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Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

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Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#11

Post by pfannkuchen »

klyrs wrote: post #3
jkubicek wrote: post #2

Severely limiting the scope of civil forfeiture seems like one of those political issues that everyone across the political spectrum can agree on. I'm constantly hearing horror stories like the ones in this article and I've never heard any reasonable defense of our current system. In fact, I've never even heard an unreasonable defense.

I disagree that everyone across the political spectrum agrees on this: Thin Blue Liners have considerable sway over politics, and they're happily on the take.

Can you provide a reference where you have seen someone take this stance? I personally have never seen it, and I think I know a lot of pro police types. I think most pro police types would see this as corruption.

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#12

Post by rgrieselhuber »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #11
klyrs wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that everyone across the political spectrum agrees on this: Thin Blue Liners have considerable sway over politics, and they're happily on the take.

Can you provide a reference where you have seen someone take this stance? I personally have never seen it, and I think I know a lot of pro police types. I think most pro police types would see this as corruption.

The best case response on this issue I’ve seen from TBLiners is apathy.

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#13

Post by membrcovidb »

bashinator wrote: post #9
wahnfrieden wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is at best a harm reduction tactic. But as I said for limiting state powers specifically, it's usually not even that.

So what actual actions do you advocate for ordinary citizens to take?

[dead]

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#14

Post by cmmeur01 »

bashinator wrote: post #9
wahnfrieden wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is at best a harm reduction tactic. But as I said for limiting state powers specifically, it's usually not even that.

So what actual actions do you advocate for ordinary citizens to take?

Create parallel organizations / structures is about all you can do. Very clear we aren’t voting our way to something better at this point.

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#15

Post by criddell »

cmiller1 wrote: post #10
wahnfrieden wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden was one of the "architects" of modern civil forfeiture: https://fee.org/articles/how-a-young-joe-biden-became-the-ar... Voting gets us nowhere with limiting state power. Like falling for a good cop bad cop routine. It provides consent for both sides of the aisle abuse like this. edit: I don't know fee.org. Here's a more neutral reference to widely-known facts: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/bidens-cri…

[flagged]

Wikipedia has a slightly different take:

> The politics of civil forfeiture were somewhat unusual. The federal forfeiture laws were introduced and pushed through Congress by Republicans in the 1980s, with some Democrats supportive and some critical.

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#16

Post by phkahler »

mikece wrote: post #5

The key question is "What will SCOTUS Do?" There have been numerous cases where Civil Asset Forfeiture has been overturned, but only AFTER the wronged party sued for actual and punitive damages. I wish the law required that LEOs who steal people's stuff to be automatically criminally charged for theft upon the overturn of civil asset forfeiture (along with treble damages awarded to the wronged party)... but that woul…

>> I wish the law required that LEOs who steal people's stuff to be automatically criminally charged for theft upon the overturn of civil asset forfeiture

At that point the defense would be Qualified Immunity.

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#19

Post by jasonlotito »

cmiller1 wrote: post #10
wahnfrieden wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden was one of the "architects" of modern civil forfeiture: https://fee.org/articles/how-a-young-joe-biden-became-the-ar... Voting gets us nowhere with limiting state power. Like falling for a good cop bad cop routine. It provides consent for both sides of the aisle abuse like this. edit: I don't know fee.org. Here's a more neutral reference to widely-known facts: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/bidens-cri…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Police Seized Innocent Peoples Property, Kept It for Years. What Will SCOTUS Do?

#20

Post by wahnfrieden »

sambeau wrote: post #17

This graph from the 2015 article "Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year" really rammed this home for me: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

Both those sums are further eclipsed by wage theft but that's another topic.

This is also only based on federal police statistics, because we don't have data available on state and local police forces who all participate in this looting.

Previous discussion, which mods removed from the frontpage once it was at the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36975143

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