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Justice Department Shuts Down Huge Asset Forfeiture Program
HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham reports at the Washington Post that the Department of Justice has announced that it's suspending a controversial asset forfeiture program that allows local police departments to keep a large portion of assets seized from citizens under federal law and funnel it into their own coffers. Asset forfeiture has become an increasingly contentious practice in recent years. It lets police seize and keep cash and property from people who are never convicted — and in many cases, never charged with wrongdoing. Recent reports have found that the use of the practice has exploded in recent years, prompting concern that, in some cases, police are motivated more by profits and less by justice. Criminal justice reformers are cheering the change. "This is a significant deal," says Lee McGrath, legislative counsel at the Institute for Justice. "Local law enforcement responds to incentives. And it's clear that one of the biggest incentives is the relative payout from federal versus state forfeiture. And this announcement by the DOJ changes the playing field for which law state and local [law enforcement] is going to prefer."
When the government steals they give it a nice sounding euphemism. When citizens steal they're called criminals and go to jail.
Now give the ill gotten gains back
i find it quite distressing that this was ever considered legal.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's just a violation of the 4th and 8th Amendments. After all, the Constitution doesn't mean anything, we can have a Federal Government willfully trample all over it whenever it likes...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Too bad being a stupid shit isn't illegal, then you wouldn't be one.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. - US Constitution, 4th Amendment
Asset seizures and forfeiture, especially without charges or conviction, are inherently unconstitutional. Of course, when Government gets to arbitrate what is Constitutional, it will naturally decide that a nice, open-ended income stream will always be constitutional - regardless of the actual fact.
If only more people remembered our rights existed before the Government was founded, our rights do not come from Government.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Asset forfeiture has become a program by which law enforcement can shake down citizens without and evidentiary standard, and steal that money for their own departments.
I'm sorry, but can you trust law enforcement when they profit from the misapplication of terrible laws?
For me, no way in hell ... it became a license to steal money like a bunch of crooks. And like a bunch of crooks, they stole everything which wasn't nailed down.
I bet the sheer amount of money which has essentially been stolen by a bunch of thugs with badges is vast. I mean, why wouldn't they steal money from every schmuck they encountered if they could just make shit up and claim they suspected a crime.
You want to see how corruptable police are? Give them free reign to take money without a court to decide, and you'll see exactly what we have now ... a fucking shakedown racket the mob would be proud of.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They are still taking the money. Just not sharing it with local law enforcement.
So local law enforcement agencies will now have big holes in their budgets.
So anyone want to guess how they will fill these holes? Raise local taxes . . . ? Raise the fines for traffic tickets, and hand out more tickets . . . ?
At any rate, they are not going to get by with less money.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Just call it what is was: Legalized Theft, backed by the power of law.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Getting rid of their "SWAT" team would probably save a ton of cash as well...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That will have the effect of reducing its use. It was the fact that state and local law enforcement got a cut of seized property that made it so popular with the police. That incentive is now removed, and the FBI and Federal prosecutors can keep using it against organized crime.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The obvious is going to happen once you start forcing the people who make the seizures to earn their living from it no matter how honest 99% of them are.
They are still taking the money. Just not sharing it with local law enforcement.
Here's the deal: It's not like the feds were active participants in 99% of the seizures. Basically, some podunk jurisdiction would seize the stuff, usually cash. They'd 'charge' the money, not the individual, with the suspicion of being involved in interstate drug trafficking. Note - 'intended to purchase' was a 'good enough' excuse.
In exchange for naming the FBI(for example) as a cooperating agency, even though no FBI agents were involved, it became a federal case under federal jurisdiction, until the program this article is about. In exchange for a 10% cut, the 'arresting' agency got to keep 90% of the money, which is often more generous than what state statutes allowed. Some states don't allow forfeitures this easily. Many only let the agency keep half of the money, etc...
So many state agencies were using this federal program as an end-run around the rules of their own state.
By no longer sharing the money, that removes the desire to confiscate the money in all but the most gregarious of cases.
I don't read AC A human right
That's so true. The government couldn't interfere with you tar and feathering your neighbour for his speech, or in the case of Mr Lynch, hanging them. The government couldn't interfere with your right to buy people and infringe on their rights. The government would actually help you steal other peoples property as those savages weren't actually people so you had a right to their stuff.
Obviously for the entitled, rights pre-existed, including the right to infringe on others rights, but only as private citizens instead of the traditional aristocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism