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Stop and Seize

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Stop and Seize

#201

Post by maxxxxx »

slowcode wrote: post #186

I like to use cash, and I keep a tally sheet and receipts with me when I travel, along with any withdrawal slips pertaining to the money. I can prove to a penny where it came from, where it was spent, on what, and it will equate to what is left. But I get the impression that's not enough. As soon as they see cash, it's theirs. And the thing is, I have plenty more in the bank. So if I am stopped and any cash or items…

When you read the reports it becomes clear that they won't go after people like you. they go after people who either don't know their rights or simply cannot afford to fight back.

If you want to do something about this then help some of the people in this situation take their case to court.

Re: Stop and Seize

#202

Post by gizmo686 »

poolpool wrote: post #196
otterley wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will lie or provoke you into doing something I would love to see a law on the books that forbids law enforcement officers from lying to witnesses or the accused to extract evidence or confessions. After all, it's unlawful to lie to them; the playing field should be level on both ends.

Are you a cop? You gotta tell me if you are.

I would imagine such a law would apply to cops who are representing themselves as cops. This would go a long way to establishing the police as a group of people that I, as a law abiding citizen, can trust.

Re: Stop and Seize

#203

Post by jccooper »

kghose wrote: post #70
jjoonathan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money orders typically have limits of a few hundred dollars, far under $18k (the example in the article). Bank-certified checks suffer from forgery problems and take 1-3 days to clear at my local bank. Both of these cost money, sometimes significant amounts of money. For instance the money order fee on $18k, assuming you structured the transaction to get around the limit, would come out to ~$150 at the place I last u…

Why not personal check when you make the payment? Why not a credit card?

A credit card will take something like 3% of the transaction. Thus the "cash discount" idea.

And personal checks are plenty risky for fraud and insufficient funds.

Re: Stop and Seize

#204

Post by zorrb »

PeterisP wrote: post #165
zorrb wrote: post #137

Reading through these comments, I see quite a bit of ignorance. A lot along the lines of, "Why would you ever carry cash!?" Which fortunately a lot of cogent comment have successfully answered. Another is, "Why would you carry that much cash it's so RISKY?" As someone whose had to carry around five figure sums around quite a bit in the past because of my profession (hint: it rhymes with "rambling") my far and away, i…

Are you speaking about the seizure process described in the article or just plain old theft?

Theft under the guise of, "oh this must be drug money". I think the article mentions the average amount taken is something like ~$8k. That's 8-10months of legal fees.

AND IF YOU DON'T LIVE where they took it, you'd have to GO THERE to go to court.

That's why in places like Missouri they love pulling over out of state licenses because they know if you live in California you aren't going to be coming back to contest their shenanigans.

Re: Stop and Seize

#205

Post by aianus »

WildUtah wrote: post #175
aianus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took $9500 in internship savings in cash across the border with Canada a few years ago. I wanted to put the USD directly into my RRSP (Canadian 401K) and a wire transfer would have cost $40 and international deposit of a bank draft would have taken 3 weeks. I would have taken more but >$10k requires a customs declaration which I didn't want to deal with.

Remember that choosing to take less than US$10k in order to avoid the reporting and customs paperwork is a crime in the USA, too.

I thought that only applied if you were taking > $10k by splitting it up to avoid reporting.

Re: Stop and Seize

#206

Post by jtc331 »

stanleydrew wrote: post #130
DominikR wrote: post #117

Why doesn't your society resist? Parts of your police is now equiped like an army on a battlefield and money can be seized without any reasoning. And then there's NSA spying, torture and drone executions of suspected terrorists (even US citizens) without trial. If someone would have told me 20 years ago, that the US will turn into this, I would have thought that this person must be insane. Now it wouldn't even surpri…

Policemen likely don't think of themselves as "going after their own people." They think of themselves as going after criminals, often times profiled based on race (e.g. the anecdote from the article about stopping a Mexican wearing a U of Wyoming hat). And being a police officer probably conditions you pretty quickly to assume that everyone is a bad person. When you do deal with lots of criminals every day you start…

Except that the SPE/ZPE was critically flawed: http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/07/what-textbooks-dont-tell-yo...

Re: Stop and Seize

#207

Post by FiatLuxDave »

javajosh wrote: post #136
solutionviatech wrote: post #133

--------Can we solve part of this problem through a smartphone app? ----------------- Here are my initial thoughts on how it would work, feel free to comment on better ways to implement it / other features 1) If you get pulled over by a cop, you start up the smart phone app and place the phone in the windshield mount (the mount should have power so the phone battery doesn't die) 2) When the app starts, it immediately…

It's a good idea, but it hinges entirely on streaming at least audio, as it hinges on getting real-time help of a lawyer. It also assumes that there are lots of lawyers out there sitting at a computer and willing to listen to police convos, and step in, for free. Perhaps lawyers would want to be involved as a loss leader for new business? I don't know.

It would make a lot more sense to run it like a call center, where low cost personnel would monitor the routine calls and then escalate it to the lawyer on duty when it was obvious that there was a problem.

Re: Stop and Seize

#208

Post by kordless »

angersock wrote: post #108
kordless wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, you are using a TON of blaming statements (which are mostly ad hominem) and are using a trolling technique to attempt poll others for feelings. It's a nasty habit and your comments only serve to make someone angry. I believe you are aware of your intent and only use it to illicit fear. We still have enough liberty here that this article can run in the newspaper freely. That is evidence enough America is fa…

Eh, their post was their opinion, and they've got some decent points. Your accusation of ad hominem is misapplied--go look it up. The observation was made that the real damage to the US would come from within and not without. This seems trivially easy to "prove" if you keep up with the news and history. The observation was made that broad swathes of government and private practice were in league to perpetuate these i…

> their post was their opinion

This is a false statement. "Your country is beginning to stink." is a blaming statement that attempts to lay out pre-support of the opinion "In many respects it is worse than third world countries". However, in the subsequent context in which it is used the statement is presented as a logical conclusion or fact. It is then followed up with another blaming statement meant to seal the 'logic' of the opinion, "It looks like it is not terrorists who are going to destroy America after all. Your corrupt governments, banks, judiciary and law enforcement will do it on their own."

There is no proof that America will be destroyed by corruption inside government, banks or the judicial system. There are observations that we are threatened by some individual's actions, but there are also observations we are doing something about it. The claims we will be 'destroyed' because we are 'corrupt as a third world country' are simply false. There is no evidence this will occur and it is pure conjecture.

While I agree with you it probably started as an opinion the comment, in general, their comments consititued an irrelevant conclusion. Irrelevant because it was full of blaming opinion from someone outside those being blamed, and conclusion because it was presented as fact. As it turns out, irrelevant conclusions fall into a broad of set of relevance fallacies, which themselves are 'ad hominem' arguments. Look it up.

Re: Stop and Seize

#209

Post by otterley »

poolpool wrote: post #196
otterley wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will lie or provoke you into doing something I would love to see a law on the books that forbids law enforcement officers from lying to witnesses or the accused to extract evidence or confessions. After all, it's unlawful to lie to them; the playing field should be level on both ends.

Are you a cop? You gotta tell me if you are.

"No I don't."

Re: Stop and Seize

#210

Post by kordless »

vfclists wrote: post #185
kordless wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, you are using a TON of blaming statements (which are mostly ad hominem) and are using a trolling technique to attempt poll others for feelings. It's a nasty habit and your comments only serve to make someone angry. I believe you are aware of your intent and only use it to illicit fear. We still have enough liberty here that this article can run in the newspaper freely. That is evidence enough America is fa…

I think you don't really get my point. Many countries don't have any meaningful rights or rule of law of any kind. There are many countries whose citizens will not challenge the authorities in any form or manner, because the systems give them no redress against any abuse of power. Even if they are rich the legal systems don't exist. Witness Khordovsky and his problems with the Russian government. In America these ins…

> I think you don't really get my point.

I don't think you get mine about speaking for others and making blaming statements. You can't say what I get or what I don't get, nor can you form blaming opinions and then try to speak them as fact. This behavior itself is where problems start, not where they are ended. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand and everything to do with solid lines of communication between those that agree to disagree.

I hear you when you say we have problems. We do. Like other countries, we have certain traits that make up who we are as a culture. Part of our culture, at least historically, is firmly objecting to too much government control. Given the recent reaction to the NSA's overreach, I'd say we are moving forward on the issue. Unfortunately for the impatient, this can be painful. We're also know for dragging our feet and whining about change while it is occurring. We're not perfect, but we're trying.

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