited too. Former Kimble County, Texas, District Attorney Ron Sutton used forfeiture money to pay the travel expenses for him and 198th District Judge Emil Karl Pohl to attend a conference in Hawaii. It was OK, the prosecutor told NPR, because Pohl approved the trip. (The judge later resigned over the incident.) Shelby County, Texas, District Attorney Lynda Kay Russell, whose district includes Tenaha, used forfeiture money to pay for tickets to a motorcycle rally and a Christmas parade. Russell is also attempting to use money from the forfeiture fund to pay for her defense against a civil rights lawsuit brought by several motorists whose property she helped take. In 2005, the district attorney in Montgomery County, Texas, had to admit that his office spent forfeiture money on an office margarita machine. The purchase got attention when the office won first place in a margarita competition at the county fair.

But here, too, things aren’t always as they seem. In Missouri, for example, forfeited property is supposed to go to the state’s public schools. But in 1999 a series of reports in The Kansas City Starshowed how Missouri police agencies were circumventing state law. After seizing property, local police departments would turn it over to the DEA or another federal agency. Under federal law, the federal agency can keep 20 percent or more of the money; the rest, up to 80 percent, goes back to the local police department that conducted the investigation. None of the money in these cases goes to the schools.
The Kansas City Star investigation made national news at the time, but Kessler says the practice of circumventing earmarking through federal “adoption” is now common all over the country. “It happens a lot,” he says. “It clearly goes against the intent of the state legislatures that passed these laws, but I don’t know of any state that has made a serious effort to prevent it from happening.”
 
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