Posted on 11/17/2015 7:22:35 AM PST by aMorePerfectUnion
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.
That is an obvious conflict of interest, is unethical and should be illegal. The FDA and Justus Dept. are now addicted to billion dollar fines as well. The routine fines are now just a normal cost of doing business and a normal funding source for the beast. Consumers pay for it via much higher prices. Companies incur billions more expenses implementing preventative measures, but that just annoys the government.
IOW, $8.4 total thefts.
In answer to your question of “where are the republicans.”
They’re in line with the ‘rats, waiting for their share of the boodle, of course.
Yet another example of the predictable consequences of electoral politics and voting.
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President GHW Bush, March 05, 1991 =>
Asset forfeiture laws allow us to take the ill-gotten gains of drug kingpins and use them to put more cops on the streets and more prosecutors in court.
In the last 5 years alone, the Justice Department shared over half a billion dollars in forfeited assets with State and local law enforcement.
http://bush41library.tamu.edu/archives/public-papers/2764
Maybe the Black Lives Matter crowd has a valid point, after all.
“Note that Dinesh D’Sousa has come to the conclusion that the Gov’t LEO organizations are criminal enterprises.”
States need to take it to the next level and declare federal fascist agencies as state-sponsored terrorists, and then act accordingly to wipe them out.
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