Police Can Seize and Sell Assets Even When the Owner Broke No Law

Police aren't actually required to protect anyone (see Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005)), but just to generally maintain social order.

In the world of interconnectivity news travels fast. Take for example, ebola. Everyone was informed about it and hospitals took great measures because of an unprecedented disease awareness. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Google make incredibly powerful distribution channels.

In the past, TV stations were incentivized to work with local police for a large percentage of their news stories, so they couldn't publish defamatory content. In today's world brains are connected more efficiently. One of the benefits is increase in transparency. For example, the ratio of security cameras to civilian cameras has flipped. Civilians have much better oversight over people they pay to protect them, increasing accountability. Similarly, the ratio of news publishers has flipped to civilians. Now the press has to follow reddit and twitter posts or risk loosing readership.

The Washington Post provided excellent coverage in September:

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

IIRC, it was this article that described police being trained on how to obtain valuable assets, and police collaborating on message boards:

One example was an officer posting on a message board a car's description and license plate, and telling officers in a neighboring jurisdiction that the car was coming their way, and that he was unable to justify seizure when he stopped the driver but that they might have better luck.

EDIT: And here is the ACLU's page on the issue: https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/civil-asset-forfeit...

Looks like you were buried. I'm not sure why.

I read your basic point as, "Sure, we all like to use incentives to encourage good behavior, but there are some special cases where incentives completely backfire. In general, feedback systems arise in public services, especially where funding is correlated with or necessary for performance.

e.g., If a middle of the road school starts to falter, you don't strip away all its funding and expect it to start churning out well rounded prodigies. No, you have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of figuring out, "ok, what broke down? Is this a morale issue, something with leadership/management, is the cohort of students a bad outlier, did materials quality decline?" Recovery might take more funds, not less.

Other public services would see similar results. A struggling fire department shouldn't lose its trucks. A police department that can't effectively deter or arrest criminals needs a little more work than just being driven into bankruptcy.

To panic's point, maybe there are other ways to incentivize good behavior. The fruit of the poisonous tree and miranda both operate on the premise that when the cops misbehave, criminals go free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_warning

For civil asset forfeiture it's trickier, because there's not any criminal when police are doing their job poorly. You almost have to fine them, unless maybe you're willing to release some random offender from prison every time the police cross the line? :)

I'm with you, insofar as your point was just, "There aren't simple solutions here, it's a difficult issue."

1) Do not follow legal advice from IT message boards! But if you want some tips on JavaScript, this might be the place.

2) Do seek advice from experts, such as the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/drug-law-reform-immigrants-rights-racia...

3) Do not lie to police officers; it's a crime. A defense lawyer in this video advised not to talk to police at all if you are being investigated; you could misspeak (esp. under stress), be misunderstood, be taken out of context, the officer could misremember, etc. I have no idea if he's a crank or if it's good advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc