Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

bloombergview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 268 posts

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#171

Post by rayiner »

__jal wrote: post #169
asmithmd1 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forfeiture was designed for cases like this: A bank robbery suspect is arrested with cash on him. The police have no evidence against the suspect but obtain a written confession - the trouble is they did not read him his rights. The confession is inadmissible, the suspect goes free. Do you hand him his money on the way out of court? In anti-trust cases damages are tripled as a deterrent, why not institute the same pe…

One reason not to institute the same penalty for the police is that taxpayers end up paying. You might say, good, that means voters will try to ensure future police don't do this shit. Which is a nice theory, but probably doesn't work out in practice. In practice, you have small towns that can be bankrupted by a good-size suit, which is probably not a good outcome. You also have large cities that have room to minimax…

> In practice, you have small towns that can be bankrupted by a good-size suit, which is probably not a good outcome.

It's an excellent outcome. Particularly in small towns, the police strongly reflect the attitude of the people.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#172

Post by MCRed »

Fezzik wrote: post #106

Ugh, so much misinformation. Having lurked here for a while HN seems to think civil forfeiture is the boogie man. To clarify a few things, at least on the county level: 1) There are always drugs when property is seized this way. I review every single civil forfeiture in a rather large county, and the affidavits officers submit read something like: "I stopped Bob after an informant purchased a large amount of heroin f…

> There are always drugs when property is seized this way.

Nope. Several years ago the FBI stole $6M in Platinum, Gold and Silver. Some of the theft was of protected political speech-- literally copper & silver pieces with Ron Paul's picture and a campaign slogan on them. No allegations of drugs was involved, and the criminality claim -- that using gold and silver as barter threatened to undermine the US dollar -- was absurd on its face.

> IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO CONTEST A CIVIL FORFEITURE.

BS. The $6M in precious metals was melted down (reducing its value actually) and sold off to the profit of the FBI, despite a very large and expensive legal effort to try and reclaim the money. The owners of the assets were never convicted of a crime.

> The money does not all go directly to the seizing agency. Much of it goes towards drugs programs, oversight for civil forfeitures, and other programs.

IT's still theft.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#173

Post by Spooky23 »

rayiner wrote: post #160
ChristianBundy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But shouldn't the burden of proof rest on the government?

It should be, and it is (at least under federal law): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/983 ("the burden of proof is on the Government to establish, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the property is subject to forfeiture"). What I think causes confusion is the "innocent owner defense" where the burden is on the owner to prove that, notwithstanding that the property may be subject to forfeiture because…

That's a low standard for the government to meet. "Preponderance of the evidence" means that the government doesn't need to prove the property is subject to forfeiture, just show that 50% of the evidence indicates that it could be. (guy in car from out of state at night, guy fits the profile of something, road is a "drug corridor", guy had alot of cash, guy was speeding)

It's hard to convict you of a crime for driving around with a envelope stuffed with a lot of cash. But's it's easy to demonstrate reasons why the cash may be used for nefarious purposes.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#174

Post by MCRed »

DickingAround wrote: post #89

We cannot expect the world to become more sane. We must ourselves engineer our way out of it. We will engineer our way out of surveillance with encryption. We will engineer our way our of highway seizure with bitcoin (or a similar tech). If does seem bad now, but we will solve it and we will solve it without needing to convince others it's broken.

We may or may not solve it with engineering, but one thing I've become increasingly certain of is we won't solve it by convincing others it's broken. For decades Freedom of Speech was sacrosanct, and now we have a whole generation that rejects it out of hand and feels they have the right to control others speech, even trivially "offensive" speech.

Bitcoin and other engineering efforts, however, have great potential.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#175

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #110
runako wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguments like this are why it's a good thing we don't base our criminal justice system on statistics. "Innocent until proven guilty" is very different from "Guilty because most people in similar situations are guilty, so let's not bother to prove it in this case." The cops would have a field day, for instance by arresting college students at random on the weekend because statistically most will test positive for con…

"Proof" by evidence is an inherently statistical process. E.g. cops find a DNA match between a suspect and skin cells found under a murder victim's fingernails under circumstances where it is clear she tried to fight off her attacker. Does that "prove" guilt? No, it proves that under similar circumstances, guilty is highly likely. The problem is not that the justice system is statistical. That's unavoidable. The prob…

FWIW (Rayiner knows this, but maybe everyone else doesn't):

The concept of "proof of innocence" does not appear in the Constitution; it derives from common law, and the Latin word it comes from doesn't mean "prove" in the mathematical sense.

Which makes sense, because "innocent until formally proven guilty" doesn't make sense in a sentence that proceeds to "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#176

Post by Spooky23 »

asmithmd1 wrote: post #149
cft wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A suspected bank robber gets arrested when the money is kept. The outcome of the arrest is a conviction or an acquittal, which (automatically) determines the fate of the money. That's different from what is described in the article

Forfeiture was designed for cases like this: A bank robbery suspect is arrested with cash on him. The police have no evidence against the suspect but obtain a written confession - the trouble is they did not read him his rights. The confession is inadmissible, the suspect goes free. Do you hand him his money on the way out of court? In anti-trust cases damages are tripled as a deterrent, why not institute the same pe…

I think a better approach would be to turn the money to the state's general fund. That way you avoid the problems with cops loading up with overtime and buying fancy cars.

The problem with the direct seizures going to the cops is that the local government underfunds the overtime budget -- that affects the policeman's pocket and is a powerful motivator.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#177

Post by humanrebar »

soylentcola wrote: post #128
humanrebar wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some rights are inalienable, so they cannot be taken away, just violated. The right to justice is one of those. The right to life. The right to free expression. It's pretty obvious that they exist, otherwise nobody would really care about murder, rape, theft, fraud, lying, etc. So the burden of proof is on those that want to limit or deny inalienable rights. George Carlin is hilarious (at least in general), but ironi…

I think his intention wasn't so much to say this is a positive thing but rather to cynically (and humorously) point out that "rights" are a human construct and susceptible to all of the associated weaknesses in practice. You can claim a right to something and if you can get enough people to agree with you, you can enforce someone's claim on the right to something. But it's not like there's a natural force that ensure…

> But it's not like there's a natural force that ensures, compels, or mandates these rights.

A lot of really well regarded philosophers throughout the ages have disagreed with that.

> I guess my point is that taken less cynically, rights... only exist [with] sufficient power

If I follow that line of thinking, justice is only an extension of power. I don't think people agree with that.

I don't believe you think that. Perhaps it's just a matter of phrasing; surely we both agree that it's important to recognize that people should never murder people. We use the word "right" because it's important to be absolute in this rule.

It's worth distinguishing between:

  * life is not a right
  * we don't have enough power to enforce murder laws
...the second case is preferable, even if it may be hard to distinguish between the two looking down the barrel of a gun. If you believe in a deity, the could be justice in the afterlife. If you don't, one can be justified in history, if nothing else. For example, we don't say it was OK for Thomas Jefferson to own slaves because the U.S. didn't have the votes to ban the practice altogether. We say the slaves had their rights violated, not that they didn't deserve freedom and dignity because nobody could guarantee it.

tl;dr To say there are no absolute rights is to say there are no absolute wrongs.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#178

Post by MCRed »

commentzorro wrote: post #24

This is the Republican Dream. Shifting taxes to states then to localities and finally to each group within the locality. As the nation moves farther and farther to the right expect the to happen in every state and local agency out there.

Joe Biden is a republican? Didn't you vote for him in the last two elections?

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#179

Post by __jal »

rayiner wrote: post #171
__jal wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason not to institute the same penalty for the police is that taxpayers end up paying. You might say, good, that means voters will try to ensure future police don't do this shit. Which is a nice theory, but probably doesn't work out in practice. In practice, you have small towns that can be bankrupted by a good-size suit, which is probably not a good outcome. You also have large cities that have room to minimax…

> In practice, you have small towns that can be bankrupted by a good-size suit, which is probably not a good outcome. It's an excellent outcome. Particularly in small towns, the police strongly reflect the attitude of the people.

I went to high school in a southern town U.S. town that then had a population of about 2000. I can assure you that police behavior there strongly reflected the attitudes of a couple wealthy families in the town, not the ~1900 other folks.

Re: Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs

#180

Post by makomk »

rayiner wrote: post #102
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 was not. It is worse than that. The money is what is charged, not the person. So the money has to prove itself innocent, which is pretty much impossible. If you h…

The money isn't "charged." The case is just styled as In re $35.00 of US Currency because the case is about the ownership status of the property, not about any specific person. The money doesn't have to "prove itself innocent." The legitimate owner just needs to rebut the government's argument that it was illegally obtained.

Of course, this styling isn't just used in cases where the property was illegally obtained. It's also used in cases where it's not in dispute that the property was legally obtained, and the government simply seeks to take it from the legitimate owner as a penalty for a crime they assert he committed, in order to avoid naming the owner as a defendant even though they know exactly who owned the property they seized.
Post reply on HN