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

#181

Post by azth » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 12:33 AM 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…

> But it's so hard not to categorise you together with North Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates with how trigger happy...

United Arab Emirates... trigger happy? You have no idea what you're talking about. The police there are extremely pleasant to deal with. You actually feel safe talking to them.

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

#182

Post by Falkon1313 » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 2:02 AM UTC

rebootthesystem wrote: post #172

Falkon1313 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a situation where segments of the population are advocating killing cops. And, in fact, cops have been killed just sitting in their cars doing absolutely nothing more than existing. [...] >They are very concerned that every time they put on their uniform they become targets for maniacs. They'd love to be able to walk around without their guns when in uniform but, today, in the USA, that would be suicidal. And today,…

I am not going to dispute your points. I'll just say that painting all cops with the same brush is as fair as painting all Muslims as terrorists. Which is to say it isn't fair at all. Their jobs are unimaginable to most of us, particularly when they work difficult areas. One of the cops from my Aikido dojo is in a gang task force. One day he entered this room (I can't give too much detail) and had a full clip emptied…

I agree. One of my family members is now retired law enforcement and the stories that he has to tell are incredible (and sometimes hysterical). And of course the job affected his wife and kids - sometimes he would get called away on the weekend and they wondered whether he'd come back.

But my point is that, while most cops have good intentions, instead of punishing and removing the few assholes so that people can feel safer with cops around, we're rewarding them, giving them heavier weapons, institutionalizing their assholery, and possibly turning good cops bad by encouraging them to do unethical/immoral/illegal things. That makes people feel threatened by cops, and that makes it more dangerous for the cops. Citizens and police should not be an adversarial us-vs-them relationship.

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

#183

Post by fweespeech » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 1:53 PM UTC

greenleafjacob wrote: post #168

fweespeech wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was denied a bank account when I was in the middle of moving out of my parents house and needed them to essentially cosign/co-own the account. The stated reason was an inability to document my income and a lack of credit information. Similarly, I've been denied credit cards and bank accounts since this "co-ownership" has mixed my financial information in LexisNexis [and similar services] with that of my parents and…

Try contacting the CFRB

This was 10 years ago.

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

#184

Post by pandaman » Mon, Oct 12, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #180

pandaman wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't think so. I don't see where he said dogs are trained like that. He actually said almost the opposite - dogs are not ignoring weak smells.

I'm not following. He said that 1) such training is possible, and that 2) at least in some cases, it is ignored or that dogs who have this capability are rejected. So indeed, the feature appears, at least according to his source, to be available. And it also appears to be regarded as (or mistaken for) a bug by the users.

I see. It seems you have your own meaning for the word "feature" that makes it interchangeable with the word "option".

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

#185

Post by Roboprog » Wed, Oct 21, 2015, 1:46 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #119

Roboprog wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think carrying thousands of dollars around is foolish, but thanks for the examples of ... that's just how things have to work, sometimes.

Why is it foolish? I'm not real fond of being called a fool. I've had more problem with credit card fraud (and the lost money in fees because of it even if the original money was restored) then I ever had carrying cash. I don't honestly get this "you could be mugged" thinking. If mugging happens often enough that its a risk factor in carrying cash, then you need to think about where you are living.

If you drop a credit card somewhere, you call and cancel it. If you drop $1000, well, don't do that. (carry it? drop it? either?)

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

#186

Post by stretchwithme » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 6:57 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #146

stretchwithme wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just get it from the estate? Anyway, that's relatively rare and doesn't justify suspending the property rights of individuals without due process.

Why would the estate give its property to the government instead of following the will? It is not as rare as you might think, but even if it were very frequent, it would not justify taking people's property for no good reason.

I meant upon conviction they can get what the person would have been fined. Can't execution of the will wait until all cases are finished?