Civil Forfeiture In USA - Seizing Cars, Cash, and Homes from Everyone

[CH-Toronto]

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.

 

[porscheguy]

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

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.

 

[puckerman]

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.

 

[Off The Reservation]

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.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

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.

 

[Teutatis]

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.

This sounds more like a dystopian future than reality. I don't think citizens of any developed country would ever allow for something like this to happen without extreme social convulsions, but who knows, I never thought what is happening in Europe could be possible either, and just look at that clusterfuck of insanity.