Posted on 11/13/2015 8:48:23 PM PST by markomalley
The Department of Justice took $4.5 billion in private property including cash, cars and homes from Americans in 2014, which includes both civil and criminal forfeitures, according to a report from the Institute for Justice.
A majority, or 87 percent, of the forfeitures by the government from 1997 to 2013 were civil forfeitures, while only 13 percent were criminal.
“Under civil forfeiture laws, the government can seize this property on the mere suspicion that it is connected to criminal activity,” the report, entitled “Policing for Profit,” said. “No charges or convictions are required.”
“Every year, police and prosecutors across the United States take hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, cars, homes and other property—regardless of the owners’ guilt or innocence,” the report found.
Proceeds from the sale of this personal property are used to generate revenue for the federal government.
In 1986, the Justice Department took $93.7 million in revenue from these forfeitures and in 2014, they took $4.5 billion, representing a 4,667 percent increase.
The report drew attention to a case of asset forfeiture involving Charles Clarke, a 24-year old carrying $11,000 in cash on a flight home to Florida. Federal agents claimed that Clarke’s bag smelled of marijuana and seized the funds. Although the law enforcement officials could not find any drugs on his person or his bag, current law allowed his property to be seized.
“The officers found no evidence that he was guilty of any crime before seizing his money,” the report said. “In the upside-down world of civil forfeiture, they did not have to.”
“Civil forfeiture threatens the constitutional rights of all Americans,” said Scott Bullock, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice. “Using civil forfeiture, the government can take your home, business, cash, car or other property on the mere suspicion that it is somehow connected to criminal activity—and without ever convicting or even charging you with a crime.”
Angela Erickson, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Justice said civil forfeiture should be abolished.
“Civil forfeiture needs to be completely abolished,” Erickson said. “Short of that, the federal government should reform its laws by requiring a criminal conviction and eliminating the profit incentive that allows law enforcement to fill their coffers.”
This is at the federal level, and doesn't include state and local, which is where civil forfeiture is most abused.
!) I can’t find any story anywhere of Trump actually using parcels taken by eminent domain. There are stories about where projects with his involvement tried to but failed.
2) The villain in any controversial public/private eminent domain project would obviously not be the private portion but rather the public. Only the elected officials can actually do eminent domain so its the elected politicians not the developer.
3) This civil rather than criminal taking of property on this thread with NO NO NO process at all is beyond reprehensible, a far greater abuse than eminent domain for compensation.
4) Last, you are correct regarding Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Given that Drug War funding has ramped up since then, the $4.5B figure does not seem unreasonable to me.
Asset forfeiture is just a fancy name for theft.
BUT, BUT.........That donald trump........
Unfortunately for America, the constitution don’t mean sh*t anymore.
Reverse RICO :)
You mean, like the mosque the crime was planned in? Or incited in?
I have never understood how this can begin to be constitutional...
... Me too.
An excellent reason for an offshore bank account that would require due process.
That was the plan all along - "drugs" was just to scare the sheep into line.
That's a good Wiki article.
What I'm skeptical about is the total dollar amount of forfeitures received.
The article says $4.5 billion was seized by DOJ in 2014. But the only example they give is the $11,000 seizure.
If $11,000 is an “average” size seizure, they would need 410,000 such seizures, each year. That means there must be thousands of million dollar-plus seizures, just at the federal level.
A contingency lawyer gets 40% or more of that money if he wins. I guarantee that thousands of contingency lawyers would line up for a shot at a $400,000+ pay day.
The fact that contingency lawyers are not lining up to take these cases tells me that most of these cases are completely valid, and are drug related, and would be impossible to win.
Like you, I don't support these laws. But to my eye, the number of completely innocent people who get snared in the net is quite small.
For instance, if I had $11,000 in cash in my car or my airport suitcase, I would demand a search warrant before I'd let the cops look for it. That would stop 90% of the innocent seizures right there.
And why would anyone sign a “waiver” and let them take it? Why would anyone even talk to these cops?
I'd be demanding a court appointed attorney at the first sign of a search or a seizure.
Invalid conclusion. They don't take these cases because the deck is stacked against the owner: "The government must initially prove by a preponderance of the evidence [NOT beyond a reasonable doubt] that the property is subject to forfeiture. The owners must then prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they had no knowledge of the underlying crime." - http://www.nhbar.org/publications/display-news-issue.asp?id=7171
No! Not one of the people I am referring to had a “tax lien” that I am aware of. If you have a business such as a burger stand, nail salon, yard maintenance, used car lot, or especially a gun dealership, but really any business where you make a lot of cash transactions and you make frequent cash deposits you are very likely to face this type of action at some point. You just have no clue about this do you? If you could take just a small amount of your valuable time and look it up... your eyes might be opened.
As a reminder, here's how it works in a free society: Before the government subjects you to any punishment - including loss of property - IT must prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that you have broken a law for which that punishment is the penalty prescribed by the criminal statutes.
So what kind of society do we now find ourselves living in? Because that is not how it currently works with the confiscation of property. And this is happening at all levels, local, state and federal. Most people want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that it is not happening because they have not been personally affected by it. The first time that I became aware of the situation was around 15 years ago when we were shopping for an airplane. We were looking for a small vintage airplane, we were looking at a Tripacer. The guy who was selling the Tripacer took us across the runway to introduce us to his friend. His friend was storing a Pilatus PC-6 for the Black Diamond police department.
I asked how the Black Diamond police department happened to have a Pilatus PC-6 to sell. Black Diamond was rural small town which had a population of approximately 3000 people at the time. I was told that they had hired a police chief that knew the inns and outs of confiscating property. The Pilatus had never been anywhere near Black Diamond that anyone was aware of. The Black Diamond Police Chief had some inside knowledge of something about the owner of the plane which was kept in Renton.
The plane had never been used in drug smuggling operations that anyone was aware of. The owner was never convicted of anything that anyone who knew about the plane was aware of, although there were rumors that he was a marijuana user and had a history of making large cash deposits. Of course he was a small business owner who made many cash transactions. He did not live or work any where near Black Diamond. The whole thing seem so unbelievable to me that I looked into it a little further and was extremely disturbed to find that the owner had no criminal history, and no charges were ever filed against him for anything. Yet he lost nearly everything he owned including his airplane, his home and his small business. The IRS actually is the agency who confiscates the most property using this tactic... these re not "tax liens" all it takes is a history of cash deposits and if it looks to them like your cash deposits are "structured" to avoid depositing more than $10,000 at a time you are vulnerable. Knowing the IRS it is very likely if you are an outspoken conservative and might be inclined to describe yourself as a patriot the selective enforcement policies of the Obama administration might make you more vulnerable. So please keep this in mind.
An unfree society - to the cheers of some alleged "conservatives."
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