To: tacticalogic
Asset forfeiture is a good tool in theory. But now every “police” (quotes because police now means “revenue”) agency has an asset forfeiture group. In Tallahassee they took a grandmother’s paid for home because they said her grandson sold drugs from her porch. The paper mentioned that if she’d had a mortgage instead of owning it outright they wouldn’t have bothered. So, the sale wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t getting any money from it, but they succeeded in taking her home. Now, could she have fought it in court? In theory, but you have to come up with $5,000 down and $500/hour to use the court system. For all intents and purposes there is no justice unless you have plenty of money.
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every time I drive by the police driving some hot car, I think that the car was taken from a citizen, without due process. I don’t care what the crime was; due process and selling assets to pay fines works.
“every time I drive by the police driving some hot car, I think that the car was taken from a citizen, without due process.”
Back when 280Z’s were new the Highway Patrol in Pinellas County had one. An article in the paper said the trooper driving it had stopped a drug dealer and they’d seized the car. Think about that. A trooper directly benefited from a drug seizure. (I seem to recall they stopped that practice, but I’m not sure about that.)
I own a really nice car for which a police package already exists. Believe me I NEVER speed in that car as Florida can seize your car for “racing.” But there doesn’t have to be a second car to make it a race. Theoretically they have to stop you three times.
I used to know cops and trust them. That was years ago. The ones I’ve dealt with lately seem entirely different. They don’t seem to consider themselves ordinary citizens with a uniform and a gun. They seem to think of themselves as cops and their view is it’s us (cops) against them. We are all “thems.”