"The Police Just F**ked My Life" - Alabamians Outraged As Civil Asset Forfeitures Soar

The morning of June 29, 2010, began much like any other day for Frank Ranelli, the owner of FAR Computers in Ensley, Alabama. Ranelli, who had owned his computer repair business just outside of Birmingham for more than two decades, was doing some paperwork in his windowless office when he heard loud banging on the front door.  Within a matter of moments Ranelli was placed under arrest and all of the computer equipment in his store, much of which belonged to customers, had been confiscated by Alabama police never to be returned.  Per AL.com:

Within moments, a Homewood police sergeant had declared a room full of customers" computers, merchandise and other items "stolen goods," Ranelli recalled. He ordered his officers to "arrest them all," according to Ranelli, who was cuffed and taken to the Homewood jail along with two of his shop employees.

 

The police proceeded to confiscate more than 130 computers - most of which were customers" units waiting to be repaired, though some were for sale - as well as the company"s business servers and workstations and even receipts and checkbooks.

 

"Here I was, a man, owned this business, been coming to work every day like a good old guy for 23 years, and I show up at work that morning - I was in here doing my books from the day before - and the police just f***ed my life," he said.

Nothing ever came of the case. The single charge levied against Renelli of receiving stolen goods was dismissed after he demonstrated that he had followed proper protocol in purchasing the sole laptop computer he was accused of receiving illegally. That said, despite no official charges and no jury trial, Ranelli has been trying, to no avail, for nearly 7 years now to recover the items the officers took from his business.

Rick Hightower had a similar experience with Alabama police when he was a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  After being arrested for "lewd behavior" at a college party in 2008, Hightower says police raided his apartment and confiscated as much as $200,000 worth of musical instruments and other property.  Despite never being charged with stealing the property, Hightower says police have refused to return any of the confiscated items. 

On April 13, 2008, he was arrested and initially charged with lewd behavior after police said he was caught exposing himself at Samford University in Birmingham, according to court filings. Hightower, who has a fairly extensive rap sheet, was ultimately convicted of indecent exposure and resisting arrest in connection with that incident.

 

Five days after his arrest, officers with the Homewood and UAB police departments raided Hightower"s apartment, executing a warrant to search for files, cameras and any other evidence related to the incident at Samford.

 

They also decided to seize "a large amount of property believed to be stolen," including "musical instruments, electronics and other items," according to a UAB Police Department report on the search.

 

As such, Hightower was charged with receiving stolen property. He was never charged with stealing any of the other items that were seized from his apartment, and was not convicted of stealing the English horn, as he provided a receipt that showed that he had purchased the item from a thrift store.

 

And yet the Homewood Police Department - which stored and ostensibly continues to store the items seized in the raid - did not return the horn or any other items to Hightower. More than nine years later, he has yet to even lay eyes on any of the possessions that were taken from him.

Unfortunately, the raids on Ranelli"s business and Hightower"s apartment are not isolated incidents. They are just a couple of many similar cases that have taken place in Alabama and across the U.S. in recent years, according to Joseph Tully, a California criminal lawyer with expertise in civil asset forfeitures.

Long used in major criminal busts as a means to confiscate money and possessions obtained by illegal means, civil asset forfeiture impacts thousands of Americans each year and has become the subject of intense national and local scrutiny over the past decade.

 

The ability of law enforcement agencies to use such tactics to take people"s assets and property almost at will "lends itself to abuse," Tully, who describes cases like Ranelli"s as "theft," said.

 

"It"s really hard to fight the system. If it was a private citizen who stole your things, you could go get your things, or in the olden days you could get your shotgun and pay the thief a visit and say, "give me my stuff back." But you can"t do that in this case because it"s the police."

 

In fiscal year 2016, law enforcement agencies in Alabama seized more than $2.2 million worth of "assets that represent the proceeds of, or were used to facilitate federal crimes," according to its annual report to Congress. In fiscal 2014, the total value of such assets seized by law enforcement in the state was more than $4.9 million.

That recent drop is the local manifestation of a nationwide reduction in the use of civil asset forfeiture as public awareness and outcry over its widespread use has grown in recent years, according to experts. The tactic is still regularly deployed, impacting dozens of Alabamians each year. But the tide is turning. Fourteen states, from New Mexico to Connecticut, have passed laws in recent years to stop police from seizing property absent a criminal conviction.

"The pendulum is starting to swing but I wouldn"t say that it has been swinging back the other way for too long," Tully said. "State and local governments are starting to act ... Law enforcement officers are coming around a bit and there"s a little bit of a curb in police doing whatever they want."

 

And on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo directing a deputy to establish a unit aimed at ensuring there are no abuses of a federal policy reinstated by Sessions in July to help state and local law enforcement agencies seize accused criminals" property.

 

Alabama"s laws, however, still provide the state"s citizens with few protections from the practices, earning the state a "D- for its civil asset forfeiture laws" in a November 2015 report by the Institute for Justice, a Virginia nonprofit advocacy law firm.

 

Alabama laws stack the deck against victims of asset forfeiture by establishing a "low bar to forfeit" and not requiring a conviction to do so; offering "limited protections for innocent third-party property owners"; and letting "100% of forfeiture proceeds go to law enforcement," the report stated.

The irony here, of course, is that we live in a country where the police can show up to any "Regular Joe"s" apartment on any given day and legally confiscate all of his stuff but James Comey couldn"t even manage to interview a material witness in the Hillary email investigation without first granting them an immunity deal.  Seems fair...

Ron Paul Urges Trump To Dump AG: "Jeff Sessions Endorses Theft"

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ordered the Justice Department to increase the use of civil asset forfeiture, thus once again endorsing an unconstitutional, authoritarian, and increasingly unpopular policy.

Civil asset forfeiture, which should be called civil asset theft, is the practice of seizing property believed to be involved in a crime. The government keeps the property even if it never convicts, or even charges, the owner of the property.

Police can even use civil asset theft to steal from people whose property was used in criminal activity without the owners’ knowledge. Some have even lost their homes because a renter or houseguest was dealing drugs on the premises behind the owners’ backs.

Civil asset theft is a multi-billion dollar a year moneymaker for all levels of government. Police and prosecutors receive more than their "fair share” of the loot. According to a 2016 study by the Institute for Justice, 43 states allow police and prosecutors to keep at least half of the loot they got from civil asset theft.

Obviously, this gives police an incentive to aggressively use civil asset theft, even against those who are not even tangentially involved in a crime. For example, police in Tenaha, Texas literally engaged in highway robbery — seizing cash and other items from innocent motorists — while police in Detroit once seized every car in an art institute’s parking lot. The official justification for that seizure was that the cars belonged to attendees at an event for which the institute had failed to get a liquor license.

The Tenaha police are not the only ones targeting those carrying large sums of cash. Anyone traveling with "too much" cash runs the risk of having it stolen by a police officer, since carrying large amounts of cash is treated as evidence of involvement in criminal activity.

Civil asset theft also provides an easy way for the IRS to squeeze more money from the American taxpayer. As the growing federal debt increases the pressure to increase tax collections without raising tax rates, the IRS will likely ramp up its use of civil asset forfeiture.

Growing opposition to the legalized theft called civil asset forfeiture has led 24 states to pass laws limiting its use. Sadly, but not surprisingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of step with this growing consensus. After all, Sessions is a cheerleader for the drug war, and civil asset theft came into common usage as a tool in the drug war.

President Trump could do the American people a favor by naming a new attorney general who opposes police state policies like the drug war and police state tactics like civil asset theft.

How a Dog Named Brutus Was Used to Steal $36,000

Via The Daily Bell

For the egregious crime of being in the right lane at the wrong time, a driver was pulled over in Lowndes County, Georgia. Thanks to the heroic efforts of one Georgia State Police dog, and his faithful officer, a major threat to the people of Georgia is off the streets.

The responding police dog, Brutus, made a major bust. The vehicle was transporting $36,000 of cash; an imminent danger to Georgians across the state.

The cash may have eluded officers if not for the quick thinking of Brutus. He sat down next to the car to let officers know the money was being stored in a speaker inside the vehicle. The officer was quick to confiscate the cash, take a picture of it for social media, and let the driver go. 

Wait, the police let the driver get away? Yes, they did. The driver was not charged an actual crime, and no one was arrested during the “major bust” that took place. The driver’s only crime was carrying cash.

Under Georgia’s criminal code officers can take property from any citizen they suspect may be part of a criminal enterprise. In this case, the only hunch officers had of criminal activity was Brutus the dog taking a seat.

The police took more than half of the state’s median yearly income from someone because a dog sat next to their car. If you think this is a horrific injustice, you should feel relieved to know the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with you. 

Civil asset forfeiture is the formal name for this form of state sanctioned theft. It has become a hot topic in the last few years for Americans concerned about their fundamental rights. The practice is troublingly common among law enforcement agencies at all levels of government.

Its history of abuse has resulted in BILLIONS of dollars taken from Americans who were never charged with a crime. While marginalized groups are the most likely victims, anyone can be targeted. From entrepreneurs and small business owners to Christian music groups, law enforcement agencies only see dollar signs. 

A growing number of states have implemented forfeiture reforms aimed at holding police agencies accountable. They aim to protect citizen’s right to due process supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. Unfortunately for this driver, and the rest of the country, state laws may soon be futile. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced a federal policy to ignore state statutes prohibiting civil asset forfeiture.

To be clear, the Attorney General is the top official appointed to keep the rule of law alive in America. Instead, he is encouraging law enforcement agencies to seize property from law-abiding citizens. We’re supposed to be assumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Sessions’ reversal of justice reform raises serious civil rights concerns.

The government can take your money simply because a dog gets tired of standing. But you may find it a relief that some elected officials are making it a priority to end this archaic and evil practice once and for all. States may lead the way, but Jeff Sessions’ actions make it clear that there needs to be real reform at the federal level.

In reality, impactful reforms are nowhere near the horizon. If you are concerned with protecting your assets from government seizures you are best taking matters into your own hands. Of course, the state doesn’t make that easy.

Officials have gone out of their way to ensure any legal protections you thought you had go out the window when stopped by police on the road. As the example in Georgia shows, the victim looked to store his money in a speaker system to keep it out of plain sight. But Brutus made short work of that tactic. 

Others have gone further by making alterations to the interior of their vehicles. But in a case that went to the Supreme Court, the state gave itself the right to physically tear your car apart in search of anything valuable (Carroll v. United States U.S. 132, 1925). The state also deemed it appropriate for officers to search any containers, including locked safes, inside a stopped vehicle (California v. Acevedo 500 U.S. 565, 1991).

To recap, imagine you are traveling in a vehicle and are pulled over, for even the most minor traffic violation, like looking nervous. Suppose the responding officer can establish probable cause, like having his dog sit. They can then destroy anything inside your car, including the seats. They can take anything they find without charging you with a crime.

What can you do in the face of this draconian action by the state? Digitize your assets.

As the law currently stands going digital is the best way to get around forfeiture. Using decentralized online currencies, you can side step efforts to police for profit.

Luckily officials have not yet devised a way to completely gut the Fifth Amendment. Federal courts have ruled that law enforcement cannot coerce you into revealing passwords to your electronic devices. To keep your wealth safe from state led highway robbery, keep your money online with hefty encryption.

The law allows, and incentivizes, law enforcement agencies to use asset forfeiture. Citizens can live with the fear of their money being taken on a whim. Or, individuals can stand up, en masse, to challenge this egregious and open aggression against innocent citizens.

Until then, the best bet to keep the greedy hands of government out of your pockets is to seek refuge in blockchain technology. If you need to move lots of cash, digitize your wealth.

Policing For Profit: Jeff Sessions' Thinly Veiled Plot To Rob Us Blind

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.” - H.L. Mencken

Let’s not mince words.

Jeff Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement official, would not recognize the Constitution if he ran right smack into it.

Whether the head of the Trump Administration’s Justice Department enjoys being the architect of a police state or is just painfully, criminally clueless, Sessions has done a great job thus far of sidestepping the Constitution at every turn.

Most recently, under the guise of “fighting crime,” Sessions gave police the green light to rob, pilfer, steal, thieve, swipe, purloin, filch and liberate American taxpayers of even more of their hard-earned valuables (especially if it happens to be significant amounts of cash) using any means, fair or foul.

In this case, the foul method favored by Sessions & Co. is civil asset forfeiture, which allows police and prosecutors to “seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime.”

Under a federal equitable sharing program, police turn asset forfeiture cases over to federal agents who process seizures and then return 80% of the proceeds to the police. (In Michigan, police actually get to keep up to 100% of forfeited property.)

This incentive-driven excuse for stealing from the citizenry is more accurately referred to as “policing for profit” or “theft by cop.”

Despite the fact that 80 percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner, challenging these “takings” in court can cost the owner more than the value of the confiscated property itself. As a result, most property owners either give up the fight or chalk the confiscation up to government corruption, leaving the police and other government officials to reap the benefits.

And boy, do they reap the benefits.

Police agencies have used their ill-gotten gains “to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear,” reports The Washington Post. “They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.”

Incredibly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that, according to The Washington Post, “in 2014, law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did.”

In 2015, the federal government seized nearly $2.6 billion worth of airplanes, houses, cash, jewelry, cars and other items under the guise of civil asset forfeiture.

According to USA Today, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that allowing departments to keep forfeiture proceeds may tempt them to use the funds unwisely. For example, consider a 2015 scandal in Romulus, Michigan, where police officers used funds forfeited from illicit drug and prostitution stings to pay for ...  illicit drugs and prostitutes.”

Memo to the rest of my fellow indentured servants who are living through this dark era of government corruption, incompetence and general ineptitude: this is not how justice in America is supposed to work.

We are now ruled by a government so consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population that they are completely unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

Our freedoms aren’t just being trampled, however. They’re being eviscerated.

At every turn, “We the People” are getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties. All you have to be is in possession of something the government wants. And if you happen to have something the government wants badly enough, trust me, their agents will go to any lengths to get it.

If the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

Here’s how the whole ugly business works in a nutshell.

First, government agents (usually the police) use a broad array of tactics to profile, identify, target and arrange to encounter (in a traffic stop, on a train, in an airport, in public, or on private property) those  individuals who might be traveling with a significant amount of cash or possess property of value. Second, these government agents—empowered by the courts and the legislatures—seize private property (cash, jewelry, cars, homes and other valuables) they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity.

Then—and here’s the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, without any charges being levied against the property owner, or any real due process afforded the unlucky victim, the property is seized by the government, which often divvies it up with the local police who helped with the initial seizure.

In a Kafkaesque turn of the screw, the burden of proof falls on the unfortunate citizenry who must mount a long, complicated, expensive legal campaign to prove their innocence in order to persuade the government that it should return the funds they stole. Not surprisingly, very few funds ever get returned.

It’s a new, twisted form of guilt by association, only it’s not the citizenry being accused of wrongdoing, just their money.

Unsurprisingly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that they have expanded their reach beyond the nation’s highways.

Any American unwise enough to travel with cash is now fair game for government pickpockets who are out to rob you of your cold, hard cash.

This is not freedom.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if the government can just take from you what they want, when they want, and then use it however they want, you can’t claim to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.

It’s up to “We the People” to demand reform.

These injustices will continue as long as we remain silent.

In other words, make them hear you.

And if they won’t listen, then I suggest it’s time for what Martin Luther King Jr. called for when government doesn’t listen: “militant nonviolent resistance.”

The Feds Just Expanded Civil Asset Forfeiture 'Laws' Nationwide

When you"re a government agency, asking for a tax increase is always a hassle. As Ryan McMaken notes, for the most part, taxpayers don"t like taxes, and if asked if they want to pay more, they"re likely to often say "no." Moreover, when public officials pass tax increases, they may face the wrath of taxpayers at the ballot box. For this reason, governments are always looking for ways to get revenue without having to use tax revenue.

One such "hidden" method of seizing wealth from the taxpayers is through what is now called "civil asset forfeiture."

This occurs when a law enforcement agency seizes the assets - including real estate, cars, cash, and other valuables - from private citizens based merely on the suspicion that the person has committed a crime with the assets in question. No due process is necessary. No conviction in a court of law need occur. While it is technically possible to sue a government agency to reclaim one"s possessions, this requires immense amounts of time and legal fees to pursue. Needless to say, civil asset forfeiture has become a lucrative source of income for law enforcement agencies. And, over the past 30 years, the practice has become widespread.

As Martin Armstrong detailed, between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. Now, according to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses.

This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

“Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property. Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head.  With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.”

- “ Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture,” Institute for Justice

In jolly old England, Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. But as John Whitehead noted, in modern-day America, greedy government goons steal from the innocent to give to the corrupt under court- and legislature-sanctioned schemes called civil asset forfeiture. This is how the American police state continues to get rich: by stealing from the citizenry.

At every turn, “we the people” are getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

President Trump has made it clear his loyalties lie with the police, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has previously declared his love for civil asset forfeiture, the Supreme Court keeps marching in lockstep with the police state, and the police unions don’t want their gravy train to go away, so there’s not much hope for federal reform anytime soon. As always, change will have to begin locally and move upwards.

Some state legislatures (Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Ohio) are beginning to push back against these clearly unconstitutional asset forfeiture schemes. As the National Review reports, “New Mexico now requires a criminal conviction before law enforcement can seize property, while police in Florida must prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that property is linked to a crime before it’s seized.”

And it is that pushback that has seemingly pushed the federal government to "fix" the situation. As Reuters reports, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Wednesday that the federal government will reinstate a program that helps local and state law enforcement seize cash and other assets they suspect have been earned from crimes.

Local police will now be able to seize cash, often from those suspected of drug crimes, even in states that do not condone the policy.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told reporters that most seizures were warranted because the "vast majority" of people who have property taken by police do not contest it in court.

"This is going to enable us to work with local police and our prosecutors to ensure that when assets are lawfully seized they are not returned to criminals," said Rosenstein at a media briefing at the Justice Department.

The Obama administration had rolled back the policy in 2015, saying it incentivized police to take money from people who had committed crimes.

Since former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder weighed in on the issue in 2015, Justice Department agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration has been barred from rewarding local police for taking possessions from people they stop.

Now, the federal government will again be able to return up to 80 percent of the assets seized to local law enforcement.

Rosenstein said the 2015 policy had a chilling effect on seizures by local law enforcement.

Many states have civil asset forfeiture laws that allow the state government to redistribute money seized for programs like education. But the federal program returns cash directly to the police department that took the asset, allowing them to buy new equipment or as drug sniffing dogs.

The Justice Department under President Donald Trump has made efforts to improve relationships with local and state law enforcement, which they viewed as damaged under the Obama administration. Rosenstein said that the president had heard from police who were concerned about the 2015 policy, but the administration was not acting to score political points with police unions that supported Trump"s campaign.

"This is not an effort to appease any particular constituency. It is an effort to empower law enforcement," Rosenstein said.

The Police State"s tentacles just reached a little further into your "pocketbook" as what has become known as “policing for profit,” goes nationwide.. by federal law!

DoJ"s Full new asset forfeiture policy letter below (confirming police can sezie proeprty from people not charged with crimes even in states where it is banned)...

As John Whitehead concluded so eloquently, remember, long before Americans charted their revolutionary course in pursuit of happiness, it was “life, liberty, and property” which constituted the golden triad of essential rights that the government was charged with respecting and protecting. To the colonists, smarting from mistreatment at the hands of the British crown, protecting their property from governmental abuse was just as critical as preserving their lives and liberties. As the colonists understood, if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, you have no true rights: you’re nothing more than a serf or a slave. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was born of this need to safeguard against any attempt by the government to unlawfully deprive a citizen of the right to life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Little could our ancestral forebears have imagined that it would take less than three centuries of so-called “independence” to once again render us brow-beaten subjects in bondage to an overlord bent on depriving us of our most inalienable and fundamental rights. Yet if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

Enough is enough.

We leave it to Liberty Blitzkrieg"s Mike Krieger to sum it all up...Washington D.C. has become a clear threat to hundreds of millions of Americans who just want to lead a decent lives for themselves and their families. The only policies coming out of that cesspool have made things far worse for the political and economic well-being of the vast majority of us. The time for us to take our constitutional powers back and reinstate self-government is long overdue.

Has The Drug War Incentivized Police To Treat Citizens Like Terrorists?

Authored by Duane Norman via Free Market Shooter blog,

A video of a Florida Sheriff making a promo video to scare has been making the rounds recently.  Casey Research recently covered the affair, noting the following quote from Sheriff Grinnell:

“Enjoy looking over your shoulder, constantly wondering if today’s the day we come for you. Enjoy trying to sleep tonight, wondering if tonight’s the night our SWAT team blows your front door off the hinges. We are coming for you.”

The video (reproduced below, with commentary from Casey Research) is as surreal as the above picture implies…

Sheriff Grinnell delivered this message last month while flanked by four combat-ready officers wearing ski masks. It looks like someone from ISIS directed it.

Grinnell’s message was aimed at local drug dealers. You see, Lake County has a serious opioid problem. And like many other places in the US, it’s fighting its drug problem as if it were a war.

…but this is hardly the first time a video like this has been produced, and it likely won’t be the last.  Last year, former Sheriff Clay Higgins, known as the “Cajun John Wayne” in Louisiana, released the below video calling out the “Gremlins” gang, and before his resignation, was known for making many similar videos:

Some notable quotes from Sheriff Higgins:

• You won’t walk away.  Look at you. Men like us, son, we do Dumbbell presses with weights bigger than you.


• Young man, I’ll meet you on solid ground, anytime, anywhere. Light or heavy, it makes no difference to me.


• You will be hunted, you will be tracked. And if you raise your weapon to a man like me, we’ll return fire with superior fire.


• You don’t like the things I’ve told you tonight?  I’ve got one thing to say – I’m easy to find.

This guy certainly has enough one-liners to be worthy of the “Cajun John Wayne” moniker, but it seems none of the police or community leaders behind him bothered to ask why criminals engage in such violent behavior; they are trying to profit from the obscenely high price of illegal drugs.  And when it comes to profit, the criminals are hardly alone.

Free Market Shooter has covered the problems with Civil Asset Forfeiture in the past…

Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics explains how police have every reason to seize assets, largely because these civil asset forfeitures are literally funding police departments:

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

…but if you take a closer look at the forfeitures themselves, you’ll realize just how many of them are related to the war on drugs:

“Thirty-six percent of all local police departments received money, property, or goods from a drug asset forfeiture program during 2002 (table 32). These departments employed 78% of all local police officers. At least 80% of the departments in each population category of 25,000 or more had drug asset forfeiture receipts.”

“There can be few components of law enforcement programmes which actually cost nothing. The asset forfeiture provision of the federal law for crop suppression (relating mainly to cannabis in the State of Kentucky), proved to be such a case, costing the United States Government $13.7 million, but yielding a return of $53 million in 1991, or almost $4 in assets seized for every $1 invested by the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

“The advent of a now common police tactic, called the “reverse sting,” illustrates the shift in priorities from crime control to funding raids. In a reverse sting, an officer attempts to sell drugs to an unsuspecting buyer. The method permits the police to seize the buyer’s cash rather than a seller’s drugs, which have no value to the agency.

“During the past decade, law enforcement agencies increasingly have turned to asset seizures and drug enforcement grants to compensate for budgetary shortfalls, at the expense of other criminal justice goals. We believe the strange shape of the criminal justice system today—the law enforcement agenda that targets assets rather than crime, the 80 percent of seizures that are unaccompanied by any criminal prosecution, the plea bargains that favor drug kingpins and penalize the “mules” without assets to trade, the reverse stings that target drug buyers rather than drug sellers, the overkill in agencies involved even in minor arrests, the massive shift towards federal jurisdiction over local law enforcement ^- is largely the unplanned by-product of this economic incentive structure.”

So the drug war has created a massive financial incentive for police to seize property from individuals, one that many departments could require to stay afloat.  What do you think happens next?

As Free Market Shooter has covered previously for Single Dude Travel, raids from SWAT teams have become commonplace, with police becoming better armed by the day:

Our nation’s policing system has become profit-driven instead of crime-driven, largely due to the failure of the war on drugs, and the fact that cops have been given surplus military hardware from the armed forces at bargain basement prices. SWAT team raids have gone from a few hundred per year in the 1970s to 50,000 annually, largely because they call SWAT in when “Special Weapons And Tactics” aren’t really needed, such as when apprehending a credit card scammer or raiding an organic farm for the filmiest of reasons. When a SWAT team nearly kills a 19-month old baby with a flashbang grenade, in a raid without the suspect present, how are there no charges filed?

And now that police are all armed to the teeth looking for property to seize, what happens next?  The practice is applied everywhere.  If you look at a report on the “most outlandish SWAT team raids” across the country, you’ll see just how common it is to have a SWAT team called in:

• Armed agents raid animal shelter in search of baby deer—and kill it.


• Girl’s home wrongfully raided with flashbangs despite door being open.


• SWAT team raids DJ’s studio to enforce copyright law.


• SWAT squad invades private poker game.


• SWAT team raids man’s home in search of stolen koi fish.


• Sex toys, condoms and pajamas seized in drug/prostitution SWAT team raid.


• Peaceful monks arrested in SWAT team action.


• Feds raid Amish dairy farm—twice—for selling unpasteurized milk.


• Police unlawfully invade a series of barbershops without warrants.


• Police forcibly search and detain 19 patrons in gay bar.


• SWAT team confiscates wood used to make instruments during illegal raid.

So, how do you stop police from treating civilians like they would treat terrorists?  The best place to start is removing the incentive structure that has been created by the war on drugs, which brings us back to Casey Research’s commentary:

Illegalizing something does nothing but create a black market and give people a reason to induce other people to get high. I mean, people have been drinking alcohol for about the last 10,000 years. But it didn’t become a real problem until the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act passed in 1920. At that point, it financed the mafia.

Laws turn simple bad habits into massive and profitable criminal enterprises.

The government learned absolutely nothing from the failure of alcohol prohibition. What they’re doing with drugs makes an occasional, trivial problem into a national catastrophe…

However, do not expect that to happen anytime soon; again, as Free Market Shooter has covered in the past, new Attorney General Jeff Sessions is adamant about expanding the war on drugs:

And, in case you weren’t aware, this is the same Jeff Sessions who is on the record as being not only against medicinal marijuana, it is the same Jeff Sessions that has stated that marijuana is only slightly less awful than heroin:

     And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana – so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.

Then again… it’s not like the prior ten attorney generals did anything but continue the war on drugs.  Remember what Casey said about “massive profitable criminal enterprises”?

The DEA Has Stolen $3.2 Billion From Americans Without Charges Since 2007

Authored by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg,

In my post published earlier this week, Recent TSA Molestation Video Proves Americans Have Become Authority Worshipping Slaves, I noted the following:

Yeah, it’s disgusting, inappropriate and anathema to a free people, but that’s the point. We aren’t a free people. We’ve become a bunch of authority-worshiping subjects toiling on a plantation dominated by multi-national companies who write our laws and manipulate our thoughts through corporate media. The worst part is we don’t do anything about it. We elect Trump and then puff our chests out yelling stupid slogans like MAGA, as molestations from the TSA get worse. Well done everyone.

I was pleased that the above paragraph connected with many people, but for those of you who think I was being hyperbolic, take a look at the following excerpts from a piece recently published at The Washington Post, Since 2007, the DEA Has Taken $3.2 Billion in Cash from People Not Charged with a Crime:

The Drug Enforcement Administration takes billions of dollars in cash from people who are never charged with criminal activity, according to a report issued today by the Justice Department’s Inspector General.

Since 2007, the report found, the DEA has seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of involvement with the drug trade. But 81 percent of those seizures, totaling $3.2 billion, were conducted administratively, meaning no civil or criminal charges were brought against the owners of the cash and no judicial review of the seizures ever occurred.

Remember, the terrorists hate us for our freedom.

That total does not include the dollar value of other seized assets, like cars, homes, electronics and clothing.

These seizures are all legal under the controversial practice of civil asset forfeiture, which allows authorities to take cash, contraband and property from people suspected of crime. But the practice does not require authorities to obtain a criminal conviction, and it allows departments to keep seized cash and property for themselves unless individuals successfully challenge the forfeiture in court. Critics across the political spectrum say this creates a perverse profit motive, incentivizing police to seize goods not for the purpose of fighting crime, but for padding department budgets.

In the absence of this information, the report examined 100 DEA cash seizures that occurred “without a court-issued warrant and without the presence of narcotics, the latter of which would provide strong evidence of related criminal behavior.”

Fewer than half of those seizures were related to a new or ongoing criminal investigation, or led to an arrest or prosecution, the Inspector General found.

“When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution,” the report concludes, “law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution.” 

The scope of asset forfeiture is staggering. Since 2007 the Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Fund, which collects proceeds from seized cash and other property, has ballooned to $28 billion. In 2014 alone authorities seized $5 billion in cash and property from people — greater than the value of all documented losses to burglary that year. 

Some of the encounters were based on tips from confidential sources working in the travel industry, a number of whom have received large sums of money in exchange for their cooperation. In one case, officers targeted an individual for questioning on a tip from a travel industry informant that the individual had paid for a plane ticket with a pre-paid debit card and cash.

Nope, no conflict of interest there. USA! USA!

Forfeiture cases are also legally complex and difficult for individuals to win. Forfeiture cases are brought against the property, rather than the individual, leading to Kafkaesque case titles like United States v. $8,850 in U.S. Currency and  United States of America v. One Men’s Rolex Pearl Master Watch.

While criminal proceedings assume the defendant’s innocence, forfeiture proceedings start from the presumption of guilt. That means that individuals who fight forfeiture must prove their innocence in court.

Meanwhile, guess who’s a big fan of civil forfeiture? Yep, you guessed it, Mr. MAGA himself, Donald Trump.

Recall what we learned in the post, Trump’s Policies Are Authoritarian, Not Populist:

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday there was “no reason” to curb law enforcement agencies that seize cash, vehicles and other assets of people suspected of crimes, a practice that some lawmakers and activists have criticized for denying legal rights.

The issue of civil asset forfeiture, created to disrupt the activities of organized crime groups, arose when sheriffs from around the United States told Trump at a White House meeting that they were under pressure to ease the practice.

"I’d like to look into that,” Trump said. “There’s no reason for that.”

Makes sense. Eliminating due process and providing the feds with open season to steal possessions from American  citizens without charge is clearly a populist position.

This is an issue that’s been very important to me for many years, and I’m absolutely disgusted by Trump for being a defender of something so anti-American and unconstitutional.

In case you missed them the first time around, here are a few prior posts on the topic:

Why You Should Never, Ever Drive Through Tenaha, Texas

Asset Forfeiture – How Cops Continue to Steal Americans’ Hard Earned Cash with Zero Repercussions

Land of the Unfree – Police and Prosecutors Fight Aggressively to Retain Barbaric Right of “Civil Asset Forfeiture”

How the IRS Used Civil Asset Forfeiture to Ruin the Lives of Two Connecticut Bakers

The DEA Strikes Again – Agents Seize Man’s Life Savings Under Civil Asset Forfeiture Without Charges

Stealing From The Citizenry: How Government Goons Use Civil Asset Forfeiture To Rob Us Blind

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property. Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head.  With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.”

- “ Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture,” Institute for Justice

In jolly old England, Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor.

In modern-day America, greedy government goons steal from the innocent to give to the corrupt under court- and legislature-sanctioned schemes called civil asset forfeiture. In fact, according to The Washington Post, “law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did.”

This is how the American police state continues to get rich: by stealing from the citizenry.

Here’s how the whole ugly business works in a nutshell.

First, government agents (usually the police) use a broad array of tactics to profile, identify, target and arrange to encounter (in a traffic stop, on a train, in an airport, in public, or on private property) those  individuals who might be traveling with a significant amount of cash or possess property of value. Second, these government agents—empowered by the courts and the legislatures—seize private property (cash, jewelry, cars, homes and other valuables) they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity.

Then—and here’s the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, without any charges being levied against the property owner, or any real due process afforded the unlucky victim, the property is forfeited to the government, which often divvies it up with the local police who helped with the initial seizure.

It’s a new, twisted form of guilt by association.

Only it’s not the citizenry being accused of wrongdoing, just their money.

What this adds up to is a paradigm in which Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties. All you have to be is in possession of something the government wants.

Motorists have been particularly vulnerable to this modern-day form of highway robbery.

For instance, police stole $201,000 in cash from Lisa Leonard because the money—which Leonard planned to use to buy a house for her son—was being transported on a public highway also used by drug traffickers. Despite the fact that Leonard was innocent of wrongdoing, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the theft on a technicality.

Police stole $50,000 in cash from Amanee Busbee—which she planned to use to complete the purchase of a restaurant—and threatened to hand her child over to CPS if she resisted. She’s one of the few to win most of her money back in court.

Police stole $22,000 in cash from Jerome Chennault—which he planned to use as the down payment on a home—simply because a drug dog had alerted police to its presence in his car. After challenging the seizure in court, Chennault eventually succeeded in having most of his money returned, although the state refused to compensate him for his legal and travel expenses.

Police stole $8,500 in cash and jewelry from Roderick Daniels—which he planned to use to purchase a new car—and threatened him with jail and money-laundering charges if he didn’t sign a waiver forfeiting his property.

Police stole $6,000 in cash from Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson and threatened to turn their young children over to Child Protective Services if they resisted.

Tenaha, Texas, is a particular hotbed of highway forfeiture activity, so much so that police officers keep pre-signed, pre-notarized documents on hand so they can fill in what property they are seizing.

As the Huffington Post explains, these police forfeiture operations have become little more than criminal shakedowns:

Police in some jurisdictions have run forfeiture operations that would be difficult to distinguish from criminal shakedowns. Police can pull motorists over, find some amount of cash or other property of value, claim some vague connection to illegal drug activity and then present the motorists with a choice: If they hand over the property, they can be on their way. Otherwise, they face arrest, seizure of property, a drug charge, a probable night in jail, the hassle of multiple return trips to the state or city where they were pulled over, and the cost of hiring a lawyer to fight both the seizure and the criminal charge. It isn’t hard to see why even an innocent motorist would opt to simply hand over the cash and move on.

Unsurprisingly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that they have expanded their reach beyond the nation’s highways.

According to USA Today, the U.S. Department of Justice received $2.01 billion in forfeited items in 2013, and since 2008 local and state law enforcement nationwide has raked in some $3 billion in forfeitures through the federal “equitable sharing” program.

So now it’s not just drivers who have to worry about getting the shakedown.

Any American unwise enough to travel with significant amounts of cash is fair game for the government pickpockets.

In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been colluding with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and local police departments to seize a small fortune in cash from American travelers using the very tools—scanners, spies and surveillance devices—they claimed were necessary to catch terrorists.

Mind you, TSA agents already have a reputation for stealing from travelers, but clearly the government is not concerned about protecting the citizenry from its own wolfish tendencies.

No, the government isn’t looking to catch criminals. It’s just out for your cold, hard cash.

As USA Today reports, although DEA agents have seized more than $203 million in cash in airports alone since 2006, they almost never make arrests or build criminal cases in connection to the seized cash.

For instance, DEA agents at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport stole $11,000 in cash from college student Charles Clarke—his entire life savings, in fact—simply because they claimed his checked suitcase smelled like marijuana. Apart from the sniff test, no drugs or evidence of criminal activity were found.

Christelle Tillerson was waiting to board a flight from Detroit to Chicago when DEA agents stole $25,000 in cash from her suitcase, money she planned to use to buy a truck. Tillerson was never arrested or charged

Joseph Rivers was traveling on an Amtrak train from Michigan to Los Angeles when police stole $16,000 in cash in a bank envelope—money the 22-year-old had saved up to produce a music when he arrived in Hollywood—based solely on their groundless suspicions that the money could have been associated with drugs.

How does the government know which travelers to target?

Through surveillance of Americans’ domestic travel records, by profiling train and airport passengers, and by relying on a “network of travel-industry informants that extends from ticket counters to back offices.” In one instance, the DEA actually promised to give a TSA security screener a reward for identifying luggage with large sums of cash: the more cash found, the bigger the reward.

Starting to notice a pattern?

First, the government claims it needs more powers and more weapons in order to fight crime and terrorism: the power to spy on Americans’ communications and travel; the ability to carry out virtual and actual strip searches of Americans’ luggage, persons and property; the authority to stop and interrogate travelers for any reason in the name of national security.

Then, when government agents have been given enough powers and weapons to transform them into mini-tyrants, they’re unleashed on an unsuspecting citizenry with few resources to be able to defend themselves or protect their property.

So much for those long-cherished ideals about the assumption of innocence and due process.

For example, the federal government attempted to confiscate Russell Caswell’s family-owned Tewksbury, Massachusetts, motel, insisting that because a small percentage of the motel’s guests had been arrested for drug crimes - 15 out of 200,000 visitors in a 14-year span - the motel was a dangerous property. As Reason reports:

This cruel surprise was engineered by Vincent Kelley, a forfeiture specialist at the Drug Enforcement Administration who read about the Motel Caswell in a news report and found that the property, which the Caswells own free and clear, had an assessed value of $1.3 million. So Kelley approached the Tewksbury Police Department with an “equitable sharing” deal: The feds would seize the property and sell it, and the cops would get up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

Thankfully, with the help of a federal judge, Caswell managed to keep his motel out of the government’s clutches, but others are not so fortunate.

Gerald and Royetta Ostipow had their Michigan farm and property seized, including a classic muscle car, and then sold by the local sheriff’s office. As USA Today reports:

The Ostipows were required to provide a $150,000 cash bond before they could begin the legal proceedings to contest the forfeiture and get their property back. But they couldn’t afford to. An appeals court later overturned the Ostipow’s hefty bond requirement… But the ruling didn’t stop the nightmare for the couple who were never charged with a crime. They still had to win a court case seeking the return of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of property taken from the Ostipow’s rural Michigan home, including a cherished classic car. Eventually, an appeals court found that the property was wrongly forfeited. But it was too later to recover the car. With the odometer mysteriously bearing an additional 56,000 miles, police had already sold the car and spent the proceeds.

Despite the fact that 80 percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner, challenging these “takings” in court can cost the owner more than the value of the confiscated property itself. As a result, most property owners either give up the fight or chalk the confiscation up to government corruption, leaving the police and other government officials to reap the benefits.

Under a federal equitable sharing program, police turn asset forfeiture cases over to federal agents who process seizures and then return 80% of the proceeds to the police. Michigan police actually get to keep up to 100% of forfeited property.

This is what has become known as “policing for profit.”

According to USA Today, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that allowing departments to keep forfeiture proceeds may tempt them to use the funds unwisely. For example, consider a 2015 scandal in Romulus, Michigan, where police officers used funds forfeited from illicit drug and prostitution stings to pay for ...  illicit drugs and prostitutes.”

Police agencies have also used their ill-gotten gains “to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear,” reports The Washington Post. “They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.”

So what’s to be done?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are now ruled by a government so consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population as to be completely unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

Our freedoms aren’t just being trampled, however.

They’re being eviscerated.

At every turn, “we the people” are getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

President Trump has made it clear his loyalties lie with the police, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has previously declared his love for civil asset forfeiture, the Supreme Court keeps marching in lockstep with the police state, and the police unions don’t want their gravy train to go away, so there’s not much hope for federal reform anytime soon.

As always, change will have to begin locally and move upwards.

Some state legislatures (Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Ohio) are beginning to push back against these clearly unconstitutional asset forfeiture schemes. As the National Review reports, “New Mexico now requires a criminal conviction before law enforcement can seize property, while police in Florida must prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that property is linked to a crime before it’s seized.”

More than legislative change, however, what we need is a change of mindset on the part of the citizenry. We need to stop acting like victims and start acting like citizens with rights.

Remember, long before Americans charted their revolutionary course in pursuit of happiness, it was “life, liberty, and property” which constituted the golden triad of essential rights that the government was charged with respecting and protecting.

To the colonists, smarting from mistreatment at the hands of the British crown, protecting their property from governmental abuse was just as critical as preserving their lives and liberties. As the colonists understood, if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, you have no true rights: you’re nothing more than a serf or a slave.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was born of this need to safeguard against any attempt by the government to unlawfully deprive a citizen of the right to life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Little could our ancestral forebears have imagined that it would take less than three centuries of so-called “independence” to once again render us brow-beaten subjects in bondage to an overlord bent on depriving us of our most inalienable and fundamental rights.

Yet if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

Enough is enough.

Civil Asset Forfeiture - Ruining Lives, While Failing To Stop Crime

Submitted by Duane via Free Market Shooter blog,

Yesterday, President Trump met with the National Sheriff’s Association at the White House.  Like so many Trump comments, this one took a strange turn when Trump (jokingly or not) threatened to “destroy the career” of a Texas state Senator:

During the meeting, Rockwall County, Texas, Sheriff Harold Eavenson told President Trump about a piece of asset forfeiture legislation he believes would aid Mexican drug cartels…here’s the full conversation:

Eavenson:  “There’s a state senator in Texas that was talking about legislation to require conviction before we could receive that forfeiture money.”

Trump:  “Do you believe that?”

Eavenson:  “And I told him that the cartel would build a monument to him in Mexico if he could get that legislation passed.”

Trump:  “Who is that state senator? I want to hear his name. We’ll destroy his career…”

Though the major point of conversation was about Trump’s threat to a state legislator, the bigger story should be the implicit support Trump gave to civil asset forfeiture, whether he realized it or not.  And if you are not aware what civil asset forfeiture is, it is (surprisingly) something that is agreed by both sides of the aisle to be unjust and unconstitutional, and rightfully so.

Civil asset forfeiture is defined by Wikipedia as “a controversial legal process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing.”  The practice is commonplace in the war on drugs, but it can be extended to almost anything.

What it means is that the government can essentially seize any of your assets it can find (be it in a bank account, or cash/gold/whatever you have in a safe or under the mattress), label them a part of a “criminal investigation,” and keep them indefinitely, without sufficient due process for the citizen to challenge the seizures, and whether you are ultimately charged with a crime or not.

Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics explains how police have every reason to seize assets, largely because these civil asset forfeitures are literally funding police departments:

Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

 

The police have been violating the laws to confiscate assets all over the country. A scathing report on California warns of pervasive abuse by police to rob the people without proving that any crime occurred. Even Eric Holder came out in January suggesting reform because of the widespread abuse of the civil asset forfeiture laws by police.

 

Bloomberg News has reported now that Stop-and-Seize authority is turning the Police Into Self-Funding Gangs. They are simply confiscating money all under the abuse of this civil asset forfeiture where they do not have to prove you did anything. Prosecutors are now instructing police on how to confiscate money within the grey area of the law.

 

A class action lawsuit was filed against Washington DC where police were robbing people for as little as having $100 in their pocket.  This is getting really out of hand and it has indeed converted police into legal criminals or “gangs” as Bloomberg News calls them.

And Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkreig even cites the Huffington Post, of all places, which detailed the case of two bakers who did not commit any crime, but had their assets (and lives) ruined by the IRS, because they were able to legally seize the business’s assets by just believing that they may have been engaging in criminal activity, with absolutely no evidence to support their claim:

But the IRS refused to believe Vocatura’s Bakery was operating on the up and up. Agents said the business raised red flags because of a series of cash deposits in sums under $10,000, the amount at which banks are required to report transactions to the federal government. They said this behavior was consistent with a crime known as structuring, which the IRS defines as making calculated financial transactions in order to skirt reporting requirements. The agents had no evidence of other wrongdoing, but thanks to a controversial law enforcement tool known as civil asset forfeiture, they didn’t need any to seize every penny in the Vocaturas’ bank account: $68,382.22.

Under the practice of civil forfeiture, authorities can move to permanently take property they suspect of being linked to criminal activity, without obtaining a conviction — and, in cases like the Vocaturas’, without even charging the owner with a crime.

For the past three years, the brothers have been fighting to get their money back, maintaining they’d done nothing wrong. The IRS has responded by subjecting David, 53, and his brother Larry, 69, to a series of increasingly aggressive legal maneuvers — including threats of significant prison time and additional fines — in an attempt to strong-arm them into permanently forfeiting their assets.

Hours after the suit was filed, the IRS said it would finally give the Vocaturas their money back. But the prosecutor didn’t drop the case. Instead, he now plans to mount an expansive investigation into the bakery’s finances, looking for a reason to bring criminal charges against the brothers.

It was just the latest twist in a protracted legal battle that has called into question some of the government’s favorite — and most problematic —methods of taking people’s money.

The practice is just as bad as it sounds – with the original intent being to stop big time drug dealers from recouping their assets, the practice has devolved into police and agencies of all types funding their departments by stealing the assets of civilians, whether they were obtained criminally or not.  This is also not a partisan trend, and as Michael Armstrong indicated above, the practice has been steadily increasing, across all administrations, since it was first implemented in the early 1980s.  Mike Krieger details the real problem with civil asset forfeiture below:

Civil asset forfeiture is a civil rights issue, and it should be seen as such by everyone. Just because it targets the entire population as opposed to a specific race, gender or sexual orientation doesn’t make it less important.

The problem with opposition in America today is that people aren’t seeing modern battle lines clearly. The greatest friction and abuse occurring in these United States today comes from the corporate-fascist state’s attack against average citizens. It doesn’t matter what color or gender you are. If you are weak, poor and vulnerable you are ripe for the picking. Until people see the battle lines clearly, it will be very difficult to achieve real change. Most people are divided and conquered along their superficial little tribal affiliations, and they completely miss the bigger picture to the peril of society. Which is why women will support Hillary just because she’s a woman, not caring in the least that she is a compromised, corrupt oligarch stooge.

All in the same, this makes Trump’s support of the policy quite disturbing.  Mother Jones, of all places, sums up what it all means, and whether or not Trump actually supports the policy (or even realized the significance of it):

My guess is that he has no idea what civil asset forfeiture is and has no real opinion about it. If, say, Trump had been in a meeting with a few senators, and Bob Goodlatte had remarked that “police can seize your money even if you weren’t convicted of a crime,” Trump probably would have reflexively answered, “Can you believe that?” Instead, a sheriff said it was a bad thing related to Mexicans, so Trump automatically agreed with him. That means it’s now official Trump administration policy.

Obviously, the Sheriffs who met with Trump support the policy – it helps fund their departments.  Perhaps Trump was merely supporting lawmen and trying to unify everyone behind his stated policy of “law and order” by agreeing with them in words, and doing something different in practice.  Surely, we would all like to believe that Trump is prepared to concede that every citizen is innocent until proven guilty, and should have recourse to challenge the legality of any seizure of personal assets.

However, I’m not naive enough to think that is a certainty.  Trump very well could have realized exactly what he was doing and the policy he was supporting, and the ramifications behind his support.  He could actually believe the practice helps stop crime, and be ready to willingly disregard the rights of citizens to do so.  It is an extremely dangerous position to take; one that the Trump administration should clarify as soon as possible.

Sheriff tells Trump that state senator is doing something he doesn"t like

Trump: "Do you want to give his name? We"ll destroy his career." pic.twitter.com/75y3t9zc54

— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) February 7, 2017

The average American citizen ends up being the big loser in the ongoing saga of oppressive conduct by the authorities, as the practice is unlikely to end without intervention via legislation and/or executive action.   So, while it would be nice if the media would ask the Trump administration for some clarity on their policy regarding civil asset forfeiture, they seem too preoccupied with asking Trump if he really wants to end a state Senator’s career, in their ongoing quest to boost their own ratings.

It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.