It's interesting that "conservatives" and "freedom loving people" become pretty OK with tyrannical practices as long as they are practiced on some undesirable group. "Don't tread on me" becomes "Don't tread on me, tread on the brown people instead."
Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
91–100 of 268 posts
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#92Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. I don't get it, which is why I'm asking here: Why is this "stop-and-seize"…
No one would argue illegally obtained money cannot be confiscated. A bank robber cannot keep his stolen money, or someone selling stolen goods, or a drug dealer. The trouble with civil asset forfeiture, as its properly known, is that the burden of proof has been shifted to the accused. So, instead of the state having to prove your money is illegally obtained, or that any crime was committed, you have to prove there w…
I think another big negative here is just the fact that it shifts police org's focus towards crimes where they can "fund" themselves.
I repeat this statistic a lot, but the solved murder rate has fallen from ~90% in the 60s to ~60% in recent years. You'd think with all our new forensic technology and lower overall murder rates it would be opposite.
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless it is to defend gun ownership? (clueless UK citizen here)
The only real reason blatantly anti-constitutional law such as blanket seizure/confiscation hasn't happened on a large scale yet (because they've sure as hell tried) is that, if such laws were passed, the powers that be would suddenly find themselves in front of an enormous number of very angry gun owners who (hopefully) would be less than willing to cooperate peacefully.
Most gun legislation dies pretty quickly in congress. I don't think the threat of violence from gun owners has particularly affected that process.
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#94Actually, the core problem is that when (usually) white, middle-class America sees a police boot on someone's face their instinct is to say, "Well, I guess he deserved it." This is particularly the case for working middle-class mothers. Based on anecdotal conversations, when they see a story about the police shooting an unarmed man in the back, they think, "Well, the guy was probably going to grab someone's little gi…
great comment
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Libya, Iraq, Afganistan, the list goes on. Afghanistan has had problems for some time, but Libya and Iraq both functioned as nations before ill-advised adventurism on the part of Western powers. This "list goes on" shit is particularly chilling to those who value peace, life, and national solvency. What other functioning nations must be broken to feed the military-industrial complex?
> ill-advised adventurism on the part of Western powers Let keep the picture clear: ill-advised by the USA. It was the USA who wanted the conflicts and did everything in their power to 'persuade' their allies to bomb along. It was all lies and just see what we got in return.
Not only the US, I'm afraid. The German government wants to wage more wars, too. For "humanitarian reasons" and also bananas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86ELBWLNdmg (this is an official propaganda video of the German military, not satire)
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#96Serious question. We're all problem solvers here. There has got to be a better way to get our elected leaders to pay more immediate attention to blatantly immoral and unconstitutional stuff like this.
As developers and engineers we should come up with a technology to force issue on things like this. I'm pretty tired of reading a story like this and feeling helpless to change it,
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one would argue illegally obtained money cannot be confiscated. A bank robber cannot keep his stolen money, or someone selling stolen goods, or a drug dealer. The trouble with civil asset forfeiture, as its properly known, is that the burden of proof has been shifted to the accused. So, instead of the state having to prove your money is illegally obtained, or that any crime was committed, you have to prove there w…
I think another big negative here is just the fact that it shifts police org's focus towards crimes where they can "fund" themselves. I repeat this statistic a lot, but the solved murder rate has fallen from ~90% in the 60s to ~60% in recent years. You'd think with all our new forensic technology and lower overall murder rates it would be opposite.
That 90% figure isn't reliable given the tendency to force confessions out of "known troublemakers" that was far more rampant in the 60s.
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#98Democracy has been bastardized over the past 150+ years to the extent that governments are now effectively nothing more than organized criminal organizations. Police serve as the enforcing arm of these organizations.
Insofar as representative democracy is concerned, it has always fundamentally incurred the inefficiencies caused by the principal-agent problem and diseconomies of scale. This might have been a reasonable trade-off before the advent of modern communication infrastructure, but the model is highly anachronistic by now. The fact that electoral districts operate under a majoritarian basis ensuring party dichotomy per Duverger's law then only makes the case even worse.
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one would argue illegally obtained money cannot be confiscated. A bank robber cannot keep his stolen money, or someone selling stolen goods, or a drug dealer. The trouble with civil asset forfeiture, as its properly known, is that the burden of proof has been shifted to the accused. So, instead of the state having to prove your money is illegally obtained, or that any crime was committed, you have to prove there w…
Didn't civil forfeiture take off as a way to counter the rise of drug monies making kingpins? If to a great degree it's true and simultaneously we're reëvaluating cannabis and society and reëxamining three strikes laws, etc., I would hope we also take a critical look at this shift in burden of proof transferred to the accused with the hope it goes back to the prosecution.
Yeah but policing is expensive, being tough on crime is popular (but mostly only with white republicans) and lowering or eliminating taxes is sacrosanct to republicans. Perfect combination for these kind of abuses.
As long as the victimized populaces doesn't vote for the politicians in power or is otherwise disenfranchised and poor, it's a great plan /s.
Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs
#100Serious question. We're all problem solvers here. There has got to be a better way to get our elected leaders to pay more immediate attention to blatantly immoral and unconstitutional stuff like this. As developers and engineers we should come up with a technology to force issue on things like this. I'm pretty tired of reading a story like this and feeling helpless to change it,
Get out there and join political organizations. Another website just isn't going to change things.