For the record I absolutely believe that underfunding police departments incentivizes abuse of civil forfeiture*. The first does not justify the second, clearly, but lets fix both.
*From a broad perspecrive. Every situation is unique and I'm sure sometimes it's just thieves in blue uniforms.
in some situations it's not about "underfunding police"... there are towns in Texas where the tax base is basically gone along with most of the people and all they have left is that their incorporated area happens to cross a major highway. There aren't any funds available. Without forfeiture, the police dept would simply close the next time their one patrol car breaks down.
For the record I absolutely believe that underfunding police departments incentivizes abuse of civil forfeiture*. The first does not justify the second, clearly, but lets fix both.
*From a broad perspecrive. Every situation is unique and I'm sure sometimes it's just thieves in blue uniforms.
in some situations it's not about "underfunding police"... there are towns in Texas where the tax base is basically gone along with most of the people and all they have left is that their incorporated area happens to cross a major highway. There aren't any funds available. Without forfeiture, the police dept would simply close the next time their one patrol car breaks down.
That's just indicative of really shitty governance on like multiple levels.
+41
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
In that case there's no good reason for the town to exist as an entity anymore and policing should be done by the county sherrif's office or whatever the Texas equivalent is.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Something I've tried talking about with the more anti-tax side of the family. It's a pretty straightforward argument. We want to feel safe so we hire more police/community officers. That costs money to do and the one reliable way government can get more money is to raise taxes. Since we, the people, want this shouldn't we, the people pay more taxes in order to achieve it?
I get a lot of rolling eyes and dismissal.
Apparently government is magical much like the internet and the less you think about it, the more you can complain when it doesn't work like you imagine it should.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
For the record I absolutely believe that underfunding police departments incentivizes abuse of civil forfeiture*. The first does not justify the second, clearly, but lets fix both.
*From a broad perspecrive. Every situation is unique and I'm sure sometimes it's just thieves in blue uniforms.
in some situations it's not about "underfunding police"... there are towns in Texas where the tax base is basically gone along with most of the people and all they have left is that their incorporated area happens to cross a major highway. There aren't any funds available. Without forfeiture, the police dept would simply close the next time their one patrol car breaks down.
If a local economy collapses, I don't think the recourse should be for the police department to become literal highway robbers.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
In that case it becomes a matter of the authorities getting the enforcement part engaged.
So in the UK (no idea about the rest of the world) we also have asset forfeiture. Police are allowed to seize money over £1000 on the spot without a conviction. However, the important difference I suppose is that whether the money is kept is decided by a court (magistrates first, but can be sent to Crown court (has a jury). Money seized is usually divided equally between the local police and the central government. I think that level of oversight is important in something like this.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
So in the UK (no idea about the rest of the world) we also have asset forfeiture. Police are allowed to seize money over £1000 on the spot without a conviction. However, the important difference I suppose is that whether the money is kept is decided by a court (magistrates first, but can be sent to Crown court (has a jury). Money seized is usually divided equally between the local police and the central government. I think that level of oversight is important in something like this.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
The reality is that many of these small town police forces could be disbanded or rolled into the county sheriff's office with little issue. They continue to exist through inertia and the fact that policies like asset forfeiture allow them to avoid angering the people who could trigger their dissolution.
So in the UK (no idea about the rest of the world) we also have asset forfeiture. Police are allowed to seize money over £1000 on the spot without a conviction. However, the important difference I suppose is that whether the money is kept is decided by a court (magistrates first, but can be sent to Crown court (has a jury). Money seized is usually divided equally between the local police and the central government. I think that level of oversight is important in something like this.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
The reality is that many of these small town police forces could be disbanded or rolled into the county sheriff's office with little issue. They continue to exist through inertia and the fact that policies like asset forfeiture allow them to avoid angering the people who could trigger their dissolution.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
There's a lot of mythology that plays into police culture. A good deal of toxic masculinity, more than a pinch of hero worship, and a great whopping dollop of power fantasies come along with serving. When it comes to small town police culture it has all of this but since there can be one or two people who generally are there it becomes magnified. This is where you get your power tripping southern sheriff motifs from. This is where you get "Walking Tall" stories from. And then on top of that, you have the local political structures. In a lot of these small towns, their police force is often an elected position. Whereas in larger cities these are municipal employees, in these towns the sheriff is a political officer on top of being law enforcement. Why that came about is a good history lesson in suppression of minorities and slave return possies but is otherwise a digression from the point I'm trying to make.
Which is that from a financial and practical standpoint it may make a whole ton of sense to get rid of the small town forces and have the town through levies or taxes pay the county or state for law enforcement but it's not going to happen because politics and tiny fiefdoms. Small town mayors not having their local sheriff buddy clean up messes or whatnot. Or whoever might have the biggest purse locally and significantly donates to the election fund. Which in places like Texas might be a small time oil baron or owner of the last factory in town.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
So in the UK (no idea about the rest of the world) we also have asset forfeiture. Police are allowed to seize money over £1000 on the spot without a conviction. However, the important difference I suppose is that whether the money is kept is decided by a court (magistrates first, but can be sent to Crown court (has a jury). Money seized is usually divided equally between the local police and the central government. I think that level of oversight is important in something like this.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
The reality is that many of these small town police forces could be disbanded or rolled into the county sheriff's office with little issue. They continue to exist through inertia and the fact that policies like asset forfeiture allow them to avoid angering the people who could trigger their dissolution.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
There's a lot of mythology that plays into police culture. A good deal of toxic masculinity, more than a pinch of hero worship, and a great whopping dollop of power fantasies come along with serving. When it comes to small town police culture it has all of this but since there can be one or two people who generally are there it becomes magnified. This is where you get your power tripping southern sheriff motifs from. This is where you get "Walking Tall" stories from. And then on top of that, you have the local political structures. In a lot of these small towns, their police force is often an elected position. Whereas in larger cities these are municipal employees, in these towns the sheriff is a political officer on top of being law enforcement. Why that came about is a good history lesson in suppression of minorities and slave return possies but is otherwise a digression from the point I'm trying to make.
Which is that from a financial and practical standpoint it may make a whole ton of sense to get rid of the small town forces and have the town through levies or taxes pay the county or state for law enforcement but it's not going to happen because politics and tiny fiefdoms. Small town mayors not having their local sheriff buddy clean up messes or whatnot. Or whoever might have the biggest purse locally and significantly donates to the election fund. Which in places like Texas might be a small time oil baron or owner of the last factory in town.
So you're arguing that we can't get rid of local police forces on any logical ground because the local rich guy needs them to maintain control?
There are a number of police forces that have unrealistically high expenses due to the militarization of our police. Having to keep a SWAT tactical team on-staff for a town of a few thousand and what-not.
So in the UK (no idea about the rest of the world) we also have asset forfeiture. Police are allowed to seize money over £1000 on the spot without a conviction. However, the important difference I suppose is that whether the money is kept is decided by a court (magistrates first, but can be sent to Crown court (has a jury). Money seized is usually divided equally between the local police and the central government. I think that level of oversight is important in something like this.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
The reality is that many of these small town police forces could be disbanded or rolled into the county sheriff's office with little issue. They continue to exist through inertia and the fact that policies like asset forfeiture allow them to avoid angering the people who could trigger their dissolution.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
There's a lot of mythology that plays into police culture. A good deal of toxic masculinity, more than a pinch of hero worship, and a great whopping dollop of power fantasies come along with serving. When it comes to small town police culture it has all of this but since there can be one or two people who generally are there it becomes magnified. This is where you get your power tripping southern sheriff motifs from. This is where you get "Walking Tall" stories from. And then on top of that, you have the local political structures. In a lot of these small towns, their police force is often an elected position. Whereas in larger cities these are municipal employees, in these towns the sheriff is a political officer on top of being law enforcement. Why that came about is a good history lesson in suppression of minorities and slave return possies but is otherwise a digression from the point I'm trying to make.
Which is that from a financial and practical standpoint it may make a whole ton of sense to get rid of the small town forces and have the town through levies or taxes pay the county or state for law enforcement but it's not going to happen because politics and tiny fiefdoms. Small town mayors not having their local sheriff buddy clean up messes or whatnot. Or whoever might have the biggest purse locally and significantly donates to the election fund. Which in places like Texas might be a small time oil baron or owner of the last factory in town.
So you're arguing that we can't get rid of local police forces on any logical ground because the local rich guy needs them to maintain control?
That seems like a problem...
It sounds like an argument about practicality and the obstacles to doing it rather than an argument that it shouldn't be done. Admitting that there are problems is not the same thing as saying not to do a thing.
So in the UK (no idea about the rest of the world) we also have asset forfeiture. Police are allowed to seize money over £1000 on the spot without a conviction. However, the important difference I suppose is that whether the money is kept is decided by a court (magistrates first, but can be sent to Crown court (has a jury). Money seized is usually divided equally between the local police and the central government. I think that level of oversight is important in something like this.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
UK's already ahead of the US by allowing an actual court to determine the fate of the property. More often than not the ones making the decision in the US are the prosecutors, not an actual judge or court.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
I'm now wondering if this is a case of the justice system's framework essentially making it so anybody with the resources to challenge this legally has a much easier route to resolution of just going through the "normal" system.
Basically the issue with forfeiture is not that it is impossible to get your stuff back. It is very possible to get your things back but it is an involved legal process that is going to cost a fair amount of time and money to do. While it is expensive and time consuming it is nowhere near as lengthy or time consuming (or risky) as challenging the constitutionality of the law directly. Thinking through this...you probably can't raise the constitutionality of it until you've exhausted the normal legal remedies. Anybody who is positioned to make a strong constitutional case will likely never get there because they'll win at the earlier stages. Until we get a stupid and stubborn district attorney it might just be that nobody has legal standing to sue to stop it.
IANAL and all that and this is just top of the head speculation of what might be happening.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
I'm now wondering if this is a case of the justice system's framework essentially making it so anybody with the resources to challenge this legally has a much easier route to resolution of just going through the "normal" system.
Basically the issue with forfeiture is not that it is impossible to get your stuff back. It is very possible to get your things back but it is an involved legal process that is going to cost a fair amount of time and money to do. While it is expensive and time consuming it is nowhere near as lengthy or time consuming (or risky) as challenging the constitutionality of the law directly. Thinking through this...you probably can't raise the constitutionality of it until you've exhausted the normal legal remedies. Anybody who is positioned to make a strong constitutional case will likely never get there because they'll win at the earlier stages. Until we get a stupid and stubborn district attorney it might just be that nobody has legal standing to sue to stop it.
IANAL and all that and this is just top of the head speculation of what might be happening.
IANAL either but I think that is spot-on.
The best case scenario would be an act of Congress. (lol) Barring that, an entity like the ACLU taking up a class action on behalf of people who have lost small amounts of money to impound fees and filing fees. But even then who are you class-actioning? Bumfuck, ND municipal police department?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Yea, there might be something about the ERA that would give a broad base for a suit against the Federal level law. If you're going to challenge one with the aim of getting it declared unconstitutional that would be the one you want to sue. Though at that level you don't get the evil corrupt little fiefdom as your opposition. [Insert Trump/Sessions joke here]
The form of the styling of this case—the defendant being an object, rather than a legal person—is because this is a jurisdiction in rem (power over objects) case, rather than the more familiar in personam (over persons) case. In current US legal practice, in rem is most widely used in the area of asset forfeiture, frequently in relation to controlled substances offenses. In rem forfeiture cases allow property (in this case, $124,700 in cash) to be directly sued by and forfeited to the government, without either just compensation or the possessor (and presumptive owner) being convicted of a crime.
Edit x2: Just gaining standing to challenge the seizure is pretty challenging:
The law allows the Government or the claimant to obtain a stay of the civil forfeiture case while a criminal investigation is pending.
Claimants have thirty five (35) days from the date of notification to submit a verified claim indicating the basis for asserting an interest in the property. A verified claim of an individual asserting an interest in the forfeiture property must include:
1. Identify the specific property claimed;
2. Identify the claimant and their interest in the property;
3. Signed by the claimant under penalty of perjury;
4. And be served on the Government.
A claimant who fails to file a verified claim has no standing to contest a forfeiture action.
A claimant must file an answer to the complaint within twenty one (21) days after filing the verified claim and the case proceeds in U.S. District Court following the federal rules of civil procedure.
TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
edited July 2017
This is a fight we can only win in the Legislature, period.
This is the worst form of violating the rule-of-law, aside from extra-judicial killings by the police of course, currently being practiced in our "legal" system in my view and one of many deleterious effects of the insanity called prohibition.
All the fancy-footwork and weasel words in the world can't paper over the fact that this is a clear and obvious violation of the 4th Ammendment both by a basic layman's reading of the Constitution and by the vast bulk of stare decisis.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
I'm now wondering if this is a case of the justice system's framework essentially making it so anybody with the resources to challenge this legally has a much easier route to resolution of just going through the "normal" system.
Basically the issue with forfeiture is not that it is impossible to get your stuff back. It is very possible to get your things back but it is an involved legal process that is going to cost a fair amount of time and money to do. While it is expensive and time consuming it is nowhere near as lengthy or time consuming (or risky) as challenging the constitutionality of the law directly. Thinking through this...you probably can't raise the constitutionality of it until you've exhausted the normal legal remedies. Anybody who is positioned to make a strong constitutional case will likely never get there because they'll win at the earlier stages. Until we get a stupid and stubborn district attorney it might just be that nobody has legal standing to sue to stop it.
IANAL and all that and this is just top of the head speculation of what might be happening.
IANAL either but I think that is spot-on.
The best case scenario would be an act of Congress. (lol) Barring that, an entity like the ACLU taking up a class action on behalf of people who have lost small amounts of money to impound fees and filing fees. But even then who are you class-actioning? Bumfuck, ND municipal police department?
You could potentially get original jurisdiction at SCOTUS if the ACLU chose their defendant carefully in looking for a case that involved a state agency, and even throw on diversity of citizenship as a cherry on top with a defendant from another state. Luck would probably be a factor getting the SCOTUS to hear the case considering they've limited their docket in the past by deciding that certain cases against states (specifically environmental law, Article III original jurisdiction explicitly outlines that cases involving state governments were original jurisdiction) have sufficient avenues in lower courts. Though I can't think off the top of my head of any civil forfeiture cases that the SCOTUS has heard.
There is this case from April against Colorado. I didn't read through the decision itself yet but it may just be limited to specific cases where when the original forfeited property is returned that court costs and fees are not refunded.
We take your shit if we have a trivially good reason.
We keep 100% of it for ourselves
You gotta prove it's yours, on your own dime. We don't have to prove anything.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
I'm now wondering if this is a case of the justice system's framework essentially making it so anybody with the resources to challenge this legally has a much easier route to resolution of just going through the "normal" system.
Basically the issue with forfeiture is not that it is impossible to get your stuff back. It is very possible to get your things back but it is an involved legal process that is going to cost a fair amount of time and money to do. While it is expensive and time consuming it is nowhere near as lengthy or time consuming (or risky) as challenging the constitutionality of the law directly. Thinking through this...you probably can't raise the constitutionality of it until you've exhausted the normal legal remedies. Anybody who is positioned to make a strong constitutional case will likely never get there because they'll win at the earlier stages. Until we get a stupid and stubborn district attorney it might just be that nobody has legal standing to sue to stop it.
IANAL and all that and this is just top of the head speculation of what might be happening.
Generally, this is how a federal forfeiture case goes:
1) The government files for a federal judge to approve a forfeiture of cash
2) The government gives notice to the person from whom the cash was seized
3) Occasionally, that person hires a lawyer and challenges the forfeiture based on a lack of evidence
4) Nearly all of those cases settle
Between the settlement agreement and legal costs, the original owner is probably lucky to walk away with even half of the seized money
I don't think there's a procedural reason why the owner could not also raise constitutional issues while challenging the strength of the evidence, but it's risky to accrue new legal fees when the margins are already pretty thin for the likely settlement
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
We take your shit if we have a trivially good reason.
We keep 100% of it for ourselves
You gotta prove it's yours, on your own dime. We don't have to prove anything.
Yeah Massachusetts can be oddly authoritarian sometimes.
We take your shit if we have a trivially good reason.
We keep 100% of it for ourselves
You gotta prove it's yours, on your own dime. We don't have to prove anything.
Especially compared to New Mexico's apparent policy of "Please come collect your shit, we didn't want it in the first place."
Would like one on departments that actually pay the *officers* commission on forfeiture, but that's probably a local thing and not state level so hard to make a nice map. That's bullshit enough with tickets, but seriously, that means there are places in the US where, if a cop takes $100 from your wallet, they get $20 and their department gets $80, and you have to file an expensive lawsuit and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you legally obtained and planned to legally use that money to maybe have a chance of getting it back. Maybe.
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
I'm now wondering if this is a case of the justice system's framework essentially making it so anybody with the resources to challenge this legally has a much easier route to resolution of just going through the "normal" system.
Basically the issue with forfeiture is not that it is impossible to get your stuff back. It is very possible to get your things back but it is an involved legal process that is going to cost a fair amount of time and money to do. While it is expensive and time consuming it is nowhere near as lengthy or time consuming (or risky) as challenging the constitutionality of the law directly. Thinking through this...you probably can't raise the constitutionality of it until you've exhausted the normal legal remedies. Anybody who is positioned to make a strong constitutional case will likely never get there because they'll win at the earlier stages. Until we get a stupid and stubborn district attorney it might just be that nobody has legal standing to sue to stop it.
IANAL and all that and this is just top of the head speculation of what might be happening.
IANAL either but I think that is spot-on.
The best case scenario would be an act of Congress. (lol) Barring that, an entity like the ACLU taking up a class action on behalf of people who have lost small amounts of money to impound fees and filing fees. But even then who are you class-actioning? Bumfuck, ND municipal police department?
Yeah, that's a big problem that repeats itself over many issues related to policing. How do you tackle 17,000 departments? As attractive as it is to make directives through DoJ and launch lawsuits, the former can easily be rolled back and the latter has no clear targets. A lawsuit strategy is more appealing than it normally would be for me, though, because SCOTUS might sympathic to some degree here.
+1
Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
edited July 2017
Could someone seize to your car for speeding since they don't even need to charge you with a crime?
Could someone seize to your car for speeding since they don't even need to charge you with a crime?
Speeding?
In some places it seems they can seize it for liking the color.
They might have to fib a bit with paperwork, but that's about it.
Well seizing stuff like cars is usually contingent on them somehow associating drugs with it. Like money is sorta the same deal except just having a large amount of actual cash is often used as proof of drug involvement.
Could someone seize to your car for speeding since they don't even need to charge you with a crime?
You don't need to be speeding.
They pull you over because your driving was "making them nervous."
Then when asking for your info, they say they smell marijuana and ask to search the vehicle.
If you say yes, they will find something regardless, arrest you, and impound your car as evidence. You don't get your car back, ever, even if they drop the charges later.
If you say no, they ask you to step out of the vehicle, and detain you while they bring over a drug sniffing dog, which is trained to give the signal for "I found drugs, aren't I a good dog?" on command, so they will now have probable cause to search your car as above.
In addition, since you defied a cop and wasted his time bringing the dog over, depending on your race, how far away from town you are, and what time of day (i.e. it is evening or night), he will make up a story about how you went for his gun, and beat you to some degree, depending on his mood.
I feel obliged to point out of course not all cops will do this, but:
A) This exact scenario has happened There is nothing stopping any cop in America from getting away with this, if he so chooses.
Civil asset forfeiture is a monstrous practice enabling the worst sorts of people with legitimacy, which is why it's so scary, and why Jeff Sessions is ramping it up countrywide.
Posts
in some situations it's not about "underfunding police"... there are towns in Texas where the tax base is basically gone along with most of the people and all they have left is that their incorporated area happens to cross a major highway. There aren't any funds available. Without forfeiture, the police dept would simply close the next time their one patrol car breaks down.
That's just indicative of really shitty governance on like multiple levels.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I'm just saying that rural areas will have fewer police if the law changes. Departments will close as a result.
If they don't have the population required to support them, do we really need the extra police there? Seems like a problem that solves itself.
A widely dispersed municipality may need more police per capita to be able to respond to a crime in progress.
(But it should probably be up to the host state's budget to augment them with state troopers if that's the case)
... deep breath, I know it's hard...
... raise taxes enough to pay for police honestly?
Perhaps enough even to include better training in de-escalation and non-lethal policing?
That same funding would need to be pared with laws restricting asset seizure though as I sincerely doubt they would stop the practice even if funded properly on their own.
Something I've tried talking about with the more anti-tax side of the family. It's a pretty straightforward argument. We want to feel safe so we hire more police/community officers. That costs money to do and the one reliable way government can get more money is to raise taxes. Since we, the people, want this shouldn't we, the people pay more taxes in order to achieve it?
I get a lot of rolling eyes and dismissal.
Apparently government is magical much like the internet and the less you think about it, the more you can complain when it doesn't work like you imagine it should.
Would you need new laws, though? I thought there were already laws to prevent this. To be clear, I'm asking specifically about the technicality of current laws. Making new laws will not work if we are not enforcing the ones we have.
Abuse of asset seizure is something I honestly did not know existed, but that may be the due to the blinders of white privalege.
If a local economy collapses, I don't think the recourse should be for the police department to become literal highway robbers.
In that case it becomes a matter of the authorities getting the enforcement part engaged.
I always get the impression that a lot of these issues could be resolved by reducing the fragmentation of your police forces. Seems so bizarre to expect police to maintain their service if their tax base is tiny. Seems far better to lose the independence of smaller forces and to increase the state/federal funding. Allows the funding of the services by need not by the local tax base.
The reality is that many of these small town police forces could be disbanded or rolled into the county sheriff's office with little issue. They continue to exist through inertia and the fact that policies like asset forfeiture allow them to avoid angering the people who could trigger their dissolution.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.
There's a lot of mythology that plays into police culture. A good deal of toxic masculinity, more than a pinch of hero worship, and a great whopping dollop of power fantasies come along with serving. When it comes to small town police culture it has all of this but since there can be one or two people who generally are there it becomes magnified. This is where you get your power tripping southern sheriff motifs from. This is where you get "Walking Tall" stories from. And then on top of that, you have the local political structures. In a lot of these small towns, their police force is often an elected position. Whereas in larger cities these are municipal employees, in these towns the sheriff is a political officer on top of being law enforcement. Why that came about is a good history lesson in suppression of minorities and slave return possies but is otherwise a digression from the point I'm trying to make.
Which is that from a financial and practical standpoint it may make a whole ton of sense to get rid of the small town forces and have the town through levies or taxes pay the county or state for law enforcement but it's not going to happen because politics and tiny fiefdoms. Small town mayors not having their local sheriff buddy clean up messes or whatnot. Or whoever might have the biggest purse locally and significantly donates to the election fund. Which in places like Texas might be a small time oil baron or owner of the last factory in town.
So you're arguing that we can't get rid of local police forces on any logical ground because the local rich guy needs them to maintain control?
That seems like a problem...
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It sounds like an argument about practicality and the obstacles to doing it rather than an argument that it shouldn't be done. Admitting that there are problems is not the same thing as saying not to do a thing.
UK's already ahead of the US by allowing an actual court to determine the fate of the property. More often than not the ones making the decision in the US are the prosecutors, not an actual judge or court.
That's what I was trying to get at with my post above.
It isn't really a matter of "we're not enforcing the laws we have." We don't really have any laws that can stop this practice on a national scale.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm now wondering if this is a case of the justice system's framework essentially making it so anybody with the resources to challenge this legally has a much easier route to resolution of just going through the "normal" system.
Basically the issue with forfeiture is not that it is impossible to get your stuff back. It is very possible to get your things back but it is an involved legal process that is going to cost a fair amount of time and money to do. While it is expensive and time consuming it is nowhere near as lengthy or time consuming (or risky) as challenging the constitutionality of the law directly. Thinking through this...you probably can't raise the constitutionality of it until you've exhausted the normal legal remedies. Anybody who is positioned to make a strong constitutional case will likely never get there because they'll win at the earlier stages. Until we get a stupid and stubborn district attorney it might just be that nobody has legal standing to sue to stop it.
IANAL and all that and this is just top of the head speculation of what might be happening.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
IANAL either but I think that is spot-on.
The best case scenario would be an act of Congress. (lol) Barring that, an entity like the ACLU taking up a class action on behalf of people who have lost small amounts of money to impound fees and filing fees. But even then who are you class-actioning? Bumfuck, ND municipal police department?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Edit:
Edit x2: Just gaining standing to challenge the seizure is pretty challenging: from http://www.hennenberg.com/blog/2013/07/federal-criminal-and-civil-forfeiture-procedure-in-white-collar-criminal-cases.shtml
try this
This is the worst form of violating the rule-of-law, aside from extra-judicial killings by the police of course, currently being practiced in our "legal" system in my view and one of many deleterious effects of the insanity called prohibition.
All the fancy-footwork and weasel words in the world can't paper over the fact that this is a clear and obvious violation of the 4th Ammendment both by a basic layman's reading of the Constitution and by the vast bulk of stare decisis.
try this
You could potentially get original jurisdiction at SCOTUS if the ACLU chose their defendant carefully in looking for a case that involved a state agency, and even throw on diversity of citizenship as a cherry on top with a defendant from another state. Luck would probably be a factor getting the SCOTUS to hear the case considering they've limited their docket in the past by deciding that certain cases against states (specifically environmental law, Article III original jurisdiction explicitly outlines that cases involving state governments were original jurisdiction) have sufficient avenues in lower courts. Though I can't think off the top of my head of any civil forfeiture cases that the SCOTUS has heard.
There is this case from April against Colorado. I didn't read through the decision itself yet but it may just be limited to specific cases where when the original forfeited property is returned that court costs and fees are not refunded.
We take your shit if we have a trivially good reason.
We keep 100% of it for ourselves
You gotta prove it's yours, on your own dime. We don't have to prove anything.
Generally, this is how a federal forfeiture case goes:
1) The government files for a federal judge to approve a forfeiture of cash
2) The government gives notice to the person from whom the cash was seized
3) Occasionally, that person hires a lawyer and challenges the forfeiture based on a lack of evidence
4) Nearly all of those cases settle
Between the settlement agreement and legal costs, the original owner is probably lucky to walk away with even half of the seized money
I don't think there's a procedural reason why the owner could not also raise constitutional issues while challenging the strength of the evidence, but it's risky to accrue new legal fees when the margins are already pretty thin for the likely settlement
Yeah Massachusetts can be oddly authoritarian sometimes.
Especially compared to New Mexico's apparent policy of "Please come collect your shit, we didn't want it in the first place."
Steam | XBL
Steam | XBL
Yeah, that's a big problem that repeats itself over many issues related to policing. How do you tackle 17,000 departments? As attractive as it is to make directives through DoJ and launch lawsuits, the former can easily be rolled back and the latter has no clear targets. A lawsuit strategy is more appealing than it normally would be for me, though, because SCOTUS might sympathic to some degree here.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Speeding?
In some places it seems they can seize it for liking the color.
They might have to fib a bit with paperwork, but that's about it.
Well seizing stuff like cars is usually contingent on them somehow associating drugs with it. Like money is sorta the same deal except just having a large amount of actual cash is often used as proof of drug involvement.
You don't need to be speeding.
They pull you over because your driving was "making them nervous."
Then when asking for your info, they say they smell marijuana and ask to search the vehicle.
If you say yes, they will find something regardless, arrest you, and impound your car as evidence. You don't get your car back, ever, even if they drop the charges later.
If you say no, they ask you to step out of the vehicle, and detain you while they bring over a drug sniffing dog, which is trained to give the signal for "I found drugs, aren't I a good dog?" on command, so they will now have probable cause to search your car as above.
In addition, since you defied a cop and wasted his time bringing the dog over, depending on your race, how far away from town you are, and what time of day (i.e. it is evening or night), he will make up a story about how you went for his gun, and beat you to some degree, depending on his mood.
I feel obliged to point out of course not all cops will do this, but:
A) This exact scenario has happened
Civil asset forfeiture is a monstrous practice enabling the worst sorts of people with legitimacy, which is why it's so scary, and why Jeff Sessions is ramping it up countrywide.