This is absurd and beyond the pale. Our civil liberties have been greatly eroded in the past 50 years, but the process is rapidly accelerating under the Trump administration.
"Sessions greenlights police to seize cash, property from people suspected of crimes but not charged"
OR
That is BS. OK if proven guilty so they don't profit from crime, but suspicion only is absurd.
I agree, and, under this "new" policy, they don't even need to have evidence of any wrong doing. Make a traffic stop, find $500k in an a suitcase, confiscate it and buy a bunch of M4s for the department range.
No one should ever consent to a warrantless search of their residence, vehicles, etc.
The DoJ is more and more resembling a bunch of jackbooted thugs.
Get with the program - if they waited for conviction there wouldn't be any property left ! .. they currently seize property upon charges
- this new one allows seizure upon suspicion ... a very different kettle of fishiness .. John T.
BUT!! .... such a mechanism is a sad reality. It's called "civil forfeiture" and it occurs far to often on both the federal and local level.
CA jes missed losing out on this scam when an investigative reporter outed the story jes before the law was to come around fer a non re-vote. It was originally a grandfathered bill and not voting for it, again, would allow it to to die. Fortunately, because the story got state-wide coverage, CA'ians let the law expire.
This is a true story and happened when I still worked in Silicon Valley (90's). (I hope thIs law has not been re-instated) 8|
nb
Where the hell have you all been ? This has been going on for YEARS , it's nothing new . Check it out , I'm not going to do the research for you .
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Snag
Several years ago a gun shop owner here was caught with a small amount of cocaine, thrown in prison by the feds, and his shop and contents were confiscated and of course he lost his license. In jail for over a year he was tried and convicted and released for time served. He did manage to transfer the gun shop business to a sister who now runs it. In the meantime the shop had reopened but could not sell guns but other sporting goods like reloading supplies and ammo only.
What had happened, he was out with his girlfriend at night who got out of the car at night in back of a store to take a leak and was apprehended by a cop that saw her and searched them both and found the coke. Feds took over and threw him in jail as committing a felony because he was an FFL owner. Guilty until proven guilty.
This is nothing new, it's been going on for a long time. I guess Holder pulled it back a bit, but it isn't new. I agree it's wrong and IDK why the courts haven't stopped it.
+1
But it sounds like he was guilty. I agree that if they seized his gun business when it wasn't involved in any part of the crime, that would be wrong. But it's typical of this civil forfeiture BS that has been going on for a long time. But then you voted for law and order Trump who promised to end the "carnage" and Trump and Sessions are apparently cool with it.
This has been in place for years under civil forfeiture laws. The history goes back pre-Revolution Britain and America and was used extensively in the early days of the US to seize ships and cargo for tax purposes. It went out of favor until the 80s when War on Drugs and the RICO Acts made it in the money machine it is today. There are two kinds, one is civil where a preponderance of evidence is all that is needed and criminal where the usual restrictions apply. Since all that is needed to return the property is a not guilty verdict, it isn't used as much. Either way it is required that one go to court to get their property back and that is VERY expensive.
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