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Oklahoma State Troopers Use New Device To Seize Bank Accounts During Traffic Stops (news9.com)
mi writes from a report via news9.com KWTV: KWTV writes, "You may have heard of civil asset forfeiture. That's where police can seize your property and cash without first proving you committed a crime; without a warrant and without arresting you, as long as they suspect that your property is somehow tied to a crime. Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards. If a trooper suspects you may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan any cards you have and seize the money." But do not worry: "If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent.
We abandoned that shit here in the U.S. decades ago. We setup black sites to hold innocent people so they fall between the cracks of the constitutional system We even had to set up special courts specifically designed to circumvent constitutional rights and push victims through the system more rapidly and cheaply.
And the Republicans and Democrats just cry "terrorism" and "gun violence" and think that solves the nation's problems.
I've never understood the reasoning behind this. How can in inanimate object commit a crime?
IT WASN'T ME OFFICER! MY COMPUTER DID THE HACKING WHILE I WATCHED IN HORROR!
Hmmm....
I don't know what the current number is, but there is an income level below which most convicted criminals live. Below that level, lots of crime; above it, relatively little.
Now, below that income level, see what the proportions of the population are racially; what percentage of people living below that level are black, hispanic, white, etc.
Now, look at the numbers of those groups which are in jail/prison. You'll find that it almost exactly mirrors the general proportions of the population below that income level.
TL;DR—Crime is caused by poverty, not race. I know, it doesn't fit the narrative of the pampered children who frequent this site these days, but it is, nonetheless, true.
"The source article says specifically it lets them take the funds off of a pre-paid card. It says nothing about bank accounts, credit cards, etc."
ERAD does not transfer money from banks, but the cops can use it to scan your ATM card referncing a bank account. That means that if you get caught by Oklahoma cops in a civil forfeiture stop, immediately close any bank accounts represented by cards in your wallet and transfer them somewhere else before the cops get a signoff from some compliant local court on tapping the bank accounts they found.