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Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

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Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#381

The police will keep encroaching until they meet some kind of resistance, which will not easily materialize because people here would be the first ones to utterly condemn respect-instilling reprisals. If everybody else around you accepts to get arbitrarily molested in the butt, you either accept it too, or else you move out. I have personally chosen to move out. Unfortunately, you can see the United Nations, USAID, i…

I think part of the problem is that most of the people come to accept it as normal.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#382
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they charge you for obstruction (or whatever it's called in oklahoma, in french it's called "entrave à un agent de la paix")

Isn't the question, "obstructing what?"

And the answer, of course, is "Justice."

It's like being charged solely with resisting arrest.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#383
post #368

Symptom of a bigger problem: nobody in the criminal justice system is punished for making the wrong move. There is no law enforcement downside to civil asset forfeiture. Officer-involved shootings are discouraged from prosecution or otherwise involve highly-paid "expert" witnesses saying the officer had no other choice - at taxpayer expense. Prosecutors are valued by the number of wins, not by how many innocent peopl…

> I've said it before and I'll say it again: prevent this kind of garbage from happing without consequence by mandating docked wages/pension benefits to pay for all or part of lawsuit damages. Change the incentives and people will change themselves. I'm less certain. It seems to me that this will only push the incentive further up the chain, such that the system refuses to ever find wrongdoing or even allow lawsuits…

Yeah ancient Rome did this and they still can't get rid of the Camorra (mafia)

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#384
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, wouldn't it be evidence ? I genuinely don't know all the details of how this works, but I do find it disturbing that the police turn around and spend the forfeited cash. Should they be allowed to do that with the sack of money from the bank, in your example?

Sure, if it's clear who the property is owned by it goes back to the rightful owner. But in cases where that is unclear or nonsensical (like money obtained by selling illegal drugs) it goes to the state. Where else would it go?

It goes to the state after due process.

That's not what's being described here.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#385

Here's a fun little video from the manufacturer extolling the virtues and showing a demo of their device: https://youtu.be/XYbgnCi7NYI These are some truly evil people. Apparently they can only target prepaid cards with this thing, which unsurprisingly will disproportionately affect people with lower incomes (the "unbanked"). According to the manufacturer's FAQ [1]: Intel™ and ERAD-Recovery™ will only retrieve balanc…

Yes, evil. As is Sergeant Rob Hain (of Chicago) who uploaded this... "Sheriff's Deputy Ron Hain improperly detained Marsh after issuing him a warning and continued questioning him when he should have been free to leave, Barsanti ruled. The questioning led to Marsh's admission he was carrying a gun, which prompted further searches of his truck, phones, GPS and eventually the storage lockers." "The discovery was made b…

From [1]....“All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym. Hain is a marketing specialist for Desert Snow, a leading interdiction training firm based in Guthrie, Okla., whose founders also created Black Asphalt.

Desert Snow created civil forfeiture training seminars for law enforcement. Black Asphalt is a system "that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop."

Now, he's stealing debit cards. This guy is quite the civil forfeiture innovator.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st...

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#386

My understanding with asset seizure is that you can show why the money was yours, and it is returned. What happens to the 7.7% taken by the servicer? Is it automatically returned as well?

Also depending on the method they use to drain the card. What about interchange fees that cards brands charge for transactions?

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#387
post #360
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the police catch a person running away from a recently robbed bank holding a bag of money do you think they should have to convict the person before taking back the money? Yes. The money may be held in escrow pending the trial, but appropration by police is unjust -- and should be illegal if the person is not charged and arrested.

So if it's clear that a person is in possession of illegally obtained property, but it's a mystery exactly how they got it so law enforcement can't indict them for a crime, they should just get to keep it?

If how the individual came into possession of the property is a mystery, how is it clear the property was illegally obtained? I would be hard-pressed to prove that many of my assets truly belong to me.

Edit: all of this is off-topic, as the bank can be proven the owner and the police would not keep the money.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#388
>We've seen where the money goes and how it's been misspent

Serious question, where does the money go and how is it spent? Who is it spent by?

We do have a process for the confiscation of proceeds of crime here in Australia. I believe the money goes into a big pot controlled by a federal government department (https://www.afsa.gov.au/ ie not the police) to be spent on community projects. I am sure that there is plenty of scope for waste etc but if nothing else the system would seem to do a good job of removing any financial incentives for the police to seize stuff.

Re: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards

#389

As an Englishman, I have a couple of questions for you Americans on here. 1) Does anyone know who came up with these "civil asset forfeitures"? (Personally, they seem most un-civil to me.) 2) Can any of you defend America as "the land of the free" when more of the population are in prison than in almost any other country in the word and the police not only have the power to strip you of your property and assets witho…

I'm not going to try to defend civil asset forfeiture (it's an abhorrent practice), but I still do think America is marginally more free than most places for a few reasons: - I don't think the number of people in prison is the best measure of whether a country is free or not. By that logic, a backwater regime which simply dealt with undesirables via extrajudicial shootings would be more "free." - Likewise, the notion…

"But I'm no more afraid of getting shot by the police than I am of dying in any other unlikely way (terrorist attack, random serial killer, etc.)."

You may be unafraid, but there is an order of magnitude difference between your examples. Serial killers murder about 150 people per year, terrorist attacks killed 19 in 2015. Cops killed 1146 people.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...

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