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The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

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Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#61
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current civil engineering best practices is that if a sufficient amount of traffic is violating the limit the limit is what's wrong. Several states use methods consistent with this to set their speed limits generally. Many do not. Regardless, this is a distraction. Law is the codification of acceptable behavior. Rules that come with force of law should not substantially deviate from what average people consider accep…

> Law is the codification of acceptable behavior. Good luck lobbying the town to change the speed limit. They don't care what you think about the limit, if you drive past that speed you'll have to pay. And just to rant a bit: as someone who lives on a too-straight street (but very local and with pedestrians, including, children, walking on often) where dickheads constantly drive well past the limit because they proba…

> They don't care what you think about the limit

The outcome for greedy, corrupt towns who enjoy profiting by abusing the law is DEATH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rome,_Ohio#Dissolution

So perhaps, for their own survival, they should care what their victims think, and not abuse their position.

> as someone who lives on a too-straight street [...] where dickheads constantly drive well past the limit

Then fix the street. Modern design codes call for chicanes and street furniture to narrow the street. When streets are narrow, drivers naturally slow down.

A straight, wide road with a low speed limit is like a door with a handle and a sign saying "push" - and you want to fine anyone who intuitively pulls the handle.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#62
post #57
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that violating a speed limit going abruptly from 100 to 10, with the sign hidden behind a bush, and without any apparent reason for the limit to be changed is anything else than a scheme to collect money.

This is why, IMO, municipalities should have no ability to set their own speed limits. They should be specified by a disinterested third-party engineer at design time and be immutable without physically changing the road, or certain aspects of the road’s use (building a school, for example).

Or evidence that the existing speed limit is unsafe (e.g. good arguments, car accidents) and should not have been set in the first place.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change. Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.

>> Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit. That's not how driving actually works in practice. Most of the time drivers rely on a learned sense of what the standard speed limit is based on the type of road. E.g. highways are 65 - 70, major roads are about 55, neighborhoods are 25 - 35, etc. When I learned to drive, the…

Did you fight it? The tree should have gotten your ticket thrown out.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#65
post #45
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is post-Constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that permits the government to create the FBI and therefore the 10th should apply. As the FBI does exist, along with all of the other alphabet soup agencies, we can see that the Constitution no longer truly holds power.

Who would enforce federal laws if there were no federal law enforcement agencies?

Almost every cabinet level department ALSO has its own US Marshals already.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#67

The problem here is nobody will be fired and no one will go to jail for this. It’s like the government is suing itself and paying its own fine to itself. For cases like this a corporation or government body should not be allowed to be an abstraction. The right thing to do is not go after corporations but individuals. It’s unfortunate we don’t do this and I think we should.

I always thought it should go one step further. If I'm a government official (politician, judge, police officer, etc) and I commit a crime the damage goes much beyond the damage that would have been incurred if a private citizen had done the same. It undermines societies faith in the system as a while which is ultimately so much worse. The punishments should be accordingly.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#68
post #6

Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but m…

General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their…

With incentives, actual numbers matter. So yes, speed trap towns have bad incentives, but for national governments fines going to general revenue does not cause a problem even if in principle it is a bad incentive.

In my country, local authorities are often accused of using parking fines as revenue, but the police are rarely accused of seizing for gain. As an unofficial punishment yes, but not for gain.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#69
post #6

Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but m…

There's such an odd deference to the perpetrator's chosen language here. If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison. There's something infantile about how we go along with the state's fictions and pretenses rather than just calling their wording of "civil forfeiture" by its natural wording of "ro…

I'm totally comfortable with calling the OP's experience robbery. I used the word "seizure" because my comment is about what the law allows, not this case in particular.

Re: The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings–Without Telling Her Why

#70
post #31
post #2

About two years post-seizure, the bureau returned Martin's money—shortly after she filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit. But while the bureau may have hoped that would persuade her to drop it, she has continued with her suit, which was back in court last week and seeks a ruling that will prevent the FBI from proceeding with others as it did with her. Hero.

I've listened to a series of podcasts (More Perfect) where it became clear to me that in the US to get lawsuits go all the way to the Supreme Court, you need both a case (de jure) and a plaintiff that is marketable. This is not a diss on Linda Martin. Going forward with this case in a attempt to get civil forfeiture more constrained after getting your money back is heroic. Just saying that the US legal system needs h…

That's the Institute of Justice's jam, they have whole teams chipping away at things like this and qualified immunity -- pro bono as an added bonus.
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