Hey, hey, hey: Police are our friends. They’d never just take your money and spend it on themselves.
“All of this is fundamentally at odds with the U.S. Constitution,”
HUGE understatement!
Hey, hey, hey...those are Constitutional Patriots, ready to stand against illegitmate government power at a moments notice, just like the Revolutionaries, doncha know!?
Some here love this
RICO is wonderful
Any person who takes law enforcement personnel of any stripe as public ‘servants’ has lost track of the real world. These ‘law enforcement’ agencies have mutated into self serving fraternities. There are still remnants of/for public first obligations but most such groups today like other ‘public’ workers have an attitude that the public is our social poodle dogs. Unions of/for law enforcement people should be abolished.
If the IRS can do it so can we.
somebody's making a killing in the roid business selling to most of those doughnut munchersMaybe it’s time to start practicing “police asset seizures”. If the police and sherrifs want to run a mafia racket, they should anticipate some competition. The worst fear any law enforcement agency should have, is when those agencies overstep their bounds, and become as despised as the criminals they supposedly swore to protect the public against, the public decides that those corrupt agencies have become the enemy, and will be dealt with accordingly.
There are many good, honest police.
At the same time, there are some crooks (and worse) among them.
Perhaps not surprising, since there are so many police in modern=day, transformed Amerika...
and... when one of them steals your stuff from you, there’s almost nothing you can say or do about it, practically speaking.
just like in “backwards third-world tin-pot dictatorships”
Asset seizure can be compared to the practice of prize taking in the Royal Navy. When prizes were seized by Royal Navy ships, the value of the ship and cargo were awarded to the ship’s crew in an allocation determined by the crown.
Enemy warships captured in battle were considered to be prizes, but merchant vessels could become prizes as well, subject to British and Admiralty law. Merchant ships of an enemy nation, or neutral ships carrying cargo to an enemy port could be seized with the ship and cargo sold, and the proceeds divided among the crew. Many Royal Navy Captains became wealthy men through prize taking.
But, all seizures were subject to the judgment of an Admiralty Court. The Captain had to prove that the prize was legitimate and that the due process of law was applied. Any Captain found to have violated the law could be both sued and imprisoned.
The recent case of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes illustrates. This ship was part of a fleet of 4 Spanish warships carrying a treasure to Spain in 1804 that was meant to finance an intended war against Great Britain. The British got wind of it and the Royal Navy intercepted the ships, seized three and sank one with all its treasure. War was declared shortly thereafter. Since at the time of the battle, Spain and Great Britain were not at war, the prizes were declared by the Admiralty to be the property of the crown and the crews got nothing. The discovery of the wreck by the commercial company Odyssey Marine led back into Admiralty Court to settle a dispute with Spain that Spain, not Odyssey had the rights to the salvage.
The point of all of this is that these police seizures include no judicial review. Government administrators make all the determinations that decide the fate of assets with no due process for the apparent owners of the assets. The police have every incentive to conduct illegal searches, to seize assets found in any search and neglect to determine if crimes were committed. People sailing the seven seas 200 years ago had more rights than people driving down the Interstate today.
This is a direct result of the war on drugs. Many thanks to all the jackbooted drug warriors for this, and it’s been going on for years.
It wasn’t that long ago that I rejected the Libertarian message of “legalize all drugs”.
I still believe that all drugs are very bad and that legalization will create a public health nightmare.
But the war on drugs has created a criminal justice nightmare that I now recognize is the greater evil.
I now fully embrace the “legalize all drugs” message, for the sake of defunding and defanging our out-of-control militarized police forces.
Count on the liberal media to give us the “news” about three decades late. This stuff has been going on, and being written about, for a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time. But don’t tell the Post. They have Pulitzer dreams.
Special Quick Unified Action Team.
SQUAT.
Some of you may remember the case of a small business man (restaurant owner, I think) who was told by his insurance agent that if he was robbed, the insurance would only pay $10,000. Consequently, the owner dutifully deposited his receipts whenever they came close to $10,000.
And, guess what, the cops decided that he was money laundering and seized all his assets. I don’t recall finding out whatever happened to him, but it was posted here on FR. Maybe someone here remembers more about the case than I do.
This is the new Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos. They are actually beginning to act like real journalists for a change. Do I trust them - nah, they are still journalists, and still in Washington DC which means they are congenital liberals, but still they deserve applause for doing the right thing here. Keep it up