Stop-And-Seize Turns Police into Self-Funding Gangs • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by bionsuba » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:40 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #249

bionsuba wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice straw-man, but I'm an anarchist and an atheist. If you believe it's heading right, I would love to see your arguments, or you can choose to stay at the kids table and continue calling people names.

It seems unlikely that an anarchist would use the term "RINO" except as a joke. Anarchists reject the entire ridiculous Coke-vs-Pepsi circus. One who can actually see daylight between Democrats and Republicans is too in love with the status quo to reject its arbitrary authority.

>It seems unlikely that an anarchist would use the term "RINO" except as a joke. Anarchists reject the entire ridiculous Coke-vs-Pepsi circus

Rejecting the fact that a red team vs blue team dynamic exists is denying the political reality of the time. I used the term RINO because it accurately describes Trump, a centrist who is using the R next to his name as a way to get more votes rather than an indication of his beliefs.

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

#252

Post by golemotron » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:44 AM UTC

The real solution to this is not to reform civil forfeiture law but to pass legislation that makes sure that seized property is held in escrow and destroyed if a court decides that it does not revert to the owner.

If police/municipalities can't profit from forfeiture and have to pay real costs for exercising it, it will disappear.

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

#253

Post by icebraining » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:58 AM UTC

chad_strategic wrote: post #198

fenomas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA Civil Forfeiture. John Oliver did an episode on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

Shucks you beat me to it. This was about a year go... It's only now that main stream media is picking up on this scam by the police. This type of aggressive policing (excessive jaywalking tickets) was also happening in Ferguson. We know how that turned out...

As much as I like to beat on the MSM, they did pick it up; plenty of major publications (the Economist, the New Yorker, USA Today, Forbes, the WSJ, PBS, NPR, and many more) had articles on it before John Oliver's episode.

Sarah Stillman's article for the New Yorker, Taken, is particularly good, as well as depressing: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/08/12/taken

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

#254

Post by Your_Creator » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 2:21 AM UTC

John Oliver explains it pretty well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

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

#255

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 3:10 AM UTC

bionsuba wrote: post #251

jessaustin wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely that an anarchist would use the term "RINO" except as a joke. Anarchists reject the entire ridiculous Coke-vs-Pepsi circus. One who can actually see daylight between Democrats and Republicans is too in love with the status quo to reject its arbitrary authority.

>It seems unlikely that an anarchist would use the term "RINO" except as a joke. Anarchists reject the entire ridiculous Coke-vs-Pepsi circus Rejecting the fact that a red team vs blue team dynamic exists is denying the political reality of the time. I used the term RINO because it accurately describes Trump, a centrist who is using the R next to his name as a way to get more votes rather than an indication of his be…

...denying the political reality of the time.

Yes let's do that. We're anarchists after all, so we're allowed to step back and see the forest. D gets elected, the government spends more money, some oppressed group becomes slightly less so, the rest of us become slightly more so, we bomb some benighted Asian locale. R gets elected, the government spends more money, some oppressed group becomes slightly less so, the rest of us become slightly more so, we bomb some benighted "developing" locale. D gets elected...

This is literally every presidential administration in my lifetime and in my parents' lifetimes. What "dynamic" could possibly merit attention, which changes so little?

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

#256

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 6:01 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #231

dragonwriter wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it links to 3 other cases where money was seized from travelers, with no criminal charge ever being filed against anyone. If the people from whom the property was seized were denied (or not notified of) their rights to contest the forfeiture action, that would be something to be upset about. I don't see why we should be upset that the government took civil action without filing criminal charges; the civil burde…

First, the reason to be concerned about civil forfeiture is well stated at http://uclawreview.org/2014/04/29/criminal-forfeiture-is-tak... . The problem is that we introduced it for a specific purpose, and over time the laws have been used expansively and creatively against an ever growing category of people and businesses many of which bear no obvious relationship to organized crime. I believe that this long ago cro…

> The seizure happened under civil forfeiture law, a the second paragraph of The Economist article makes that clear.

The initial seizure happened because property was targetted for civil forfeiture, the expanded seizure happened because property was targetted for criminal forfeiture, the request for a pre-trial hearing (which was denied leading to the series of appeals that ultimately reached the Supreme Court) was for a challenge to the criminal forfeiture action.

The question addressed in the Supreme Court case was about criminal, not civil forfeiture.

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

#257

Post by kunaltyagi » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 6:39 AM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #55

joshuaheard wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

>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…

It was covered very well by John Oliver in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

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

#258

Post by spacemanmatt » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:20 PM UTC

MCRed wrote: post #168

acveilleux wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Biden is one of the architects of these abuses, and the Democrats elected him vice president-- twice. Plenty of blame to go around.

I blame the dearth of choices, not the voters. I think they voted for the best option they had.

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

#259

Post by spacemanmatt » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:40 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #108

drabiega wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most gun legislation dies pretty quickly in congress. I don't think the threat of violence from gun owners has particularly affected that process.

To me it seems unclear that the threat of this sort violence from gun owners has actually been a significant consideration or relevance for many decades, despite the mythology surrounding it. As opposed to the demonstrably effective threat of organized political action by gun right advocates, say.

Yeah, I'm still waiting for the first time gun owners raise their weapons in the interest of freedom. From all I can tell, the vocal pro-gun people are ale vocally pro status-quo.

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

#260

Post by spacemanmatt » Sat, Nov 14, 2015, 12:44 PM UTC

Scenario: You're on the jury of a person accused of killing an undercover policeman who tried to deprive them of their suitcase full of cash. We can't know if the cash was illegally obtained, as they are not on trial nor will the government charge them for any crimes that would connect the cash to a crime. They're only saying the undercover policeman was attempting to make a civil forfeiture. We can't know whether the undercover identified himself to the defendant, because he's dead. There's no evidence that the defendant should have been able to know the deceased was an officer.

How are you inclined to find for the accused?