Severely limiting the scope of civil forfeiture seems like one of those political issues that everyone across the political spectrum can agree on.
I'm constantly hearing horror stories like the ones in this article and I've never heard any reasonable defense of our current system. In fact, I've never even heard an unreasonable defense.
Generally speaking, the political argument against is "If you do anything that gives even the appearance of curtailing police powers in any way, we will create the illusion of a crime wave, attribute it to you, and absolutely hammer every form of media with that narrative." (If, God help you, you manage to pass a law that actually curtails police powers, they'll generally act in open defiance instead of doing their jobs.)
The opponent here isn't other citizens, it's the police and their organizations (police benevolent associations, police unions, etc.) which wield considerable political power, and to an extent also legal power (since they collectively have nearly full discretion over what laws are enforced and by what means, to the extent they can cooperate amongst themselves).
It's not just an empty threat either. It's happened numerous times in NYC when the mayor or city council has attempted to reign in the NYPD, they simply stop responding to calls for service and then blame it on the politicians. Even if it doesn't lead to an uptick in crime, it still angers voters that police won't respond to their calls and they take it out at the polls.
It's happened in Minneapolis as well after the George Floyd.
The solution to this is either:
- setup a second security force to gradually replace them
or
- subdivide the coverage map into different districts, suss out the districts with poor performing management, then merge the territories of bad areas under the management of good areas
or
- subdivide responsibilities between violent crime, petty crime, and mundane enforcement like traffic, with separate departments for each, and tackle cleaning them up separately.
Really the notion of taking the same "trained" cop for all the roles in an urban area is pretty stupid. Specialized enforcement roles are likely a better solution.
Shadow defunding, without calling it defunding, is also another weapon, but of course Minneapolis blew that by outright calling it defunding.
But really the drug war is what fuels corruption and excessive power. Remove the drug war, and it would kneecap massive amounts of abuse.
They'll have different duties, like traffic cop and patrol and detective, but they are all part of the same department and most go through the same training "school".
And, of course, they are all part of the same union.
By subdividing into distinct departments, it is the basic divide and conquer. And you can replace departments more readily: keep the traffic and crime investigation units, but replace the patrol cops that are refusing to do their jobs.
Shit NYPD publicly doxed and threatened the mayor's daughter. I've always known the police were evil but that made me stop and really wonder what sort of constraints municipal politicians are operating under. Like that is very very close to "gloves off" mafia type shit right out in the open. What kinds of threats do they make against those figures in private?
This kind of power dynamic between the civilian administration and 'the military' would not be considered to be healthy, if it were happening in a sovereign polity.
Could a sufficiently wealthy mayor (like Bloomberg) push through privatisation and deunionisation, while using their personal funds to pay for private security for the whole city in case there is a strike? The department's annual budget seems to be around 5 billion USD.
The problem in that situation wouldn't be funding, it would be personnel. NYPD is nauseatingly over funded and could do their job with half their current budget, but you can't just pull thirty thousand private security contractors out of your ass.
How about seizing NYPD assets and calling in the National Guard after removing everyone, collecting their data in a massive database so that they get blackmarked wherever else they would go for employment? I guess there would be an inherent risk of such a draconian policy, considering it was the American MO in Iraq, but then again, that's Iraq and this is America. Just a thought.
>NYPD publicly doxed and threatened the mayor's daughter
As best I can tell, that is not true.
The Sergeants Benevolent Association, a police union, posted to Twitter a screenshot of Chiara de Blasio’s arrest report, which is a public record. The arrest report report contained her address… which was Gracie Mansion. In other words, not remotely a secret. The tweet did not threaten her.
A particular video essay comes to mind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs). Since government must ultimately be held in place by use of force no matter how you structure it, it's unsurprising that the sub-organization responsible for exerting force is the ultimate decider of what's actually allowed.
I thought this meme was identified decades ago: Whenever a town threatens to cut the fire department's budget, the FD whines loudly, and let a house or two burn down, and then they point fingers back at the mayor / town board.
Once voters know the pattern, they're hep to it.
So what's with the NYPD ? No voter control ? Should NYers start proposing referendums ? Are referendums even possible ?
I'm in Chicago, but we have a similar situation. Voters are wise to the pattern, there's just nothing we can do about it other than firing all of them and bringing in the national guard, and we're not ready to do that. They've got us by the balls, blaming them doesn't get them to start working again
Interesting. Seems like the logical thing to do would be to fire the whole PD and replace them with another group. Except that's basically the model used by secret-police dictatorships (eg. Russia, Iran) and anarchist failed states (eg. Haiti, much of Africa), so it doesn't seem to work very well either.
Seems like the root problem is that we grant the state a monopoly on physical violence because the alternative (no group having a monopoly on physical violence, and hence all of them battling it out) is worse. But then like the holders of any monopoly, they abuse it. This is why we can't have nice things.
I seem to remember some city in the east coast fired their whole department and then hired back selected ones. And hired new cops to replace the guys they wanted to get rid of. And it helped.
A suggestion I've thought of before and have seen in the wold increasingly is pay cops a stipend to pay for their own insurance. If they can't get insurance they get fired automatically.
If only they were socialist. They’re arguably a lot less socialist than many actual gangs, as far as providing material benefits of their criminal activity to the people who “host” them. Not to glamorize gangs, but some have historically taken care to maintain some degree of legitimacy and favor among “their” people, including through provision of services and money or goods. While also, sure, shaking down some of those same people.
This is one of the things I don't understand about America. If this is really true, how can it possibly happen?
I'm from one of the more stable countries in Europe. While there is corruption and abuse in the police, the average officer has greater loyalty to the system than to their superiors. Which means that if someone refuses to do their job, you can fire them and possibly charge them with crimes, and you will eventually find a replacement willing to do the job.
The only way I can see something like this happening is if the average police officer does not believe in the legitimacy of the political and legal system.
I don't know about averages, but I have known a cop who got into it for the sake of law and order, and promptly left after seeing how things were done. It must vary widely depending on the management, like any bureaucracy.
We just went through a cycle of politicians coast to coast, though less in the middle, screaming loudly to defund the police. What wasn't part of that conversation was getting rid of civil forfeiture, which is a rather amazing omission on the part of the defund the police folks.
No, I'm pretty sure the political argument is "if we stop doing this we'll have to raise taxes because it makes up a non insignificant portion of police revenue"
I disagree that everyone across the political spectrum agrees on this: Thin Blue Liners have considerable sway over politics, and they're happily on the take.
Can you provide a reference where you have seen someone take this stance? I personally have never seen it, and I think I know a lot of pro police types. I think most pro police types would see this as corruption.
2016 essay by the president of the Fraternal Order of Police arguing against civil forfeiture reform.
> The FOP does not disagree that there is a need for civil asset forfeiture reform. In fact, we worked very closely with Senator Jeff Sessions on this issue going back to the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) of 2000.
2017 essay by then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein praising civil forfeiture and arguing reform is not necessary.
> Some critics claim that civil asset forfeiture fails to protect property rights or provide due process. The truth is that there are multiple levels of judicial protection, as well as administrative safeguards.
4 of the 5 justices that overturned Roe v. Wade (and ruled there is no right to privacy in the US) were appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote.
Whether or not you agree with them; whether or not you agree with the results of the electoral college; I've never heard of a viable dispute to the de jure legitimacy of their appointments.
I posted that link in response to an inquiry for a single source in support of civil forfeiture. While I happen to agree with the general thrust of your complaint, it is a non sequitur. The Supreme Court is the ultimate authority, provided a Congress unwilling to hold them accountable (which it currently is).
My question of 'credibility' is not "do you like the Federalist Society" but "do you think they're in political alignment with the Thin Blue Liners and are they writing policy."
I don't think the current Supreme Court is a credible source of information about US law. The fact that many of them belong to some organization lends it negative credibility in my mind.
I mean, they essentially write and rewrite laws that come before them. They're literally an authoritative source of law. We can scream about the injustice of that until we're blue in the face, but denying the facts doesn't get us anywhere.
I've never met a pro police type that would mention anything as corruption. If you asked them directly some would agree, but as a group I generally just hear apoligism.
How can it be corruption when it's all because of just "a few bad apples"? (Quoth my thin blue line next door neighbor.) To that world view, nothing wrong is systemic; it's all down to individuals whose behavior is not considered part of the whole.
Incidentally, I'm not sure he's familiar with the second half of the idiom ("spoils the whole bunch").
The fact the police unions sell or give out special signifiers for family members of police is proof enough. The fake badgers stuck to windshields in the NYC area is an obvious reminder of the corruption openly allowed by the police.
And then you have the license plates and stickers and whatnot.
> In fact, I've never even heard an unreasonable defense.
I suspect like many things, there was some logic to the introduction. But it's just gotten to really batshit levels that there is probably nothing to do but stop the practice.
As I understand it, some of the origins were that for debts owed to the government, with the person not present in the country, it was much more practical to target assets that may exist within the country than try and get the individual.
Even in the introduction in the criminal context, I sort of understand the logic. In criminal organizations, there are likely people profiting a lot, that have engineered enough doubt that proving their connection to the beyond a reasonable standard is so difficult. But meeting a preponderance of the evidence standard in the civil context to reclaim those assets I can understand the argument.
So I think there are some bad and weak arguments, but they certainly don't outweigh what's happening now.
I think one of the worst argument I heard for not returning the money, was the police department wasn't able to follow the judges order, because they deposited the money into a bank account and transferred to another agency. And they'll never be able to find the exact same bills again that they gave to the bank, so are unable to follow the court order to return the money they took to the rightful owner.
Yes the basic premise for why people would support civil forfeiture is “due process let’s too many people ‘get away with it’ so we need an extrajudicial process”.
It’s the same basic rationale that all freedoms are ultimately curtailed with - all those rules are inconvenient, let’s by pass them a little bit. Then the reason for the rules start to become readily apparent again. Then the rationale takes on the old “can’t make an omelet” refrain, as if the world revolves around punishing criminals and everyone need to accept the collateral damage.
Personally I’m of the old “rather let a thousand guilty go free than punish a single innocent,” but I also don’t set policy.
Interledger Protocol works with any type of (digital) asset ledger; W3C ILP.
The FTC CAT Consolidated Audit Trail system does not uniquely identify individual bills / [ledger] dollars, either FWIU. But are photons uniquely identifiable either
> Due process developed from clause 39 of Magna Carta in England. Reference to due process first appeared in a statutory rendition of clause 39 in 1354 thus: "No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law." [3] When English and American law gradually diverged, due process was not upheld in England but became incorporated in the US Constitution.
Whether it's possible to disarm and incapacitate without larceny.
Articles 11, 17, 6 and 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specify rights to Due Process of law, Property, and Equal Protection of such rights.
> Article 11: Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
> No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
> Article 17: Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
> No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
> Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
There really isn’t any reasonable defense for these examples or the lack of the speedy hearing.
But I’m not against civil forfeiture if practiced better with better safe guards.
Every year the government takes 30%+ of the money I make via taxation. Unelected administrative functionaries lay down laws that can massively change the value of your property.
I’m not going to cry if the government keeps money whose origin you can’t explain. By law, I have to file tax returns that explains my income. There isn’t a huge difference. These kind of seizures makes organized crime much easier to fight.
But again, a lot of these examples look more like straight theft.
Also, law enforcement shouldn’t get to keep the money it seizes. It’s a perverse incentive. Should just go into the general treasury.
There's absolutely no reason to have civil forfeiture when criminal forfeiture exists. If you think money is the product of a crime, seize it, and charge the person with a crime. If you can't prove the crime then the money gets returned.
If taxes were paid on the money then your example makes zero sense.
But yes we must explain everything to the Government. Rights aren't inherent, but are granted to us by the government if we can explain good enough why we need them. Cops should pull me over and ask how I financed my car and if I don't have a good enough answer/documentation on me they should get to take it /s
It might be okay if civil forfeiture were allowed as is but with the owner having an absolute entitlement to a jury case and treble damages against the police if they lose.
In theory it already is a constitutional right to Levy a civil trial against the police for forfeiture. And any civil trial with dollar value more than 20 is entitled to a jury.
That's true. Nobody supports civil forfeiture until the moment a politician realizes there's hay to be made from claiming that they support police efforts to prevent crime.
Voting gets us nowhere with limiting state power. Like falling for a good cop bad cop routine. It provides consent for both sides of the aisle abuse like this.
the classic "aha, if you're really so oppressed, why don't you take productive action about it (in a society where all avenues of productive action have been foreclosed)" to you strategy
kinda like asking a black man what he thinks should be done about jim crow, if he's so smart. the tactic really does go way back
like yea oppressive power structures systematically foreclose, neuter, and dismantle any means that might be used to counteract or escape their effects, that's why they're oppressive power structures.
it’s galaxy-brain stuff to be asking the people inside to just wave a wand and dismantle it all, like I guess you think they could have just done it all along and simply chose not to? and “self-oppression” is of course a very real narrative that is pushed in these situation, it’s really your fault you can’t escape!
Okay, let me rephrase. What should I be doing other than voting and working for causes I believe in. I’m not in an oppressed group unless you consider the entirety of the American public not part of the oligarchy to be such a group.
Or to put this in a little less dramatic way - what do you do when the leadership (C-suite, board, and middle managers) are running a company into the ground, abusing the employees, and won't listen to reason? You leave. You're not going to be able to do anything - the real world isn't a RPG where there is always a "good outcome" if you do the right thing. Sometimes all the options lead to bad outcomes.
Well, this is a situation where most people cannot really "just leave". And in fact the US expends considerable resources to make life difficult for those who attempt it.
This will not change unless until and until elites' own interests align in reforming it. And elites are pretty good at making it illegal to make their lives uncomfortable or apply pressure on them in meaningful ways.
It is possible for societies to become so stratified that this change is not possible without violence. Classically, dictatorships, but I don't think that is the only way to get there.
America is in that place, because our society is so geographically isolated and so resource-blessed that a traditional collapse is not possible. There is no neighboring country that is going to topple us if we allow our system to become stagnant and calcified. Any realistic attack would have to cross an ocean or a rainforest/jungle to do it.
So we will continue bumbling along, boiling the frog and allowing our society to become worse and worse, because the US cannot collapse and cannot reform. And there really is nothing that you, as a single voter, could possibly do about it.
Even a million man march cannot do anything about it - easier to just assassinate the commoner's leader and move on with some token reforms to shut people up. The system doesn't mind using (extralegal!) violence on you, that stigma is for commoners not elites.
Bro really thinks every white person got their own personal "end jim crow button" too and everyone just uniformly refused to press it I guess lol
again, commoners of any form (let alone one single commoner working alone) are not going to be able to just do one simple trick and upend an oppressive power structure, it's a better place than being in the fuckbarrel but the point is oppressive power structures don't leave anyone a recourse, if your title doesn't begin with "senator" it doesn't really matter what you think or do.
there is of course one option, the last of the boxes. but if you aren't willing to fight for what you believe in then, yeah, you're effectively consenting to the society you are offered by political elites. consent can still be withdrawn, but in an oppressive power structure that's usually going to be a violent process.
like I am just telling you outright: soapbox, ballot box, and jury box are all effectively powerless to overturn the problems in american society, by design (that's why it's oppressive). and you can either live with that, and the society thus pressed upon you warts and all, or not. some random march for george floyd or voting blue every election is not going to fix america. keyboard warriorism (including this comment) certainly is not going to do it either.
nobody actually walks away from omelas - and omelas news network thinks you're crazy for even suggesting there could be anything better. We all - you and me and every other law-abiding, taxpaying citizen - accept this society knowing that it exists on the back of the largest slave/gulag population on the planet, and an arbitrary and capricious (and usually politicized) "justice" system that could randomly condemn any of us to that slavery and a permanent mark of underclass. We all accept the idea that our attempts at reforms will not do more than trivial and meaningless amounts of good through our lifetimes. And yet we stay and participate.
You're not helping. Why is that, Leon? Why do you consent?
(I consent to omelas too, I just want you to consciously make your own decision in full knowledge of the consequences and responsibility of your actions. Every day you wake up and go about your life, you do it on the backs of the police state and the carceral state/gulag archipelago it has imposed upon us, and even rattling the bars of your cage a bit by voting or activism will not change this.)
I don't think OP was trying to advocate any particular action, merely pointing out that a real and serious problem exists at the heart of our democracy.
Expecting people who point out a problem to also fix that problem in a single social media comment is a little unrealistic, I think, and generally not something people ask in good faith.
Nobody would tell an Iraqi that they can't complain if they don't vote, especially if the only option on the ballot is Saddam.
Would they say the same if the only two options were Saddam and Maddas?
If the nation's leaders are being elected by a 10-20% voter turnout, it'll be very obvious what's going on. That is the thing that they don't want to happen.
>Voting gets us nowhere with limiting state power.
You have to make a habit of finding out who the incumbent is and not voting for them. Do this every election and it will get better after a decade or so. You have to scramble the shady alliances by inserting new people every election. It's better than what we've been doing.
How do I know this will work? Incumbent politicians were starkly against simply marking who the incumbent was on ballots a decade or two ago the last time it came up.
> The politics of civil forfeiture were somewhat unusual. The federal forfeiture laws were introduced and pushed through Congress by Republicans in the 1980s, with some Democrats supportive and some critical.
And the dems rolled back "equitable sharing" in 2015.
> Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.
I'm constantly hearing horror stories like the ones in this article and I've never heard any reasonable defense of our current system. In fact, I've never even heard an unreasonable defense.