Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by InvisibleCities » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

imaginenore wrote: post #63

eldavido wrote: post #61

Civil asset forfeiture is horrible and we should get rid of it. On a different note, my takeaway from this story: pick your battles. Sure, you can go into an airport with $11k in cash. Maybe you're a Sikh and you want to carry a kirpan [0] into the airport, or you're a high school kid working on a science project and you have a bunch of C-cell batteries taped together with wires hanging out the ends of them (experien…

Civil asset forfeiture is fine if you're convicted, and the law says it's ok for a given crime. The current situation is ridiculous, and I'm surprised nobody brought a case all the way to The Supreme Court (I mean a case when a person was not charged and/or not found guilty).

>I'm surprised nobody brought a case all the way to The Supreme Court

State's Attorneys will typically drop Civil Asset Forfeiture cases before they get to the Supreme Court for that reason. It's better to give up a few cases here and there than to fight them and risk taking down the whole system, I guess.

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

#72

Post by readme » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

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…

You know what man, you're absolutely right. But most people here are going to disagree with you, downvote you, and your brand new account is only going to be visible when I click "showdead" because apparently HN can't handle an opinion without hitting the down button.

I would bet you so much, not a soul on HN would dream of carrying 11k in cash through an airport.

It's ok though, we should make sure people have the right to do that, since 300 years ago before we even had ACH transfers or airplanes the constitution guaranteed us protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

There are cases where I sympathize a lot with the victims of civil asset forfeiture, but this is not one of them.

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

#73

Post by epicureanideal » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

I wrote my rep because of this. If anyone wants to use pieces of this to save time writing their own rep, feel free:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

I'll keep this email brief because either you'll know about the issue already, or you'll want to do your own research (or ask your staff to do so). Most people won't take the time to email you, but this is probably the #1 most important issue for law abiding citizens at this time.

Civil forfeiture, which permits cash or property of US citizens to be seized by police without being convicted of a crime, is completely opposed to all the principles of democratic government. If someone is convicted of a crime and the cash or property relates to the crime, sure, take it. But I am reading more and more stories in the news about merely unlucky fellow citizens having their cash stolen from them by the police (I use the word stolen because the seizure is unjust in this case) merely because "carrying a lot of cash is suspicious".

You might be interested to read the Peelian Principles of policing a democracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles) which were created for the Metropolitan Police Force in London in 1829. The same principles would be effective today for maintaining public support for the police.

When the people we as citizens entrust to keep order create the impression that they are not trustworthy and are a potential danger to us, this is a serious problem. When citizens see a police car or see a police officer walk by, they should feel safe, not fearful. That is less and less the case.

Thank you.

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

#74

Post by joshuaheard » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

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…

Don't get your news from a comedian.

Edit: Sorry, still on my first cup of coffee. Here it goes: the purpose of news is to objectively inform you of facts. The purpose of these comedy shows is to make you laugh, often by distorting or exaggerating the facts. By getting your news from comedy shows, you are receiving a distorted view of reality, which you seem to admit in your post. However, I see this as a greater problem with some youth.

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

#75

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #19

ipsin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that it can still be a false positive, even though "detecting weed" and "using weed" both occurred. The dog "alerted" for drugs, but the dog can't testify as to why -- because it actually smelled drugs or because it sensed its handler wanted it to. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/legal-challen...

So just to be clear: He said he used drugs, a gate agent smelled drugs, the cops smelled drugs, and you just want to argue that if a dog also smelled drugs that that dog is unreliable even though the arrested party says the dog was correct..? I just don't understand what point you're even trying to make. Just seems like you want to talk/criticise drug-dog evidence even though it has no relation to this case at all. I…

Just because the dog alerted and the person later admitted that they had used drugs doesn't make the fact that the dog was used as justification for a search and confiscation tolerable. If they had used astrological 'cause' in the same circumstance, would you be ok with that?

"We ran his name and found out he was a Pisces. That gave us grounds to search. He had money. That gave us grounds to seize it."

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

#76

Post by readme » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:35 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #60

twic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid your university fees in cash? Is this normal? As a Brit, all these stories about people carrying around huge chunks of cash seem completely outlandish to me. But then, we have free bank-to-bank transfers here.

At the time, yeah - I paid in cash. Financial aid wouldn't free up my money unless I paid my Business Office balance. Business Office claimed I owed $200 from the summer and wouldn't clear my balance until I paid that and the tuition ($734 if I remember correctly). So I walked $934 to the business office (Business Office had the odd policy that they didn't take checks with numbers under 2000 and I didn't write a lot…

Weighing that against the risk of being mugged and having all the money suddenly disappear? I understand the 1000. That's an acceptable risk. I've paid for college like that before.

But 15k for a used truck, all cash? No thanks. I don't suppose your friend also totes a shotgun around with him just in case someone decides they want that 15k too?

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

#77

Post by adebtlawyer » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:36 PM UTC

chucksmash wrote: post #68

steveax wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shady? How have we gotten to a place where carrying a modest amount of cash like $11k is "shady"? I suspect you're not familiar with how many unbanked people there are in this country, or what kind of predatory fees for banking services are levied upon folks with non-existent or low credit ratings.

I'm curious about the predatory fees for banking services you mention. A Wells Fargo checking account can be had for $10/mo, a fee that is waived given 10 or more transactions a month or $500 or more in direct deposit a month or a minimum balance of $1500. Would people with non-existant credit be ineligible for an account like this?

It is possible to be denied a bank account based on overdrafting and abandoning prior accounts. This is not based on credit score with one of the 'big three' agencies, but another agency called Chexsystems that only deals with your conduct towards your bank accounts. Poor people frequently have this problem - an old overdrafted account prevents them from getting another one, even at a different bank.

The gag is that you'd think $11,000 would be enough to fix this problem. Usually people who have it couldn't put a few hundred together to close out the old account.

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

#78

Post by atom-morgan » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:37 PM UTC

joshuaheard wrote: post #74

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…

Don't get your news from a comedian. Edit: Sorry, still on my first cup of coffee. Here it goes: the purpose of news is to objectively inform you of facts. The purpose of these comedy shows is to make you laugh, often by distorting or exaggerating the facts. By getting your news from comedy shows, you are receiving a distorted view of reality, which you seem to admit in your post. However, I see this as a greater pro…

Just a bit dismissive.

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

#79

Post by pandaman » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #49

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a false positive, he admits himself that he smoked weed on the way to the airport. That's really not the point of the article however.

That's still a false positive. Dogs are ostensibly trained to distinguish between a lingering odor (or "residue") and actual material. So the dog, we're told, indicated because of "residue," falsely giving a positive indication for material.

>Dogs are ostensibly trained to distinguish between a lingering odor (or "residue") and actual material.

Have you got any citation for this? I am wondering how is it even possible.

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

#80

Post by yason » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

While the capability of the police to forfeit property is absolutely and completely unfair and, in an (supposedly) equal society, deeply questionable——as opposed to taking the property temporarily unless proven guilty——the unescapably stupid thing to do is to a) transfer money in cash and b) smoking weed while doing that.

All kinds of unlucky things could happen with a) such as losing the baggage/wallet/jacket with the money in it or being robbed. But because of b) and in a state where I believe cannabis is illegal, the mere unluckiness can be imagined to be amplified tenfold and one of the results is a catastrophe such as his.