Post: #1

I came across this old article from the New Yorker this evening and I was dumbfounded.

Excluding things involving horrific physical atrocities committed by humans against other humans (wars, terrorists, genocide, crazy serial killers, torture, etc.), this was the most shocking thing I have ever read in my entire life.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/...ntPage=all

Post: #2

Asset forfeiture laws are complete garbage. I believe at least 80% of the people who have their property seized are never even charged with a crime. And then you must prove that the money wasn't acquired illegally. Can any attorney on the forum advise us on how one proves a negative? Land of The Free my ass.

Post: #3

These are pretty scary laws too. I read an article a few years back, the police in some podunk Texas town were busted for pulling people over who were going to or going from a Casino. They'd be all "you're brown and have $25k cash, it's gotta be illegal" and take it.

Post: #4

That article just re-emphasizes the need for citizens to inform themselves of their rights.

Don't answer questions. Don't consent to a search. Don't follow the cops to the station.

Everyone on this forum, and any citizen of the U.S. needs to know this shit like the back of their hand:

http://www.policecrimes.com/police.html

Post: #5

I'm bumping this because of how incredibly fucked up it is.

Kind of like how it used to be a 'conspiracy' that the government is widely surveilling our every communication, until it turned out that was completely true, beyond even our wildest and most extreme suspicions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surv...esent%29). It's 'for terrorism', of course, even though 99.9% of its use has been for prosecuting domestic offenses.

The long and short of it: police, and other government agencies, can rob you of your property. This isn't even just IRS-style theft from your bank account. This is literal high-way robbery, where a man wearing a costume and carrying a gun accosts you on a highway and robs you of your cash.





It is now crystal clear that the government is not a government. It is a posse of bandits and oppressive thugs. Might be time for another one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution.

Post: #6

I'm no fan of asset forfeiture (the ATF has made it a goddamned industry), but this article's a sham. Read further in. It implies this is all Reagan's fault for wanting to shrink public spending, thus the police had no choice but to implement this fascist strategy of taking everything that isn't nailed down to fund these ridiculous drug missions.

Writer also plays the race card towards the end of the article.

But I acknowledge the other points that the U.S. has quickly become a police state.

Post: #7

(05-10-2014 12:19 AM)Tytalus Wrote:  These are pretty scary laws too. I read an article a few years back, the police in some podunk Texas town were busted for pulling people over who were going to or going from a Casino. They'd be all "you're brown and have $25k cash, it's gotta be illegal" and take it.

You don't just have to be brown. You can be young too.

I know someone in Maryland who kept cash on him because he played poker and he got pulled over for a DUI. They found around $1000 in the car and kept it. He was around 20 at the time, so his parents went to the cops and asked about. "That's our policy." Policy to steal? I guess so. He never got the money back.

Moral: Do not carry large sums of cash because the government can confiscate it, sad to say. Along with political correctness, surveillance, and people getting fired for having "incorrect" opinions, this is yet another way we've become the old Soviet Union.

Post: #8

I carry large sums of money. Civil asset forfeiture is wrong, but there is also a solution to the problem if you do need to carry large sums of money.

Don't drink and drive, do drugs and drive, or have drugs on you when traveling with cash, obey the traffic laws, and if you get pulled over, have your cash hidden in your car, not in your wallet.

Although stories about these injustices annoy me, it amazes me how much some people, some who are quite old, have a view of the police as something akin to superheroes when a more accurate portrayal is found in Robin Hood, where the police are nothing more than protectors of the rich and behave like petty criminals.

Respect the police and government for what they are, a gang with authority, act accordingly, and you will more than likely never have any cash stolen or any bad interactions with them save a few tickets every decade.

Post: #9

(06-08-2015 04:38 PM)KorbenDallas Wrote:  I carry large sums of money. Civil asset forfeiture is wrong, but there is also a solution to the problem if you do need to carry large sums of money.

Don't drink and drive, do drugs and drive, or have drugs on you when traveling with cash, obey the traffic laws, and if you get pulled over, have your cash hidden in your car, not in your wallet.

Although stories about these injustices annoy me, it amazes me how much some people, some who are quite old, have a view of the police as something akin to superheroes when a more accurate portrayal is found in Robin Hood, where the police are nothing more than protectors of the rich and behave like petty criminals.

Respect the police and government for what they are, a gang with authority, act accordingly, and you will more than likely never have any cash stolen or any bad interactions with them save a few tickets every decade.

While I agree that "the best way to avoid being a victim of police corruption and abuse of power is just to avoid having to interact with officers in the first place", it's never a good idea to just ignore something like this. The fact that they get away with taking large sums of money from people simply because they are large sums of money means that something needs to change.

Post: #10

Rand Paul is the only prominent person talking about asset forfeiture laws and has made it a cornerstone of his criminal justice reforms. Rand's brought it up a lot of times that it should not occur unless there's probable cause that a crime has been committed, and he held up Lynch's nomination for AG for months because she supports these laws.

Anyone who seriously thinks this is a free country when things like this occur is a retard. I suppose for some, being free simply means not being in an obvious jail cell.

Post: #11

(06-08-2015 06:10 PM)Libertas Wrote:  Rand Paul is the only prominent person talking about asset forfeiture laws and has made it a cornerstone of his criminal justice reforms. Rand's brought it up a lot of times that it should not occur unless there's probable cause that a crime has been committed, and he held up Lynch's nomination for AG for months because she supports these laws.

Anyone who seriously thinks this is a free country when things like this occur is a retard. I suppose for some, being free simply means not being in an obvious jail cell.

I don't believe for one moment that Paul can turn this country around, but he might turn the crash into an emergency landing; concurrently we have this guy running, who's got the makings of a populist tyrant.

Post: #12

When these laws were introduced the justification was "oh, well, it will only ever be used against drug dealers and terrorists, don't worry".
30 years later, we've arrived at "well, we basically use it against random citizens when our department wants a new foosball table".

Data collection: "Well, it's only logs of who called who, and we only use it on calls made to other countries, with a warrant, and it prevents terrorism."
"actually, we don't need a warrant"
"actually, we use it on calls made to numbers inside the country too"
"actually, it's call audio too"
"actually, it's email and social media too"
"actually, it's never stopped a single terrorist attack"

The people are frogs in water slowly being brought to boiling temp.
15 years ago if it had come out that the government had access to everything you do online there would have been rioting in the streets.

I despise conspiracy theorists, but at this point it's not even unrealistic to me that we'll start seeing reeducation centers, FEMA camps and "disappearances" become a reality soon. I'll just shrug and say "Yup, that seems about par for the course..."

Post: #13

Yeah we should place bets on the next steps to the totalitarian state:
- Police setting up civil forfeiture 'checkpoints', including pedestrians on the sidewalk
- Cameras in your home required in 'building codes', for child and wife safety reasons.
- Possession of guns limited to muzzle-loading muskets chained to the floor of your basement.
- All your earnings are automatically taken as tax, and the government returns the amount they think you 'need'
- Speaking out against the government causes forfeiture of all your belongings.
- President can summarily execute American citizens at whim, but on American soil too
- Inclusion of political questions on tax forms, which you must get 'correct'

Post: #14

Just as the last decades of Rome, when the military garrisons sacked the cities to get "pension".

Post: #15

(06-08-2015 06:10 PM)Libertas Wrote:  Rand Paul is the only prominent person talking about asset forfeiture laws and has made it a cornerstone of his criminal justice reforms. Rand's brought it up a lot of times that it should not occur unless there's probable cause that a crime has been committed, and he held up Lynch's nomination for AG for months because she supports these laws.

Anyone who seriously thinks this is a free country when things like this occur is a retard. I suppose for some, being free simply means not being in an obvious jail cell.

Actually, Eric Holder altered the civil asset forfeiture laws recently, and Radley Balko wrote about it in his column The Watch at the Washington Post.

Balko writes about this subject a lot and it's to the Post's credit that they picked him up as a writer after he'd been writing for Reason -- not the usual liberal toilet they recruit from. Balko posts his articles regularly as part of his Facebook feed, and he's definitely worth following on there.

Here is a 2014 article Balko wrote on the "continuing outrage" of these laws and here is a landmark article he wrote on the topic for Reason back in 2010.

Post: #16

Presumption of innocence is becoming something from the movies it seems.

Quote:Under federal and state laws that allow what's called "civil forfeiture," law enforcement officers can seize and keep someone's property without proving the person was guilty of a crime. They just need probable cause to believe the assets are being used as part of criminal activity, typically drug trafficking. Police can then absorb the value of this property — be it cash, cars, guns, or something else — as profit: either through state programs, or under a federal program known as Equitable Sharing that lets local and state police get up to 80 percent of the value of what they seize as money for their departments.

Apparently, last February a 24-year-old college student lost $11,000 in life savings at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport when trying to visit his mother in Orlando. His bag carried the smell of marijuana (weed) and a drug-sniffing dog got to him. The student admitted to smoking marijuana on the way to the airport and during the questioning he could not provide complete information on where the total of $11,000 he was carrying came from. At all times Clarke, the student's name, was cooperating with the authorities, even when they asked him how much cash he was he carrying.

This is just one of the many examples in which officials seize large sums of money or cars without factual proof that those assets were gained by illegal activities. They do this because they have clear financial gain (80% of seized value) and challenging this decision in court often costs more than what the affected person can get back.

Clarke is lucky to have received a pro-bono lawyer who was willing to take up his case, but for others it is a lost cause. But even with a professional lawyer, taking a "civil forfeiture" to court is not a recipe for getting your seized property back, as the government officials who seized your property, have very little threshold as to which seizing is actually justified. Different courts have different opinions on whether smelling drugs is one of them.

To be honest, I don't know whether to laugh at or feel sad for Americans anymore.

source: "Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him for a crime"

Post: #17

Even though he's been way too PC lately, John Oliver did a great job on this subject

Post: #18

Dupe: /thread-35900.html

Post: #19

Did not mean to double post the vid - that was part of the other thread. Carry on.

Post: #20

Lol I actually got confused and thought this was a dupe thread, relinked the same thread Mobile version confusing sometimes

Post: #21

(10-10-2015 11:48 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  Lol I actually got confused and thought this was a dupe thread, relinked the same thread Mobile version confusing sometimes

Nope you're right. This was the dupe thread - it was merged.

Post: #22

(10-10-2015 09:58 AM)DeeDee Wrote:  Presumption of innocence is becoming something from the movies it seems.

Quote:Under federal and state laws that allow what's called "civil forfeiture," law enforcement officers can seize and keep someone's property without proving the person was guilty of a crime. They just need probable cause to believe the assets are being used as part of criminal activity, typically drug trafficking. Police can then absorb the value of this property — be it cash, cars, guns, or something else — as profit: either through state programs, or under a federal program known as Equitable Sharing that lets local and state police get up to 80 percent of the value of what they seize as money for their departments.

Apparently, last February a 24-year-old college student lost $11,000 in life savings at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport when trying to visit his mother in Orlando. His bag carried the smell of marijuana (weed) and a drug-sniffing dog got to him. The student admitted to smoking marijuana on the way to the airport and during the questioning he could not provide complete information on where the total of $11,000 he was carrying came from. At all times Clarke, the student's name, was cooperating with the authorities, even when they asked him how much cash he was he carrying.

This is just one of the many examples in which officials seize large sums of money or cars without factual proof that those assets were gained by illegal activities. They do this because they have clear financial gain (80% of seized value) and challenging this decision in court often costs more than what the affected person can get back.

Clarke is lucky to have received a pro-bono lawyer who was willing to take up his case, but for others it is a lost cause. But even with a professional lawyer, taking a "civil forfeiture" to court is not a recipe for getting your seized property back, as the government officials who seized your property, have very little threshold as to which seizing is actually justified. Different courts have different opinions on whether smelling drugs is one of them.

To be honest, I don't know whether to laugh at or feel sad for Americans anymore.

source: "Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him for a crime"

In 2015, smelling like weed while carrying $11K through an airport is going to cause you trouble. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Post: #23

I honestly don't know why anybody would take anything valuable to the airport anymore, but there are still plenty of people who are stupid enough to do it.

The fact that this goes on just shows the wholesale ignorance of the American people. They vote for these jackals, and they have repeatedly not voted for candidates who would put an end to this nonsense.

Post: #24

(06-08-2015 04:38 PM)KorbenDallas Wrote:  I carry large sums of money. Civil asset forfeiture is wrong, but there is also a solution to the problem if you do need to carry large sums of money.

Don't drink and drive, do drugs and drive, or have drugs on you when traveling with cash, obey the traffic laws, and if you get pulled over, have your cash hidden in your car, not in your wallet.

Although stories about these injustices annoy me, it amazes me how much some people, some who are quite old, have a view of the police as something akin to superheroes when a more accurate portrayal is found in Robin Hood, where the police are nothing more than protectors of the rich and behave like petty criminals.

Respect the police and government for what they are, a gang with authority, act accordingly, and you will more than likely never have any cash stolen or any bad interactions with them save a few tickets every decade.

Your same attitude about driving is good for law abiding concealed carry permit holders. My friends who carry legally don't drive around like maniacs attracting attention to themselves.

Post: #25

It's a logical development that will become worse in the future.

I have read long-range plans of various NGOs that the real system the elite wants to erect would have almost no private property at all for anyone except the top owner-class. Anyone would be given money credits that get deleted by the end of the week. You cannot save anything and if you don't spend it, then it goes to nirvana. Also there should not be any private ownership of cars or real estate. Essentially with those fleeting credits you are left to rent your place and whatever you need in big ticket items.

At least that way civil forfeiture won't be able to touch you. But until then governments will use everything in their power to squeeze out your lifeblood out of you. Fines, tickets are part of the indirect taxes and civil forfeiture, the fake war on drugs is one tool more of financial oppression.

Anyone who doesn't have a team of lawyers at his disposal is at risk. The US has plenty of new highly oppressive measures going on from YesMeansYes rape-is-everything laws, Mandatory Vaccination schedules (even for vaccines which are extremely dubious like Gardasil for teenage girls - some countries for example have banned that one, while California is forcing everyone to take it), cops on ticket and forfeiture quotas etc. There are even plenty of examples of cops placing evidence so that they up theirs or their departments conviction quotas.

The system is just fucked up and I fear that it will get worse.