Posted on 02/16/2017 1:15:18 PM PST by reaganaut1
In a White House meeting with county sheriffs from around the nation on February 7, President Trump sided with the law enforcement community in opposing change in the nation’s civil asset forfeiture laws. Here is the transcript of that meeting, and the president’s flippant attitude (he joked about destroying the career of a state senator in Texas who had proposed a bill to reform civil asset forfeiture) and eagerness to stay in the good graces of the sheriffs are very bad news.
Shortly after the election, I wrote that Trump should become a proponent of civil asset forfeiture and defang this vicious beast. A huge majority of the public thinks that civil asset forfeiture is wrongful, because it so indisputably is. Under civil asset forfeiture laws, people who have done nothing illegal and have not even been accused of a crime (much less convicted) have cash, cars, even real estate taken from them, based on nothing more than a law enforcement officer’s suspicion that the property might have resulted from or been involved in a crime.
Civil asset forfeiture is a glaring violation of due process of law that creates opponents across the political spectrum.
Nadine Strossen, then-president of the American Civil Liberties Union, attacked it in congressional testimony, declaring that “all civil asset forfeiture schemes violate fundamental constitutional rights, including the right not to be deprived of property without due process of law and the right to be free from punishment that is disproportionate to the offense.”
And Adam Bates of Cato Institute recommended that in his final year in office, President Obama should halt the federal government’s use of civil asset forfeiture and end its “equitable sharing” program whereby federal and state law enforcement agencies collaborate on the confiscation of someone’s property and divide up the spoils.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
He can’t be right on everything.
Not only is civil forfeiture an abomination that goes against everything the USC stands for but the WOD is the biggest waste of money and manpower since the WOPoverty.
The War On Drugs and the War On Poverty are quagmires. Time to pull out.
Civil asset forfeiture is just a cash cow for law enforcement. So of course they don’t want to lose their slush fund.
Otherwise....F**K THAT!
Write to President Trump. Let him know how you feel.
I think I'm gonna have to rethink my position....carefully!
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
the Fourth Amendment is CLEAR, Due Process is supposed to mean just what it states. The policing agencies and their individuals who ignore the Constitution’s Bill of Rights by performing illegal confiscation prior to a court finding one guilty needs to be stopped. A judge is not the Constitution nor did the enforcing officers illegally confiscate personal property from a citizen take an oath to the judge who tells them its okay to ignore their oath of office. The US Constitution; Trump needs to learn it, live it and defend it by ridding the entire legal system of those who don’t.
I can think of one person where I would be all for asset forfeiture: George Soros.
Everyone is going nuts over wanting everything done the first day in office, it would seem. Lay off of Trump, @-holes!
Very, very, VERY well said!
The ACLU has been right about two, possibly even three, issues since WWI. Can’t remember what they were, though.
IF the house and senate would get the really big stuff done then we can talk about the other important things
We know he approved of the decision in Kelo vs. New London, which was an egregious abuse of eminent domain procedures. (BTW, the shopping center was never built.) We’re well within our rights to be critical of him right now.
This is not the time to go off on Trump on this forum. Keep it for later. He's been there just over three weeks and still has no Cabinet.
DU is for those who don’t dare criticize their leader, and reflexively denounce those who do, on any issue at all.
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