Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

Post by travjones » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #9

hoffspot wrote: post #5

I'm not saying the police are right, the whole seizure thing is ridiculous, but this story is so shady. You have 11 grand in cash and want to move it from A to B. The obvious and safe way is to deposit it in a bank and get a cashier's check or do an ACH transfer. Who in their right mind would carry it with them or even worse, put it in a checked bag that airlines notoriously lose? The point of the story is valid, but…

And therein lies the crux of the problem with these things being subject to zero checks or balances and such a low standard of proof. People’s stories sound shady all the time. In Canada, in my lifetime, there have been four different men whom everyone was certain had murdered people, and it turned out that they were innocent. In many cases, people are so sure that shady people are guilty, they make up testimony to m…

Post by albedoa » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

nicarus1984 wrote: post #20

afandian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is one facet of analysis. It's an important one, but doesn't invalidate the others.

No one is claiming that it invalidates the others.

Post by DamnYuppie » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 3:45 PM UTC

1971genocide wrote: post #29

csense wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the government and businesses have slowly but surely been eroding the role of cash in our lives. Most people use checks or credit cards for big purchases. Most people are paid by check, and the exceptions are usually near minimum wage. Nobody does big transactions in cash anymore -- even if you want to pay tens or hundreds of thousands in cash for a car, a house, or college tuition, if you show up with a brie…

I agree with your conclusion - but your premise of conspiracy is wrong. Using virtual Money is obviously much better than paper money. The difference is should it be centralized or de-centralized and anonymous ? The paradoxical economic problem with decentralized money is that the govt has no control over it. Which means during bad time its going to be very difficult for the govt to enact changes. We learnt it the ha…

Post by diego » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

nicarus1984 wrote: post #15

hmottestad wrote: post #8

Now I'm not sure if Norway has similar laws, but I haven't heard of any. However, watching John Oliver talk about how ridiculous the civil forfeiture laws are in the US just makes me want to laugh so much. I know of all the great things happening in the US, and I'm not calling you a bad country. But it's so hard not to categorise you together with North Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates with how trigger happy…

To group the US in with the likes of N. Korea and China is dishonest and inaccurate. If the US were run by either of those governments, you would not have Jon Oliver, Washington Post, etc. exposing and criticizing the very issues you mention.

  select from countries group by police_score;

  select from countries group by freedom_of_press_index; 

Post by jessriedel » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #25

For those who didn't RTFA, he carried his life savings with him in cash . We've seen several stories like this: person has $xx,xxx in cash on them like that's just a normal thing to do. Bad thing happens. Person is incredulous. No one thinks they have any culpability for opting to carry $10k+ in cash over vastly safer and free alternatives. That doesn't excuse the seizure, but I don't see how it's worth our time to g…