from the He-sees-your-seizure-says-cease; you're-sure? dept.
After decades of abuse the Attorney General (AG) of the United States has barred State and Local police from using Federal Statutes to seize assets and keep them even when any other charges were dropped.
The Washington Post points out that there are very few exceptions to AG Holders order: including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography.
Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.
Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program that the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.
The order does not prevent state and local police from using State seizure statutes. It simply prevents any Federal Law Enforcement Agency from signing on to the seizure to "legitimize" it, and then share the assets back to the local authorities.
The Post noted that local and state police routinely used this program to pull over drivers for minor traffic infractions, press them to agree to warrant-less searches and seize large amounts of cash without evidence of wrongdoing, and without filing any charges.
Notably missing from the order was any limitations on Federal Authorities abusing the seizure statutes in the absence of any conviction.
Related Stories
“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the f*** it's gonna take you.”
This oft-cited wisdom comes from Detective Lester Freamon, a character in the classic HBO series The Wire, which tracked how an elite task force of (fictional) Baltimore cops used electronic surveillance to bring down criminal networks. But, the sentiment is ironic to a fault: if you keep following the money, it might take you right back to the police.
Asset forfeiture has long been a topic of controversy in law enforcement. Cops and prosecutors have had the power to seize property and cash from suspects before anyone has actually been convicted of a crime (usually narcotics-related). Then these law enforcement agencies have plugged a portion of that money (and money derived from auctioning of property) into their own budgets, allowing them to spend in ways that possibly would not have passed scrutiny during the formal appropriations process.Critics note that asset forfeiture creates a perverse incentive for policing priorities: the more assets cops seize, the more money they get to spend. Satirist John Oliver characterized the practice as akin to “legalized robbery by law enforcement” in a must-watch segment on his show Last Week Tonight. News organizations, including New York Times, the New Yorker and the Washington Free Beacon have recently outlined abuses of the system.
[...]
The Washington Post has released its giant cache of Equitable Sharing Agreements from thousands of local law enforcement agencies around the country. We urge you to dig in, find your local cops, identify out how they’ve spend this money, and let the world know what you find.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 17 2015, @11:29AM
I had always thought this stuff involved drug lords in Miami. Learning that it is widely used around the country by law enforcement at all levels to seize property and enrich themselves is breathtaking.
OK, for anyone keeping score, we have a government that is:
1. Violating the Fourth Ammendment of the Constitution "15-20 trillion times" [theguardian.com]
2. Congress and the Whitehouse under Republican and Democratic control conspiring to commit crimes against humanity [nytimes.com]
3. Mega-banks committing crime [npr.org] after crime [crooksandliars.com] without anyone there going to jail
4. LEOs seizing private property without due process of law for the purposes of personal enrichment.
How again, is Washington D.C. not being burned to the ground by angry citizens by now? Have Americans become so supine that they'll permit any abuse without reaction?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @01:31PM
Have Americans become so supine that they'll permit any abuse without reaction?
The only thing that will still get an American angry is to state Americans are now a bunch of spineless pussies.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SuperCharlie on Saturday January 17 2015, @02:34PM
When we get up the smallest amount of resistance, the media marginalizes and ridicules until the mainstream think they are crazy. Meanwhile the police state infiltrates, false flag, patriot acts, and physically drives them into the ground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @02:39PM
> I had always thought this stuff involved drug lords in Miami.
This shit has been going on since at least the 80s. When I was a teen, there was a story in the news about a couple with a ~20 year old son who had mild retardation. He had been growing a couple of pot plants at the back of their 4+ acre lot and his parents had no idea. The police used civil forfeiture to take the entire property. That story taught me that the war on drugs was out of control.
> How again, is Washington D.C. not being burned to the ground by angry citizens by now?
Because the people most obviously hurt are the least empowered and when everybody else is hurt only indirectly there is enough doubt and diffusion that most people don't have the time and energy to figure it all out and those that do get pejorative labels like "professional victims" and "attention-seekers."
(Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Saturday January 17 2015, @04:21PM
The justification for passing these laws was to go after "drug kingpins". In practice, it means a lot of drug kingpins are let go. That happens because police seize hundreds of thousands in cash and property from one of the top dealers, and want to keep the proceeds, so they agree not to prosecute if the kingpin agrees to not send his lawyers to oppose the seizure. So it does the OPPOSITE of what politicians said it would do.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday January 17 2015, @09:32PM
This isn't new by far. You may be just learning about this, but for decades I've been fully aware that the police can steal all of your property if they want. I may have sounded crazy saying it 15 years ago, but we know better today.
That little tidbit about the cash? Completely true. All the cops had to do was be reasonably certain you were involved with drugs and not able to fight back effectively or rally public support. After they determined that, it was a simple matter of fabricating whatever was necessary to seize assets. If everything does *really* well, then the prison system has a new asset to milk money out the people to store these horrible human beings who conveniently provide billions in seized assets. You probably don't have to look any farther than Phoenix, AZ. The cops there are always actively looking to steal and seize assets. That sheriff Arapoi-whatever is a real bastard that most citizens think may be responsible for serious crimes and abuses. He's the sheriff that puts people out in the 100+ degree summer weather in outside camps instead of jails. It's basically a concentration camp like atmosphere that the sheriff loves to brag about it.
It has always been a known fact, especially if you've been around marijuana in the US since the 90's, that the police *are* looking for you to *steal* from you. I had met somebody who had 40k stolen from them on the road over a very minor amount of weed. In fact, the amount is now considered so low, it's legal in the state of California, IIRC. At the time though, it was used to justify the seizure of cash on the spot, as well as the car. This person was able to escape prison since it became clear he obviously wasn't a drug runner, but a user. That 40K was actually his (don't ask me why he had it in cash) not from drugs, but from the sale of parts and machines (all cash of course) that he was using to move across the country and create a new life. They stripped him of easily 80k worth of property total that day. Yes, he may have had some illegal drugs (weed) in his car. No, none of that justifies the effective fine of 80k, and ruining his life to the extent he was near destitute and homeless. How did that help society?
A long time ago it became an US vs THEM battle with the local state police, federal agents (FBI, DEA), and they had decided to simply assume they had the moral high ground period. As long as drugs are involved, these people have justified themselves essentially performing far worse crimes than smoking a joint. It's rogue police officer behavior romanticized like Detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cops where they're super stars protecting the citizens by breaking a few laws to get the criminals. However, in this case the "criminals" aren't anywhere close to the bad guys in the movies, but citizens being abused for popular and mostly harmless, yet illegal, behavior. Once the seizures started, ostensibly to remove assets and resources from the nasty druggies and junkies to continue, it could never be stopped. Drugs are profitable and far more effective at replenishing certain state budgets than asking normal citizens to keep paying for more and more toys, and it's easy to justify the war on drugs requiring additional funds and taking them from the "enemy".
Look at what they did to Tommy Chong (Cheech & Chong) for selling water pipes across state lines. A young female federal agent smiling like she's the savior of America by spending 10+ million dollars on throwing Tommy Chong in prison for a couple of years. Pretty much all the taxes I will ever pay in my life as an American were wasted in a single fucking shot to put a musician and a comedian in federal prison. I slept safer with that man in prison who wasn't even selling drugs (he only did that in the movies).
This has been used to unlawfully evict and seize entire houses and their contents over what are minor drug offenses, and the entire time the people in the US simply ignored what was going on. After all, the only people it was really affecting were the people involved with drugs right? Why be interested in protecting the rights of people we perceive to be undesirable anyways? You've stumbled it seems on apparently one of the more secret, but well known, dirty little things that make America a pathetic shadow of the country that took down the Nazi's.
This is why I live without hope as an American in my country. The only option left is violence (representative democracy has been rotting in a coffin for decades), and that's not really an option that will keep America from repeating it's own history. I don't care for the violence, but I know a lot of other Americans have no compunctions about it at all. Yet, nothing happens. We have a standing army of militants in this country willing to invade Nevada (they actually did for a few days--it was intense) to aid a rancher's efforts to keep the Feds from stealing land that was his long before any government department started claiming ownership. Where are the same militants when this stuff happens? Nowhere. A bunch of pissed off American men, and they never get anything done either. Not even in violence. It was just the threat that got the feds to back down off the rancher, but you can bet they're coming back and now just more serious than ever about clamping down on the militants who embarrassed them and thwarted them. Next time they will just mobilize the national guard and then come right back in better prepared against the rancher. If you can believe it, it all started from some bleeding heart environmentalists that wanted to take back some of the rancher's land for "good reasons". This really boils down to a single arrogant and egotistical government worker absolutely confident and assured in their powers and morality to seize property long held by a citizen.
Americans aren't supine, but fat, lazy, stupid, and apathetic. If you truly wish to understand, watch Idiocracy. Specifically, that scene with Dax Shepard sitting on the futuristic toilet/lazyboy watching the intellectually captivating Ow! My Balls! on television while eating crappy processed foods and super sugary drinks. The technology and branding might be a little off, but it's spot-farking-on for describing most Americans today. If that's not true, then they are young, passionate, and speaking about how violence might be the only option to change government. Not good, as we have a recipe for an inevitable civil war (it will happen).
Essentially, we are all hopeless and abused, and we know it. We continue to do nothing, because we live in fear of losing what we have. What we have is just adequate enough to provide us enough comfort to continue to allow 90% of our daily efforts to be absorbed by the 1% that do nothing towards humanity's benefit whatsoever. I'm no longer permitting it, but my voice is but a whisper when I refuse violence, and my wallet is just one wallet speaking. Yeah, you're not far off calling Americans supine pussies. We kinda deserve it.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday January 18 2015, @02:59AM
With regard to the enviro-BS that triggered the Bundy ranch incident, you might find this interesting reading:
https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/10776/10049 [arizona.edu]
TL;DR: Desert tortoises feed on dung. The more cattle, the more dung, the more tortoises. Now that the cattle are being removed, the tortoise population is shrinking, because the cattle have not been replaced with other grazers, hence the tortoises are starving.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Sunday January 18 2015, @02:53AM
Some Americans resist...
http://fear.org [fear.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by terrab0t on Saturday January 17 2015, @03:15PM
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation warned Canadian travellers about this abuse [www.cbc.ca].
It sounds like the warning still stands.
(Score: 1) by theronb on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:18PM
"Equitable Sharing" - really?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 17 2015, @05:42PM
Sure, the cops do almost nothing in performing spurious asset seizure and get to keep 80%, the Feds do even less in filing the proper paperwork so the cops don't have to jump through whatever hoops the state or local laws require, and get to keep 20% for their trouble. What's not equitable about that?
Oh, you're probably thinking of the person who just had their life savings legally stolen by government thugs. But that's the beauty of the program - they have little to no political power, so nobody important cares.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 17 2015, @06:21PM
Rob from the poor to give to the rich!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 17 2015, @06:40PM
I believe you just quoted the founding slogan of unrestricted property rights.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @03:58AM
Sharing. Sounds like what we ourselves did with music. But they term it "copyright violation" hence "theft".
They went after Napster in Australia to shut down what they considered a hothouse of "theft".
However they have done nothing to go after the Cayman Islands, Singapore, and other tax havens known as a places for the rich and famous to avoid tax liabilities.
For the poor person, sharing is theft, but for the rich person, theft from the public purse is simply known as a business move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @10:42AM
Iran-Contras, basically.
Those tax havens also act as a wonderful spot for 3 letter agencies across the globe to white wash expenses...
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday January 17 2015, @09:33PM
I'm confused. No more highway robbery by the police? Why? It sounds too good to be true.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @11:04AM
It doesn't mean no more highway robbery.
It means that judiciary branch gets a share.