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Private Police Intelligence Network Shares Data and Targets Cash
Advocatus Diaboli writes Operating in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal entities, Black Asphalt members exchanged tens of thousands of reports about American motorists, many of whom had not been charged with any crimes, according to a company official and hundreds of internal documents obtained by The Post. For years, it received no oversight by government, even though its reports contained law enforcement sensitive information about traffic stops and seizures, along with hunches and personal data about drivers, including Social Security numbers and identifying tattoos. Black Asphalt also has served as a social hub for a new brand of highway interdictors, a group that one Desert Snow official has called 'a brotherhood.' Among other things, the site hosts an annual competition to honor police who seize the most contraband and cash on the highways. As part of the contest, Desert Snow encouraged state and local patrol officers to post seizure data along with photos of themselves with stacks of currency and drugs. Some of the photos appear in a rousing hard-rock video that the Guthrie, Okla.-based Desert Snow uses to promote its training courses.
That is correct. This is a legalized armed-robbery ring preying on US travelers. That, folks, is how low this country has fallen.
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United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency
"If you can't prove the crime, don't confiscate a dime."
-- some blatant pinko commie, probably Thomas Jefferson
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Right, I've run into this before. Always refuse a search. When you do that, if they are a police officer or not will become apparently rather quickly. Non-police will stall and try to get you to hang around so they can bully you into it. Ask if you're under arrest or otherwise being detained against your will, if not, leave. Have no further discussion with that person. Keep in mind that even the police departments get to keep seized cash. It may not go directly into their pocket but it goes to buying them new squad cars, weapons, vests and even towards their bonuses and promotions. So they have a very strong incentive to "Find" something on you. In a large metropolitian department it may not seem so direct to the officers. But you get into your average town that only has half a doze cops and finding a couple of hundred K in a trunk becomes a big win for them.
Even worse it's using things like RICO; which are intended for ongoing criminal enterprises (like a cartel or organized crime) as a tool to steal money from individuals.
Civil forfeiture consists of your property being the defendant, and you have no standing in the case.
Nothing better than seizing an asset, denying the owner standing in the case, and then keeping whatever was seized regardless of criminal charges filed against the owner.
Carrying cash is now essentially illegal. Ideally the police would need to prove illegal actions to keep it, or worse, you'd have to prove it was legit. But no; now they just assume it's dirty, and keep it -- with or without a charge (let alone a conviction).
Law enforcement doing their job — and bragging about it — is fine. All professions do that, it is normal.
I don't even mind them seizing the (illegal) drugs, but possession of cash is not against the law. Unfortunately, a loophole in the American legal thinking (as well as the British, which we inherited) does not provide much protection to a person's property . Nowhere near as much as to the person himself.
The Executive can seize cash, vehicles, and even real estate without Judiciary oversight or approval — and that ought to stop. Their justification — that what they are seizing things was used for "criminal activity" — comes into play, before anyone is convicted in any criminality.
That must stop. A judge may impose limitations on using of the suspect property (and fund-transfer) — the same way movement limitations are imposed on a person, while investigation is ongoing or a trial is pending. But no seizures ought to be permitted until a "Guilty" verdict is pronounced and the sentencing enumerates, what's to be seized as a punishment.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Privatization is a means by which corrupt bureaucrats hide the largess of government from an unsuspecting populace. Then they run on a record of "shrinking" the government.
It is more than that. It is wealth transfer from government employees to corporate owners. They sell it is a cost reduction that comes from using private employees who get paid less and don't get very good benefits because of competition between bidders. But after a year or two the institutional knowledge makes it extremely difficult to change to a new service provider so th company gets a lock on the contract, raises prices to match or even exceed the original costs but the employees remain underpaid and the difference goes into the pockets of the corporate owners.
You end up with the worst of both worlds - bureaucratic inefficiency and poverty-level wages. At least with direct government employees they were paid well enough to spend money in the local economy. This just sucks the local tax dollars out and puts it into the international stock market.
Those are very relevant examples of the British police incompetence resulting in dead citizens. The thing is... there are four of them, and they occurred in a period of twice as many years. Even if you add up all of the fatal British police shootings since 2000, including ones that were 100% justified, in self-defense, and recorded by the ubiquitous cameras, you will still come to about one tenth of the lowest estimate of police shootings in the US for one year.
The Brits can go years without any fatal police shootings, and the total times service weapons are discharged is usually in the dozens per year. For comparison, last year, there were four fatal police shootings in the US county (no 'r') in which I work. Two in the one where I live, plus a possible bloodbath, in the town were I live, which was avoided because some brave policemen decided to disregard procedure, by rushing and disarming a suspect instead of opening fire on him and his friends.
If anything, I have been amazed at the videos in which British cops subdue maniacs who are waving various weapons around. Make a Google search. You will find videos of literally dozens of cops spending a good portions of an hour in ultimately successful attempts not to kill people who in the US would be getting a bellyful of lead within seconds.
I'm not even going to argue whether it's a good thing that these policemen and policewomen are risking their lives to capture those people. I'm not going to say that I would want the cops in my town to act like British cops. But it is a fact that British style policing results in a lot fewer lethal shootings that ours, per capita.
No good deed goes unpunished...