Any confiscated cash needs to go into state level or even federal coffers, not to the agency or local cops that did the confiscating. That removes the immediate incentive for abuse, while retaining the tool for what it was intended for: actual criminals.
(I don’t have the sources but read years ago that states that let the cops keep the cash have ridiculous levels of abusive confiscations, whereas states that have the money go to the state coffers basically don’t)
(Most civil asset forfeiture is done by local cops stopping people on the highway and similar)
The DoJ has established a workaround for this, and it's called Equitable Sharing. Local cop seizes assets on behalf of the DEA or other federal agency, assets are held by the federal agency rather than the local agency, the federal agency sends a kickback payment to the local agency and takes over prosecution, local agency washes its hands of the matter, enjoys the plunder, and goes off and robs more subjects.
Why not require due process and 4th amendment rights to be respected?
If the government convicts you of the crime and proves the money is the proceeds of the crime you are convicted for, them maybe it makes sense for the government to seize the funds. Absent that, it should be taken for what it is: armed robery.
The whole exigent circumstances exception is required to stop a crime which is highly probably to already be in progress and for which evidence could be lost to the prosecution. Especially at international airports this is highly likely to happen. The problem is that the system is set up in a way that encourages corruption.
It abstracts it away by one level. Without appropriate third party oversight you're going to be playing whack a mole until you have the President himself managing the operation.
To solve this, I would go further: any money seized by the government, whether asset forfeiture or a fine (but not fees or taxes) must not go into any government funds, and should instead be removed from the money supply, if there isn’t a “who it should be returned to”.
Well, maybe if money from fines was allowed to go directly to paying for something that directly addresses the specific type of harm that the type of crime the fine was for tends to cause, that would be ok. Like, if someone is fined for damaging the road, that money can go towards fixing roads.
Or just publicly burn the cash. This retains the punitive element of seizure from actual criminals, eliminates the perverse incentives from LE treating seized funds as a revenue source, and causes actual pain to LE if/when a court determines that they owe restitution for unwarranted seizure.
> Any confiscated cash needs to go into state level or even federal coffers
If I was king.. all confiscated cash must go to organizations such as ACLU and EFF (not a comprehensive list). That way it can still be done when sensible, but the more it happens the more money goes to organizations who strive to reduce abuse.
This moves the problem one level up and makes returning it more difficult since they are now muddled with other assets. A safe deposit box would be required, with the court handling the keys.
I can't load the article, so this is likely off topic, but the memory came rushing back when I read this headline.
I attended a wedding that got hit by a major flash flood that required a rescue operation by boat and helicopter. Thankfully no one was seriously injured. A half dozen people were swept away and rescued from trees. The rest of us got to higher floors of the building and they were concerned about us waiting out the flood because cars from the parking lot floated and rammed the first floor of the building. It was featured on an episode of I Do, Redo.
They brought in busses to transport the 61 people rescued to the local high school where they had activated the Red Cross and provided us dry cloths and food. I can't say enough nice things about the Red Cross volunteers and the staff at the high school, and same with the fire department and EMS.
However, when we were loaded into the busses, the police held the busses until they had a drug dog come into the busses to walk up and down the aisles, and only after that let the busses take us to the high school. While no one was seriously injured physically, people were traumatized from the flooding event and many attendees suffered from PTSD for years.
It was so cruel for the police department to do what they did with everyone in the mental state that we were in.
For reasons I do not understand, we were not free to leave the high school, and even the people that did not lose their cars to the flood were required to go to the high school on the busses. I can't recall how long they detained us at the high school, I'd guess 3 to 5 hours, and then they let us leave. The friend that came to pick me up (I did lose my vehicle to the flood) got to the high school not long after I did and had to wait in the parking lot for hours.
We wanted to feel safe once we got to dry land after the ordeal we went through. I did not feel safe until I got home.
If this happened as you described it, worst part is that this evident lack of judgement would be detrimental in fighting real crime. If they were legally compelled to do it, there also is a political problem.
Maybe there is a silly explanation about the bus being confiscated from a local drug lord and people needed to be protected, but otherwise I don't see a way how you officials could come out here not looking like idiots.
quite simply to screen drugs from reaching the emergency shelter, which is also a school, and save you from special prosecution applied to these situations and protect themselves politically from something the media will monitor closely. if they screened you at the shelter, its worse for everyone if they find anything on premises. emergency shelters will house anyone affected, including vulnerable elderly, children, mentally ill people, and unhoused heavy drug users. everyone was likely checked which also protects you while sheltering. i volunteered for a shelter during katrina and it gets out of hand very fast with just one delusional person or drug user. i stopped a robbery within 3 minutes of starting my first shift. a deranged person was aggressively drug seeking, and robbing pill bottles away from an elderly woman in a wheelchair. could have been your mom or grandma just caught up in it. so- check everyone as a protocol, as its for public shelter safety. seek therapy for ptsd, its never too late to heal. if you have heavy bias against law enforcement, perhaps consider joining a community program or volunteering - do it as a therapy to yourself to help improve your insight which will help everyone work towards improving the situation in your community.
Unfortunately not consenting and knowing your rights doesn't help because they will search your belongings anyway. You can only delay the search which usually will not work in your favour. It happens in many developed "rule of law" countries. Something similar happened to me in Germany when traveling alone by car. When they noticed I have multiple smartphones with me they went hysterical. Luckily I had no cash on me, neither drugs of course. They were pursuing some criminals and perfectly wasted half an hour on scrolling my smartphones. Not even a single nude photo, just sunsets and travel photos with my girlfriend. Great job Kriminalpolizei from Dresden.
German polizei search culture blows my mind though.
When festival buses are going to Fusion Festival (think Burning Man), it's common knowledge that half the buses will be stopped and "controlled", i.e. warantless search of all the passengers' belongings. That my German friends think this is normal or acceptable just blows my mind.
This is about a U.S.A citizen on a domestic flight. I'm wondering, in similar situations what kind of rights - if any - do non-U.S.A citizen have on domestic flights? or international flights to/from the U.S.A?
The 4th Amendment doesn't mention citizenship. It covers the entirety of the people of the United States. So U.S Citizens, U.S. Nationals, and permanent resident aliens all have the same rights as far as the 4th Amendment is concerned. It does get more ambiguous when you consider undocumented aliens, temporary resident aliens, and nonresident aliens.
The one encounter with the DEA agent reminds me of cheap, sleazy, sales tactics used at car dealerships. High pressure tactics to force an action.
Civil forfeiture is absolutely insane. The “war on drugs” needs to end. Legalize all drugs. Dissolve the DEA. Tax all drugs. Earmark part of the sales towards drug addiction treatment and mental health.
This video linked in the article (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XBzV0bDZdQ) makes me want to donate to Institute for Justice to maybe help stop this practice. But a bit of Googling shows that IfJ were also one of the legal forces behind the Citizens United decision, which is something I really don't want to support.
The "Citizens United" ruling simply said that citizens who pool money to pay for political media do not lose their first amendment rights by doing so in the form of a corporation. (or other entity). In this case it was a group who funded a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton.
That's it.
Citizens United was a fundamentally pro-first amendment, pro-human rights ruling.
I wonder if you can mount a defense of the idea that government has the right to ban people from making videos that criticize political candidates without government approval?
The counterargument is that allowing the very rich to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, without even full transparency as to where the money is coming from, makes our nation far worse.
You can tell that’s an opinion held by most of the people in this country by the fact that we had a set of campaign finance laws that were gutted or basically made moot by various recent developments like Citizens United. We have those adorable quaint little limits (4 figures) that a person can give to a campaign per election cycle. The point of that is that as a person, there probably ought to be a limit for how much money you can give a campaign.
And entities other than people, just like they aren’t entitled to votes, aren’t entitled to be able to stuff money into campaigns. Even if they pretend they’re independent.
None of the campaign finance laws we have mean anything when you can use these loopholes big enough to drive an oil tanker through. Also, I think we’re the only ones among advanced democracies who have this stuff. I don’t think it’s making our democracy healthier.
It's disingenuous to frame it as being simply about "making videos"
The ruling barred restrictions on corporations, unions, and nonprofit organizations from independent expenditures, allowing groups to independently support political candidates with financial resources.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the court's ruling represented "a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government"
At least in some states if the cops bust into someone's house without a warrant the person has the right to shoot them, but I guess that doesn't apply to cars anywhere.
Has anybody mentioned the fourth amendment? All this talk of rationale is misguided. The plain meaning of the 4th has been undermined by our corrupted court system.
But I believe these cases are not leveraging the 4th amendment. Civil Forfeiture has levied a flaw in the 6th amendment, where only people have a right to a trial and other procedural protections while assets do not.
So they try to separate the person from the asset, and launch a case against an asset as if it can call a lawyer and defend itself. They don't charge the person, they establish some weaker level of review against the asset.
The problem is that the corruption has built up so much, and so many generations have grown up being "educated" by propaganda on TV like "Law & Order" that they think this is not corruption at all.
But the 4th amendment is clear, they need a warrant. They never get one. And when they do, they are almost all fraudulent/invalid warrants.
But since government is the only one that gets to enforce the laws, it is not a surprise that government tends to let government get away with criminal activity.
> ...every traffic stop, is a felony under 18 U.S. Code § 241 ... or or 18 U.S. Code § 242...
I strongly disagree with this. Traffic stops are absolutely not a felony. Properly-motivated traffic stops (think: "Stopping a driver who is operating his vehicle erratically" or "Stopping a driver whose vehicle is obviously in dangerous disrepair") are essential to maintaining the safe operation of our public roads. What should absolutely be a felony are warrantless searches conducted as part of a traffic stop, properly-motivated or not.
If the cops can't get a warrant over the phone, then they should not be permitted to do the search. They're not pressed for time! It's not like you're going to be going anywhere, they've ordered you and your passengers out of the vehicle. And if you run on foot, they still have the vehicle that they can search if they get a warrant.
I wonder what would happen if large amounts of travelers started carrying movie prop money? Could we churn out large numbers of plaintiffs with standing against the government, without losing substantial amounts of actual money?
I've seen one of these searches happen to another passenger first hand it's absurd.
The typical route for movie productions now, since modern film resolution is too high to easily use fakes that fit the legal requirements, is to use stacks of blank paper of the right color with a single actual bill on top.
Sorry to be a downer, but I doubt prop money would look like real money on an X-ray. I’ve seen bundles of cash on a TSA X-ray and it has a distinctive look.
on the plus side, things designed to look like bundles of cash on an x-ray, but not visually, would clearly not be 'counterfeit' and therefore much safer legally
Readit News
(I don’t have the sources but read years ago that states that let the cops keep the cash have ridiculous levels of abusive confiscations, whereas states that have the money go to the state coffers basically don’t)
(Most civil asset forfeiture is done by local cops stopping people on the highway and similar)
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1044326/dl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_sharing
Why not require due process and 4th amendment rights to be respected?
If the government convicts you of the crime and proves the money is the proceeds of the crime you are convicted for, them maybe it makes sense for the government to seize the funds. Absent that, it should be taken for what it is: armed robery.
The Wikipedia page has more on the rationale, good or bad:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
It abstracts it away by one level. Without appropriate third party oversight you're going to be playing whack a mole until you have the President himself managing the operation.
Well, maybe if money from fines was allowed to go directly to paying for something that directly addresses the specific type of harm that the type of crime the fine was for tends to cause, that would be ok. Like, if someone is fined for damaging the road, that money can go towards fixing roads.
But nothing else.
And that might be enough. Give some credit to laziness and inertia.
If I was king.. all confiscated cash must go to organizations such as ACLU and EFF (not a comprehensive list). That way it can still be done when sensible, but the more it happens the more money goes to organizations who strive to reduce abuse.
I attended a wedding that got hit by a major flash flood that required a rescue operation by boat and helicopter. Thankfully no one was seriously injured. A half dozen people were swept away and rescued from trees. The rest of us got to higher floors of the building and they were concerned about us waiting out the flood because cars from the parking lot floated and rammed the first floor of the building. It was featured on an episode of I Do, Redo.
They brought in busses to transport the 61 people rescued to the local high school where they had activated the Red Cross and provided us dry cloths and food. I can't say enough nice things about the Red Cross volunteers and the staff at the high school, and same with the fire department and EMS.
However, when we were loaded into the busses, the police held the busses until they had a drug dog come into the busses to walk up and down the aisles, and only after that let the busses take us to the high school. While no one was seriously injured physically, people were traumatized from the flooding event and many attendees suffered from PTSD for years.
It was so cruel for the police department to do what they did with everyone in the mental state that we were in.
For reasons I do not understand, we were not free to leave the high school, and even the people that did not lose their cars to the flood were required to go to the high school on the busses. I can't recall how long they detained us at the high school, I'd guess 3 to 5 hours, and then they let us leave. The friend that came to pick me up (I did lose my vehicle to the flood) got to the high school not long after I did and had to wait in the parking lot for hours.
We wanted to feel safe once we got to dry land after the ordeal we went through. I did not feel safe until I got home.
Maybe there is a silly explanation about the bus being confiscated from a local drug lord and people needed to be protected, but otherwise I don't see a way how you officials could come out here not looking like idiots.
https://youtu.be/0XBzV0bDZdQ
When festival buses are going to Fusion Festival (think Burning Man), it's common knowledge that half the buses will be stopped and "controlled", i.e. warantless search of all the passengers' belongings. That my German friends think this is normal or acceptable just blows my mind.
Civil forfeiture is absolutely insane. The “war on drugs” needs to end. Legalize all drugs. Dissolve the DEA. Tax all drugs. Earmark part of the sales towards drug addiction treatment and mental health.
That's it.
Citizens United was a fundamentally pro-first amendment, pro-human rights ruling.
I wonder if you can mount a defense of the idea that government has the right to ban people from making videos that criticize political candidates without government approval?
You can tell that’s an opinion held by most of the people in this country by the fact that we had a set of campaign finance laws that were gutted or basically made moot by various recent developments like Citizens United. We have those adorable quaint little limits (4 figures) that a person can give to a campaign per election cycle. The point of that is that as a person, there probably ought to be a limit for how much money you can give a campaign.
And entities other than people, just like they aren’t entitled to votes, aren’t entitled to be able to stuff money into campaigns. Even if they pretend they’re independent.
None of the campaign finance laws we have mean anything when you can use these loopholes big enough to drive an oil tanker through. Also, I think we’re the only ones among advanced democracies who have this stuff. I don’t think it’s making our democracy healthier.
So they try to separate the person from the asset, and launch a case against an asset as if it can call a lawyer and defend itself. They don't charge the person, they establish some weaker level of review against the asset.
That's called "robbery".
Deleted Comment
The problem is that the corruption has built up so much, and so many generations have grown up being "educated" by propaganda on TV like "Law & Order" that they think this is not corruption at all.
But the 4th amendment is clear, they need a warrant. They never get one. And when they do, they are almost all fraudulent/invalid warrants.
But since government is the only one that gets to enforce the laws, it is not a surprise that government tends to let government get away with criminal activity.
I strongly disagree with this. Traffic stops are absolutely not a felony. Properly-motivated traffic stops (think: "Stopping a driver who is operating his vehicle erratically" or "Stopping a driver whose vehicle is obviously in dangerous disrepair") are essential to maintaining the safe operation of our public roads. What should absolutely be a felony are warrantless searches conducted as part of a traffic stop, properly-motivated or not.
If the cops can't get a warrant over the phone, then they should not be permitted to do the search. They're not pressed for time! It's not like you're going to be going anywhere, they've ordered you and your passengers out of the vehicle. And if you run on foot, they still have the vehicle that they can search if they get a warrant.
To be fair to that show, it doesn't ever misconstrue corruption as normal or OK. Quite the opposite.
Dead Comment
I've seen one of these searches happen to another passenger first hand it's absurd.