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This seems to be a clear violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Even if the seizing of assets is legit, the assets should be looked at as revenue, and should be allocated by the legislature, not the police department. It is incredibly unseemly for police to be operating their own private economy based on forfeited assets that were acquired due to their position/power. There should be a downside for police…
If the Washington Post, and others, would turn the same eye on any other organization, they would have a field day of things they would find, but it wouldn't sell as many newspapers. The problem is, they make it sound like all police have these issues (and others they "report" on) when the reality is far from it. Someone will comment, "But the police shouldn't be doing this and it's a government institution!!", as if…
What other organization routinely takes and keeps assets from US citizens without permission?
This article is a distraction from the real issue. Most of the spending (including the oft-repeated $225 for "Sparkles the clown") is legitimate. The process of civil forfeiture, on the other hand, is a clear violation of the constitution.
This seems to be a clear violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Even if the seizing of assets is legit, the assets should be looked at as revenue, and should be allocated by the legislature, not the police department. It is incredibly unseemly for police to be operating their own private economy based on forfeited assets that were acquired due to their position/power. There should be a downside for police…
In principle, I agree. But since the police are taxpayer funded, this just ends up costing the people money, and the only damage to the police force is political/reputational. Not to say those would not be good pressures to have, just that trying to hit them in the pocketbook is not likely to have much of an effect.
This seems to be a clear violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Even if the seizing of assets is legit, the assets should be looked at as revenue, and should be allocated by the legislature, not the police department. It is incredibly unseemly for police to be operating their own private economy based on forfeited assets that were acquired due to their position/power. There should be a downside for police…
> There should be a downside for police if the seizure turns out to not be legit. I don't think paying back double would be that out of line. In principle, I agree. But since the police are taxpayer funded, this just ends up costing the people money, and the only damage to the police force is political/reputational. Not to say those would not be good pressures to have, just that trying to hit them in the pocketbook i…
This article is a distraction from the real issue. Most of the spending (including the oft-repeated $225 for "Sparkles the clown") is legitimate. The process of civil forfeiture, on the other hand, is a clear violation of the constitution.
Yeah, I'm not really sure what happened to the fourth and fifth amendments. Both prohibit arbitrary seizure of property.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason the answer to these questions is "no" is because ownership in a civil forfeiture proceeding must be proved by a "preponderance of the evidence" standard. The difference between a car trunk full of $100 bills and a painting on your wall is proving that, "more likely than not" the item is the fruit of criminal activity.
"preponderance of the evidence" is a low standard compared to the "presumed innocent" standard of criminal trials. It's not helped by the fact that the judge in civil forfeiture proceedings sometimes has a clear conflict of interest: cf. Coutroom 478. http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/08/26/p...
I think civil forfeiture has major problems with how it's applied, but it's pretty internally consistent with the rest of the law.
With this in mind I've wondered what would happen if,say, 100% of the proceeds from asset forfeiture went to ALS. I expect ALS would benefit very little but at least it would save thousands of people from having their assets stolen by the police. It turns out I'm not the first person to have this idea. The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR)[2] seeks to remove the profit incentive and conflict of interest from civil asset forfeiture (along with some other good ideas). There have been other attempts for reform in various states, but FAIR has a lot of potential to change things at the federal level.
1-https://www.ij.org/asset-forfeiture-report-california 2-https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s2644
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8423035
This is an amazing amount of coverage in fairly large, established news organizations.
Had.