Page 5 of 8 FirstFirst 12345678 LastLast
Results 101 to 125 of 177
  1. #101
    Cogito Ergo Sum LnGrrrR's Avatar
    My Team
    Boston Celtics
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Post Count
    22,399
    See, this is the stuff I wish Republicans would get behind, but they're too dumb re: authoritarian worship + war on drugs/crime to pay attention.

  2. #102
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Oklahoma Takes A Hard Look At What Police Seize — And How It's Spent

    In Oklahoma, some people in charge of enforcing the law seem to be skirting it. State audits have found people in district attorney offices have used seized money and property to live rent-free and pay off student loans.

    When state Sen. Kyle Loveless first heard about the audits, he'd already been thinking about amending the civil asset forfeiture laws — mainly because the state doesn't always follow the law.

    "We've seen in Oklahoma — through county commissioner scandals, Supreme Court justice scandals — if we let people go without any checks and balances in place, bad things happen," Loveless says.

    The forfeiture laws are loose in Oklahoma. Law enforcement can seize property or money they believe was used in a crime — even if they don't charge anyone.


    Forfeited funds that aren't contested stay with the seizing agency or local prosecutors. They're supposed to be used for "law enforcement purposes," but Sen. Loveless says paying off student loans with this money seems like a stretch.


    "When asked about it, law enforcement said, 'Well, he's a DA and he prosecutes bad guys, so therefore it's law enforcement,' " he says. "Wait a minute. I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that that passes the smell test."

    http://www.npr.org/2015/07/26/426495...m_campaign=app




  3. #103
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Stop-and-Seize Turns Police Into Self-Funding Gangs

    In his book "Why the West Rules -- for Now," historian Ian Morris draws a distinction between two ways of running a country. He calls these “high-end” and “low-end” strategies.

    High-end states have efficient, centralized bureaucracies and a credible legal apparatus, while low-end states rely on local authorities to do things like collecting taxes and providing security. According to Morris, high-end states are more effective at creating rich, powerful, technologically advanced civilizations, but they are also more expensive -- when resources are strained, countries sometimes revert to the cheaper, low-end solutions. Often, transitions from high-end to low-end strategies follow wars, famines and other disasters that reduce the state’s ability to finance its activities directly.

    Modern rich nations, with their extensive court systems, bureaucracies, militaries and infrastructure, look distinctly high-end compared with the feudal lands of past centuries. But in the U.S., I see some troubling signs of a shift toward low-end ins utions.

    Bounty hunting was a recent example (now happily going out of style).

    Another example is the use of private individuals or businesses to collect taxes, a practice known as tax farming.

    A third has been the extensive use of mercenaries in lieu of U.S. military personnel in Iraq and elsewhere.

    Practices such as these can save money for the government, but they encourage abuses by reducing oversight.


    I’ve recently been reading about an even more worrying example of low-end statecraft: Stop-and-seize. This term refers to a practice, increasingly common since the turn of the century, of police confiscating people’s property without making an arrest or obtaining a warrant. That may not sound legal, but it is! The police simply pull you over and take your money.


    A Washington Post investigative report from a year ago explains:

    [A]n aggressive brand of policing [is spreading] that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes...Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back.


    Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms…


    A thriving subculture of road officers…now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.


    “All of our home towns are sitting on a tax-liberating gold mine,” Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County, Ill., wrote in a self-published book under a pseudonym…Hain’s book calls for “turning our police forces into present-day Robin Hoods.”

    This is exactly the process of devolution that Morris describes. With government unable to pay police as much as they need or would like,
    police are confiscating their revenue directly from the populace.

    The threat to individual liberty from stop-and-seize is painfully clear. Without requirements for an arrest or for a warrant, the power to confiscate cash is a clear diminution of property rights.

    Effectively,
    the police have been given official sanction to commit literal highway robbery without the threat of punishment. People whose property was seized must pay a lot of money and spend a long time in court for even the chance of getting it back, and police who seize money with no good reason don't, apparently, suffer any threat of discipline.

    But stop-and-seize also presents a danger to public trust. When the cops go around taking money from innocent people to fund their own departments and salaries, it understandably decreases trust in the government and the legal system. That is something we can ill-afford at the present time, with trust in the police already at a low ebb over a series of videos of police killings. If they don’t trust the government, people will be less likely to report criminals, and possibly less likely to follow the law themselves.


    http://www.bloombergview.com/article...-funding-gangs

  4. #104
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,425
    See, this is the stuff I wish Republicans would get behind, but they're too dumb re: authoritarian worship + war on drugs/crime to pay attention.
    Woah!

    Hey there, LnGrrrR. Where you been?

  5. #105
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    The Nation's Criminals Can't Keep Up With The Government's Legalized Theft Programs

    from the the-only-solution-is-a-more-productive-criminal-element dept


    The Ins ute for Justice has released its latest report on asset forfeiture. Despite some recentlegislative attempts to add a much-needed conviction requirement to the seizure of property, most of the country still allows law enforcement to proceed under the assumption that money, vehicles and houses are "guilty," even if those they take this property from are, for all intents and purposes, innocent.

    The absence of this key factor has resulted in decades of nationwide abuse. The IJ's updated chart ranking states' asset forfeiture policies on an A-F scale shows only one A rating: New Mexico. The state's recent passage of significant asset forfeiture reform is the only highlight in the report. The rest of the nation continues on its path of underachievement, preferring to defer to law enforcement's best judgment on how to fight the Drug War. (While also occasionally used to target fraud and organized crime, forfeiture programs are now mostly deployed to take money from people/vehicles that smell like marijuana.)



    The largest amount of resistance to asset forfeiture reform efforts come from the agencies that benefit most from the liquidation of seized property. duh



    In 2014 alone, US Attorneys "forfeited" $4.5 billion. This dollar amount now places federal law enforcement at the top of the list of of "People Who Take Stuff That Belongs To Others."

    According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.

    Of course, there are several legitimate (i.e., tied to convictions) forfeitures included in that amount, whereas no burglary can ever be considered "legitimate." And, as the DOJ points out,some recent sizable seizures have produced gaudy forfeiture numbers.

    A Justice Department spokesman pointed out that big cases, like the $1.7 billion Bernie Madoff judgment and a $1.2 billion case associated with Toyota, have led to large deposits to forfeiture funds in a single year.


    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...programs.shtml

    Just another way America is ed and un able. Corrupt, militarized, untouchable, murderous police stealing from innocent citizens



  6. #106
    Lab Animal Capt Bringdown's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Post Count
    11,443
    Cops Took More Property From Americans Than Burglars Did Last Year
    Last year, all of America’s burglars extracted a total of just $3.9 billion worth of property from their ulative marks. Pansies, the nation’s cops spit in the general direction of that paltry figure. That’s all you got?

    That’s because over the same period, U.S. law enforcement officials netted $4.5 billion in goods from Americans through a process known as civil asset forfeiture, an astounding figure that economist Martin Armstrong noted on his blog last week in response to an Ins ute for Justice report.

    Consider that for a moment: in 2014, cops took more property from Americans than burglars did. -- more -->

  7. #107
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    New Mexico Legislators Sue City For Refusing To Follow New Asset Forfeiture Law

    Earlier this year, the state of New Mexico passed one of the most solid pieces of asset forfeiture reform legislation in the country. All it asked for was what most people would consider to be common sense: if the government is going to seize assets, the least it could do in return is tie the seizure to a conviction.

    Now, the state is finding out that bad habits are hard to break. CJ Ciaramella reports that the government is going after another part of the government for its refusal to stop taking stuff without securing a conviction.

    Two New Mexico state senators are suing Albuquerque after the city has refused to stop seizing residents’ cars, despite a law passed earlier this year ending the practice of civil asset forfeiture.


    In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, New Mexico state senators Lisa Torraco and Daniel Ivey-Soto said Albuquerque is defying the new law and “has continued to take property using civil forfeiture without requiring that anyone—much less the property owner—be convicted of a crime.”

    These would be the two senators who pushed for the much-needed reform. They managed to get the law passed, but Albuquerque (along with other cities in the state) haven't shown much interest in altering their tactics. The only incentive the new law has on its side is the threat of legal action or legislative pressure. The old incentives -- hundreds of thousands of dollars -- are still motivating local law enforcement.

    Albuquerque has a particularly aggressive program to seize vehicles from drivers suspected of DWI. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the city has seized 8,369 vehicles and collected more than $8.3 million in forfeiture revenues since 2010.

    The city's attorney argues this newly-illegal activity is still legal, because drunk driving.

    “Our ordinance is a narrowly-tailored nuisance abatement law to protect the public from dangerous, repeat DWI offenders and the vehicles they use committing DWI offenses, placing innocent citizens’ lives and property at risk,” city attorney Jessica Hernandez said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The ordinance provides defenses to forfeiture to protect innocent owners and has been upheld by the courts.”

    Yes, all asset forfeiture statutes and ordinances theoretically provide "
    defenses to forfeiture" and have been "upheld by courts." That doesn't make them right, especially when a law directly governing the city's actions has been passed and forbids the very thing it continues to do.

    And as for the DWI excuse, the city itself admits that half the vehicles it seizes do not belong to the person driving them. So, all it's really doing is taking cars because it can, not because it has any interest in preventing drunk drivers from driving. Then it lays the burden of proof -- along with the time and expense of fighting these seizures -- on the people whose vehicles have been taken (often for the actions of someone else) and calls it a reasonable avenue of "defense to forfeiture."

    Once vehicles are seized, it generally takes $850 to liberate them. Most are auctioned. This money then becomes part of a cash-heavy feedback loop by going directly to the prosecutors and police departments who run the seizure program.

    Stacking the deck further is the fact that the city counts its seizures before they're seized as part of its budgetary plans.

    According to Wednesday’s lawsuit, Albuquerque forecasts how many vehicles it will not only seize but sell at auction. The city’s 2016 budget estimates it will have 1,200 vehicle seizure hearings, release 350 vehicles under agreements with the property owners, immobilize 600 vehicles, and to sell 625 vehicles at auction.

    When government agencies have predetermined the amount of vehicles they will need to seize to hit budget projections, they will do everything in their power -- including, apparently, ignoring new laws forbidding this sort of thing -- to ensure the number of vehicles they seize is the number of vehicles they planned to seize. The incentives could not be more perverted and yet, government officials claim the system will somehow result in only the vehicles of the truly guilty being taken and sold to pay for more vehicles being taken and sold.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...ture-law.shtml



  8. #108
    Veteran Th'Pusher's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
    Post Count
    6,097

  9. #109
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,425
    right direction, wrong reason?

    The memo the DOJ sent Monday suspends all equitable sharing — regardless of whether the assets got seized by local or state police and "adopted" by the feds, or seized by a local-federal task force. So it's much broader than the January 2015 changes — and it doesn't provide easy workarounds, like simply deputizing local police officers into federal agents.


    However, the DOJ makes it clear that this is happening for budgetary reasons. Under the funding bill Congress passed in December 2015, which funds the government through September 2016, the DOJ feels it isn't getting enough money from Congress to be able to turn forfeited assets back to local police. So it's "suspending" the sharing program until it starts getting more money again.

  10. #110
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    "isn't getting enough money from Congress"

    Thanks, Repugs. ing up EVERYTHING they touch.



  11. #111
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Court Won't Let Government Screw Forfeiture Victim Out Of Legal Fees

    The government has made one last attempt to screw over a victim of an IRS bank account seizure. The screwing began in December of 2014, when the IRS -- despite stating it would not perform forfeitures if there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing -- lifted $107,000 from convenience store owner Lyndon McLellan. This was yet another one of the IRS's "structuring" cases, predicated solely on the fact that multiple deposits under $10,000 were made. ($10,000 triggers automatic reporting to the federal government.)

    After the IRS announced it would not be pursuing questionable structuring seizures -- thanks mainly to several rounds of negative press -- it still continued to pursue McLellan's case, despite IRS Commissioner John Koskinen telling a Congressional subcommittee that this was exactly the sort of case the IRS would no longer be pursuing.

    The prosecutor in charge of McLellan's case was less than enthused about the public discussion of the McLellan "investigation." He claimed the public discussion only made IRS investigators angrier and more likely to act vindictively (I'm paraphrasing) and claimed the "final offer" would only be 50% of the seized funds.

    The "final offer" turned out not to be all that "final." The IRS eventually dropped the case and returned all $107,000 to McLellan. However, it did not feel McLellan was en led to compensation for legal fees because he did not "substantially prevail" in his case against the IRS seizure.

    The government's argument against the awarding of fees was basically nothing more than it illustrating how easy it is for it to rig the game. All it takes is a more sympathetic -- or less attentive -- judge.

    The government tried to dismiss the case without prejudice, knowing that caselaw would side with it on the denial of fees.

    Under CAFRA (Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act), a claimant can recover his reasonable attorney fees and litigation costs only if he has "substantially prevailed" in a civil forfeiture proceeding. 28 U.S.C. § 2465(b)(1 ). A number of courts have held that a claimant has not substantially prevailed where the forfeiture proceeding was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.

    Indeed, this court can find no examples of any court reaching the opposite conclusion. Those courts that have considered the issue primarily rely on the Supreme Court's rationale regarding fee-shifting provisions found in Buckhannon Bd & Care Home,. Inc. v. W Va. Dept of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598 (2001). In Buckhannon, the Court held that prevailing party status requires an "alteration in the legal relationship of the parties." Id at 605. Thus, an enforceable judgment on the merits and a court-ordered consent decree carry the necessary "judicial imprimatur" to convey prevailing party status, while a voluntary change in a party's conduct -- despite being inspired by a lawsuit -- does not.

    The government argued in its brief that the case should only be dismissed without prejudice, raising several of its own claims as apparent legal strawmen, but refusing to address the solitary argument raised by McLellan -- that dismissal without prejudice would preclude him from seeking legal fees.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...gal-fees.shtml

    So the govt makes you spend $10Ks on legal fees, then gives you all your money back, and walks away.


  12. #112
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Texas fails to protect property owners from civil forfeiture

    Civil forfeiture is a booming industry in Texas. Every year, police and prosecutors statewide take in more and more cash and property from people without so much as charging them with a crime.

    Between 2001 and 2013 (the most recent year for which these numbers are available), Texas law enforcement agencies have taken in over half a billion dollars in forfeiture revenue - an average of $41.5 million per year.

    Make no mistake: Reform is sorely needed.

    Texas' civil forfeiture laws receive a grade of "D&" in "Policing for Profit," a recently updated nationwide report from the Ins ute for Justice.

    Texas scores so poorly for three reasons.

    http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opin...rs-6676811.php

    my guess: slave state TX uses forfeiture most on blacks and browns.



  13. #113
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Justice Department restarts program to seize assets from suspected criminals

    Advocates of the program frame it as a necessity, as it weakens criminal economy and supplements underfunded local police departments.

    The US Department of Justice will restore the "equitable-sharing" program that allows police officers to prosecute civil forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law.


    The controversial program authorizes police enforcement to reap considerable amounts of profits from seized assets and property from citizens suspected of committing offenses, even when they have not been convicted, The Daily Caller reported.


    The program was temporarily suspended last December, as a result of of budget reductions contained in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 and the December 2015 Consolidated Appropriations Act, drawing widespread condemnation from advocates of the program.



    Civil asset forfeiture is a contentious practice that has long faced scrutiny from criminal justice reformers contending that the measure allows police officers to seek profits at the cost of justice. The practice allows officers to seize assets without proof of offense.

    For instance, police officers sized $11,000 from 24-year-old Charles Clarke, claiming that his luggage smelled like Marijuana, Vox reported.

    The officers didn't find any marijuana after conducting a search, though Clarke did admit to having smoked marijuana on the plane. In these cases, the property or asset is considered the defendant, which means that the innocence of the owner is irrelevant, according to the Congressional Research Service.



    Sara Stillman of The New Yorker notes:

    “A piece of property does not share the rights of a person. There’s no right to an attorney and, in most states, no presumption of innocence.Owners who wish to contest often find that the cost of hiring a lawyer far exceeds the value of their seized goods. Washington, DC, charges up to twenty-five hundred dollars simply for the right to challenge a police seizure in court, which can take months or even years to resolve.”

    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Upd...cted-criminals



  14. #114
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Even with Scalia gone ...

    Supreme Court Rules Against Freezing Assets Not Tied to Crimes


    The government may not freeze assets needed to pay criminal defense lawyers if the assets are not linked to a crime, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a 5-to-3 decision that scrambled the usual alliances.

    The case arose from the prosecution of Sila Luis, a Florida woman, on charges of Medicare fraud that, according to the government, involved $45 million in charges for unneeded or nonexistent services. Almost all of Ms. Luis’s profits from the fraud, prosecutors said, had been spent by the time charges were filed.


    Prosecutors instead asked a judge to freeze $2 million of Ms. Luis’s funds that were not connected to the suspected fraud, saying the money would be used to pay fines and provide res ution should she be convicted. Ms. Luis said she needed the money to pay her lawyers.


    The judge issued an order freezing her assets. That order, the Supreme Court ruled, violated her Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel.


    Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in a plurality opinion also signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said the case was simple.


    The government can seize, Justice Breyer wrote, “a robber’s loot, a drug seller’s cocaine, a burglar’s tools, or other property associated with the planning, implementing, or concealing of a crime.”


    But it cannot, he said, freeze money or other assets unconnected to the crime.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/us...er=rss&emc=rss

    but if there is no crime at all, can the police goons grab your possessions?




  15. #115
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,425
    Last year New Mexico and Montana became the first two states to require a conviction for law enforcement to take possession of cash and property involved in crimes.
    http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.co...iture-and.html

  16. #116
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Law Enforcement Forced To Hand Over $41K It Seized From Businessman At Airport, Plus Another $10K In Legal Fees

    An unidentified Techdirt reader sends in the news that Arizona law enforcement is going to be handing over $10,000 to Madji Khaleq as a result of a failed asset forfeiture attempt. This would be in addition to the $41,870 the DEA already handed back to Khaleq -- every cent of the cash federal agents seized from him at the Tucson airport.

    Khaleq had a legitimate reason to be carrying $40K in cash on him.

    Court do ents show Khaleq told the Drug Enforcement Administration agent who seized the money that he owned a convenience store and check-cashing business in Denver, as well as a wholesale electronics distributorship in California. He said he came to Tucson to buy a smoke shop on South 12th Avenue, but the deal fell through.

    But the
    DEA firmly believes cash = drugs even when there's no evidence pointing towards illicit sources or uses for the funds, so it relieved Khaleq of his burdensome bankroll. Local law enforcement then swooped in to claim its part in the haul… only to return it when Khaleq lawyered up.

    Khaleq challenged the seizure in Pima County Superior Court and the Pima County Attorney’s Office withdrew its request for forfeiture of the money in November.

    The $10,000 in legal fees due Khaleq will come from the County Attorney's Office and a Tucson-based counter-narcotics task force. Apparently the DEA has washed its hands of the whole affair after giving Khaleq the money it took from him.


    The government is unhappy to be paying a drug trafficker an additional $10,000. Oh, yeah. It still believes Khaleq is involved in drug trafficking despite losing this lawsuit and 10 grand in discretionary spending.

    In the March 10 stipulation of dismissal, Deputy County Attorney Edward Russo said the $10,000 is not an admission that Khaleq has shown he is “en led to an award of attorney’s fees, costs or damages in this action.”

    Also:

    When asked if the County Attorney’s Office still suspected Khaleq of being involved in illicit activity, Johnson said: “Yes, we don’t just take money from people for no reason.”

    The you don't.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160321/18404933973/law-enforcement-forced-to-hand-over-41k-it-seized-businessman-airport-plus-another-10k-legal-fees.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&u tm_campaign=Feed%3A+techdirt%2Ffeed+%28Techdirt%29



  17. #117
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Nebraska Just Abolished Civil Forfeiture, Now Requires A Criminal Conviction To Take Property


    (From Forbes)

    The newly signed law provides sweeping reforms. First and foremost, Nebraska now requires a criminal conviction to forfeit property.

    The accused must be convicted of an offense involving illegal drugs, child pornography or illegal gambling to lose their cash, vehicles, firearms or real estate.

    Nebraska joins just nine other states that require a criminal conviction as a prerequisite for most or all forfeiture cases.


    http://www.againstcronycapitalism.or...take-property/

    http://ij.org/report/policing-for-pr...rfeiture-laws/


    Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-26-2016 at 06:45 AM.

  18. #118
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    How police took $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage and a church

    Eh Wah had been on the road for 12 hours when he saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror.

    The 40-year-old Texas man, a refugee from Burma who became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago, was heading home to Dallas to check on his family. He was on a break from touring the country for months as a volunteer manager for the Klo & Kweh Music Team, a Christian rock ensemble from Burma, also known as Myanmar. The group was touring the United States to raise funds for a Christian college in Burma and an orphanage in Thailand.

    Eh Wah managed the band's finances, holding on to the cash proceeds it raised from ticket and merchandise sales at concerts. By the time he was stopped in Oklahoma, the band had held concerts in 19 cities across the United States, raising money via tickets that sold for $10 to $20 each.


    The sheriff's deputies in Muskogee County, Okla., pulled Eh Wah over for a broken tail lightabout 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27. The deputies started asking questions — a lot of them.

    And at some point, they brought out a drug-sniffing dog, which alerted on the car. That's when they found the cash, according to the deputy's affidavit.


    There was the roughly $33,000 from ticket sales and donations, much of it earmarked for the religious college back in Burma, according to Eh Wah and the band members.


    There was the $1,000 in cash donations to the orphanage in Thailand, small bills bundled in two or three dozen sealed envelopes with the orphanage's name written on them.


    There was $8,000 in cash from the band's CD and souvenir sales.

    A $9,000 cash gift to one of the band's members from his family and friends in Buffalo — cash that Eh Wah says he didn't even know was in the blue and white gift bag he had been asked to hold.

    And $2,000 in cash for Eh Wah and the band's incidental expenses on the trip: meals and tolls, for example.


    All told, the deputies found $53,000 in cash in Eh Wah's car that night. Muskogee County Sheriff Charles Pearson said he couldn't comment on the particulars of Eh Wah's case because of the open investigation, but it is clear from his deputy's affidavit that the officers didn't like Eh Wah's explanation for how he got the cash.

    "Inconsistent stories," the affidavit notes. Despite the positive alert from the drug-sniffing dog, no drugs, paraphernalia or weapons were found. Just the cash.


    They took Eh Wah to the police station for more questioning. They let him drive his own car there, with deputies' vehicles in front of and behind him the whole way. They interrogated him for several hours.


    "I just couldn't believe it," Eh Wah saidin an interview. "An officer was telling me that 'you are going to jail tonight.' And I don’t know what to think. What did I do that would make me go to jail? I didn’t do anything. Why is he saying that?"


    Eh Wah tried to explain himself, but he had difficulty because English isn't his first language. He says he had a hard time understanding the officers, and they had a hard time understanding him. He told them about the band and his role with it and how he had been entrusted with the cash. He even had the officers call one of the band's leaders, Saw Marvellous Soe, who had decamped to Miami while the band was on a break.


    Marvellous saw Eh Wah's number on his phone, but when he answered, he was surprised to hear someone speaking with a thick Southern drawl that he could barely understand — "like in the movies," Marvellous said in an interview.


    "The police officer started asking questions," Marvellous recalled. "I explained: 'We are a music team. We came here for a tour.'" Marvellous tried to explain that the band was from Burma.


    "He kept telling me, 'You are wrong, you are wrong,'" Marvellous said. "Everything I said, [he said,] 'You are wrong.' I said: 'We are doing a good thing! And now you are accusing us of being like a drug dealer or something like that.'"


    http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...e-poor/479436/





  19. #119
    🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 ElNono's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Post Count
    152,607
    Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Techdirt Over The Iden y Of A Hyperbolic Commenter

    Techdirt is in hot water with the Department of Homeland Security all thanks to a commenter known as Digger. Techdirt's Tim Cushing published a story about the Han County, IN Sheriff's Department officers who stole $240,000 under color of asset forfeiture. In response to the story, Digger wrote, "The only 'bonus' these criminals [the Sheriff's Department officers] are likely to see could be a bullet to their apparently empty skulls." The Department of Homeland Security then contacted Techdirt to ask whom they should send a subpoena to in order to identify Digger. Masnick is worried the subpoena could come with a gag order. "Normally, we'd wait for the details before publishing, but given a very similar situation involving commenters on the site Reason last year, which included a highly questionable and almost certainly uncons utional gag order preventing Reason from speaking about it, we figured it would be worth posting about it before we've received any such thing," Masnick writes.

  20. #120
    Real Warrior Warlord23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Post Count
    6,024
    Oklahoma police taking this racket to a new low, scanning people's prepaid cards and robbing them of their money. As usual, no recourse since they're charging the asset, not the individual. And the loot is being shared with the firm making the readers: "Each ERAD reader is costing the state about $5,000, plus about $1,500 for training. The state has agreed to pay the manufacturer, ERAD Group, 7.7 percent of all funds forfeited with the readers".

    What's next ... taking money off people's debit cards? Pitiful. Good to know that the OK legislature is focusing on more important things like passing a bill criminalizing abortion and passing a motion to impeach Obama over the transgender bathroom issue.

    http://m.news9.com/story.aspx?story=...5&catId=112032

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0e39a28ac2083

    http://reason.com/blog/2016/06/08/ok...ou-over-and-di

  21. #121
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    So OKie cops can removed your wallet and go into it on what grounds, what probably cause?

    The ing police state is irreversible and unstoppable. Expect other Repug states to follow OKie's example. And ERAD, too.

  22. #122
    dangerous floater Winehole23's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Post Count
    89,425
    DOJ resumes Equitable Sharing Program

    Last December, civil liberties advocates cheered the Department of Justice’s announcement that it was indefinitely suspending its equitable sharing asset forfeiture program due to fiscal constraints. This week, unfortunately, the Department of Justice lifted the suspension and resumed payments to local police departments.



    Civil asset forfeiture allows the government to seize property and cash from Americans, without charge or trial, on the mere su ion of wrongdoing. In most jurisdictions, the seizing agency gets to keep some or even all of the proceeds, creating a clear profit motive for the agencies to seize property.



    Equitable sharing is a federal program which allows state and local law enforcement to seize property under federal, rather than state, forfeiture law. Law enforcement agencies in states with more restrictive forfeiture laws are thus able to get around those state restrictions by participating in the federal program.



    The equitable sharing program also provides an 80% kickback to the seizing local agency, which is a larger share of the proceeds than many states allow. As one might expect, the more a state restricts the use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture, the more state and local police tend to rely on the federal program instead.
    http://www.cato.org/blog/department-...haring-program

  23. #123
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    this ing is irreversible, unstoppable, because a Repug strict obstructionist Congress would never pass a law stopping forfeitures (if one was ever proposed).

  24. #124
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Police Can Use a Legal Grey Area to Rob Anyone of Their Belongings

    When officers categorize wallets or cellphones as evidence, getting them back can be nearly impossible—even if the owner isn’t charged with a crime.

    Last summer, Kenneth Clavasquin was arrested in front of the Bronx apartment he shared with his mother. While the 23-year-old was being processed, the New York Police Department took his possessions, including his iPhone, and gave him a receipt detailing the items in police custody. That receipt would be his ticket to getting back his stuff after his case ended.

    Clavasquin needed to get a release from the district attorney’s office stating that his property would no longer be needed for evidence. Over the following three months, he repeatedly called the assistant district attorney assigned to his case, but he neither got a release nor a written explanation of why he was being denied one.

    Then, with the help of an attorney at the Bronx Defenders, a public-defender office that had been representing him since the day after his arrest, Clavasquin sent a formal written request for the district attorney’s release. He got no response.

    Clavasquin still hasn’t gotten his phone back—but he had to continue paying for its service contract as it remained locked up in an NYPD facility.


    His ordeal is a common one. Earlier this year, the Bronx Defenders filed a class-action lawsuit against New York City that named three plaintiffs: Clavasquin and two other men who were also given the runaround when they tried to pick up their property, including their cellphones, after an arrest.

    The lawsuit alleges that the city has shown a “policy, pattern, and practice” of uncons utionally depriving people of their property after an arrest, without due process.

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...ngings/495740/

    Any wonder why blacks and browns ing HATE the cops?

    Cops take your wallet? you lose cash, drivers license, IDs, credit/ATM cards.



  25. #125
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Albuquerque Police Seize Vehicle From Owner Whose Son Drove It While Drunk; Want $4,000 To Give It Back

    the city of Albuquerque was sued by state legislators because its police refused to stop seizing assets -- mainly vehicles -- without obtaining convictions.

    The city claimed the new law only applied to state police, and anyway, it was only performing a valuable community service by taking cars away from members of the community.

    “Our ordinance is a narrowly-tailored nuisance abatement law to protect the public from dangerous, repeat DWI offenders and the vehicles they use committing DWI offenses, placing innocent citizens’ lives and property at risk,” city attorney Jessica Hernandez said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “The ordinance provides defenses to forfeiture to protect innocent owners and has been upheld by the courts.”

    lol. "Defenses."


    Here's what really happens when the Albuquerque police blow off state law and perform "nuisance abatement."

    After her son was arrested in April for drunk driving while at the wheel of her borrowed Nissan Verso, Arlene Harjo, 56, found herself in court being told that she had to transfer ownership of the car to the city, or else settle the case for $4,000 to get it back.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-it-back.shtml



Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •