” Civil asset forfeiture is a controversial policy in which the government seizes private property that it believes was either gained through the commission of a crime or used to commit one. However, the items being seized sometimes belong to someone who was never accused of a crime at all or people who later turn out to be completely innocent. Since a civil process is used to seize the items in question, individuals facing the loss of property do so without the benefit of the level of due process that would ordinarily be afforded a criminal defendant.
The Washington Post notes that, under President Obama, civil asset forfeitures have doubled. Now, as Eric Holder steps aside as US Attorney General, his potential replacement, nominee and US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch, recently announced that her office seized over $904 million in asset forfeitures in 2013 alone.
According to a quote from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, “As a prosecutor Ms. Lynch has also been aggressive in pursuing civil asset forfeiture, which has become a form of policing for profit. She recently announced that her office had collected more than $904 million in criminal and civil actions in fiscal 2013, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.” The editorial calls for senators to ask questions in an effort to clarify Lynch’s views on the controversial policy. “
” Last week, The Post published a series of in-depth articles about the abuses spawned by the law enforcement practice known as civil asset forfeiture. As two people who were heavily involved in the creation of the asset forfeiture initiative at the Justice Department in the 1980s, we find it particularly painful to watch as the heavy hand of government goes amok. The program began with good intentions but now, having failed in both purpose and execution, it should be abolished.
Asset forfeiture was conceived as a way to cut into the profit motive that fueled rampant drug trafficking by cartels and other criminal enterprises, in order to fight the social evils of drug dealing and abuse. Over time, however, the tactic has turned into an evil itself, with the corruption it engendered among government and law enforcement coming to clearly outweigh any benefits.
Then, in 1986, the concept was expanded to include not only cash earned illegally but also purchases or investments made with that money, creating a whole scheme of new crimes that could be prosecuted as “money laundering.” The property eligible for seizure was further expanded to include “instrumentalities” in the trafficking of drugs, such as cars or even jewelry. Eventually, more than 200 crimes beyond drugs came to be included in the forfeiture scheme.
The Asset Forfeiture Reform Act was enacted in 2000 to rein in abuses, but virtually nothing has changed. This is because civil forfeiture is fundamentally at odds with our judicial system and notions of fairness. It is unreformable.
Civil asset forfeiture and money-laundering laws are gross perversions of the status of government amid a free citizenry. The individual is the font of sovereignty in our constitutional republic, and it is unacceptable that a citizen should have to “prove” anything to the government. If the government has probable cause of a violation of law, then let a warrant be issued. And if the government has proof beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt, let that guilt be proclaimed by 12 peers.”
” The smallest state in the Union can rake in big money from asset forfeiture.
Since 2003, law enforcement in Rhode Island has hauled in $15.7 million using the state’s asset forfeiture laws. But most of the cases were not targeting drug kingpins. Between 2003 and 2013, the average value of forfeited property was $4,142. Almost 40 percent of these cases affected property valued at less than $1,000. Only 12 out of almost 3,800 incidents involved property worth more than $100,000.
Last year, 22 police departments seized more than $1.3 million from 306 incidents. But less than half of these actually led to a conviction. In fact, under civil forfeiture, the government can take property from people never convicted of a crime, or even charged with one. Only a handful of states (including, most recently, Minnesota) actually require a criminal conviction to forfeit property.
According to the Institute for Justice’s survey of America’s civil forfeiture laws, “Policing for Profit,” Rhode Island’s laws are in dire need of reform. To forfeit property, the government only needs to show probable cause, an incredibly low standard of proof. Only nine other states require such little evidence. Not only that, to retrieve property, an owner has to bear the burden of proof—they are considered guilty until proven innocent. As one criminal defense attorney put it, “The playing field is not level. The government has all the leverage.”
Civil forfeiture in Rhode Island also provides a tantalizing incentive to police for profit. Law enforcement can keep up to 90 percent of the proceeds from forfeited property. As the police chief for Pawtucket, the fourth largest city in the Ocean State, put it, “These assets have been a godsend.”
” Reports in national media claim the DEA has raided synthetic drug suppliers in 25 states, but Keene’s Phat Stuff hasn’t sold synthetic drugs since mid-2013. According to the sealed warrant, which you can see here, the agents were taking all smoking devices, as well as sales records from 2011-today.
The approximately dozen agents spent five hours boxing up thousands of dollars in various pipes, water pipes, hookahs, and accessories. After 4pm, they loaded it all in the back of a U-Haul and took off with the loot at approximately 4:20pm.
During the raid, one agent stood out back smoking a cigarette. I asked him if he found it ironic that he’s smoking a cigarette while he and his fellow thieves are stealing tobacco-smoking devices from the store.
At least two agents had balaclavas on outside the store, but not inside. The cowardly man exiting the heist vehicle in the picture on the right, a U-Haul truck, will be seen in the videos without his mask on. Stay tuned for that! “
” Just south of Canyonlands National Park, the redrock wonders merge into a scrubland oasis with a peak that juts 11,000 feet into the sky. Mesas and buttes provide panoramic views and canyons, and ancient cliff dwellings offer a unique retreat.
It’s a region that holds sacred and historic value to the Navajo Nation, which has pitched Congress on creating the Diné Bikéyah National Conservation Area to protect the 1.9 million acres in San Juan County from development. But as with most things involving Congress, inaction has been the order of the day.
Even as supporters of a conservation area remain hopeful, they’re ready for Plan B: Asking President Barack Obama for a national monument.”
” Willie Grayeyes, and other members of the nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah, traveled recently to Washington to lobby Interior Department officials to designate the region north of the San Juan River and just outside the Navajo Reservation as a monument.
” The Utah delegates are only fumbling the ball. They aren’t really tackling it,” Grayeyes said. A monument is a logical fallback to congressional designation, under which many of the current uses could continue.
Obama already has named a handful of monuments across the country — using his unilateral power under the 1906 Antiquities Act — and has promised more.
” I’ll use my authority to protect more of our pristine federal lands for future generations,” he said in his State of the Union address earlier this year.”
Below is a list of other potential “national monuments” that , with the stroke of our dear leader’s pen could become off-limits to the people forever …
” Possible candidates for national monument status:
For the record we would like it to be known that we are strongly in favor of preservation and the protection of our natural treasures . However , we are just as strongly against the Federal government taking whatever it feels the desire for or whatever special interest groups can succeed in persuading the Feds to snatch .
We feel that , as with all things state-related , the closer to the people that the decisions lie , the better will be the results for all . The behemoth in the east , DC , is in no position to tell the states of the west what is in their own best interests and as such conservation and preservation efforts are best left up to the people who will have to live with these efforts .
We all know that the Federal stewardship of far-flung lands is poorly managed and such is always the case with absentee-landlords . It is time for the states to start managing their own affairs and the power of confiscation by the bureaucrats in Washington to be reined in .
” Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy – of Bundy Ranch – is locked in a standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over illegal cattle grazing, endangered tortoises and property rights. It gets even better…
The fight involves a 600,000-acre area under BLM control called Gold Butte, near the Utah border. The is the habitat of the protected desert tortoise, and the land has been off-limits for cattle since 1998.
Five years before that, when grazing was legal, Bundy stopped paying federal fees for the right. Bundy stopped paying grazing fees in 1993. He said he didn’t have to because his Mormon ancestors worked the land since the 1880s, giving him rights to the land.
” We own this land,” he said, not the feds. He said he is willing to pay grazing fees but only to Clark County, not BLM.
” Years ago, I used to have 52 neighboring ranchers,” he said. “I’m the last man standing. How come? Because BLM regulated these people off the land and out of business.”
Nevada, where various federal agencies manage or control more than 80 percent of the land, is among several Western states where ranchers have challenged federal land ownership.
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” Philadelphia reporter Ryan Briggs and artist James DuPree explain how politicians use eminent domain laws to reward friends and the expense of common citizens. http://www.LibertyPen.com “
” What can $4,367 buy? For one NASA employee, it boughta business-class flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Vienna, Austria. Coach-class fare for the same flight was $39.
The federal government spent millions of dollars on thousands of upgraded flights for employees in 2012 and 2013, paying many times more for business and first-class seats than the same flights would have cost in coach or the government-contracted rate.
Premium travel reports from 14 federal agencies documenting the flights show these agencies alone spent an estimated $8.7 million on 1,903 upgraded flights in those two years. That was about $6.4 million more than the same coach and government-rate flights would have cost.
The agencies spent $5.7 million in 2012, almost double the $3 million they paid for premium travel in 2013.
One flight from D.C. to Hanoi, Vietnam, for an informational meeting cost $15,529 instead of $1,649, according to the agency’s 2012 report.”
Read it all but swallow your coffee first and put down the mug .
” The Fire Island resort of Saltaire wants to seize private property — using taxpayer money.
World War II vet Frank Whitney is locked in a legal battle with officials who want to take his Saltaire Market grocery by eminent domain in order to build their own updated version.”
” And the upscale village may increase property taxes to do it, raising as much as $2.5 million to buy and rebuild the market, which was damaged during Hurricane Sandy.
Whitney’s family says it wants to fix the store — the village’s only commercial property — and has the money to do so, but it accuses Saltaire officials of preventing them.”
” Washington D.C. city council members are considering a bill that would give D.C. residents the strongest protections against the abuse of civil asset forfeiture in the country. Currently, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) seizes millions of dollars of property from thousands of people each year—and keeps 100 percent of the profits.
Unlike with criminal forfeiture, where the government seizes assets after convicting someone of a crime, with civil forfeiture there is no legal requirement to prove a crime was committed or even to file criminal charges. Instead, once police confiscate property, the burden is on the owner to prove innocence. Property owners who can’t afford a legal battle or whose property is worth less than court costs often simply relinquish their property by default.”
” There’s video at the link, but this quote from Steve Forbes ought to shock you right down to your socks:
Before a final deal was done, Forbes penned a piece explaining why Cyprus could be a disaster for all of us, lamenting the attempt to seize depositors money. But with a final bailout agreed upon that saves insured depositors, is it less of a disaster?
“Not really,” he tells The Daily Ticker. “Because the idea’s out there that now in a crisis politicians won’t hesitate to seize any asset they can lay their hands on. So it just guarantees more fear in the future when a crisis comes, which it will come.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, the European Central Bank isn’t allowed to run the printing presses like Ben Bernanke has been doing at the Fed these last few years. So, the grubby statists will seize whatever assets they can get their panicked little hands on.
On this side of the Atlantic, the grubby statists will keep the printing presses running until the value of your assets (and their debts) is inflated away.”
Once released it becomes impossible to put the genie back in the bottle . Could this be a harbinger of the end of banking as we know it ? With interest rates at fractions of a percent , banks charging fees for every small service and now governments skimming whatever suits them from the people’s savings accounts the old Bank of The Posturepedic is looking better and better .
It certainly puts the spotlight on the Statist’s desire for a cash-less society doesn’t it ? Cash is King , but only for a short time as the Statists are in the process of devaluing paper money right into the gutter .
Ah , Everything old is new again … Gold and Silver my friends , two things government can’t devalue .
” The prospect of a tax on deposits in the banks of Cyprus has even left-leaning economic commentators in a tizzy.“A tactical blunder,” declared Lawrence Summers, who was President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and chairman of the National Economic Council for President Obama. A proposed tax of 6.75% on deposits up to about $130,000 and of 9.9% on deposits of more than $130,000 “would unfairly punish savers and could do lasting damage to confidence in banks in other euro-zone countries in financial crisis,” the New York Times wrote in an editorial denouncing the idea
Is it the taking? Bloomberg View columnist Caroline Baum, a sage, criticized the Cyprus proposal on the grounds that it is a confiscation that “amounts to a seizure of private property.” For those of us Americans who will see the IRS or state governments withdraw funds from our own bank accounts next month for tax owed, or who are seeing payroll withdrawals and estimated tax payments this year that are higher than they have been in a decade, the distinction between “seizure of private property” in Cyprus and here at home will be, alas, an awfully fine one.”
” Embassies around the world received an “urgent bulletin” today from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The MFA is strongly urging Russian citizens and businesses to pull their money from Western financial institutions immediately, at the request of Russian Prime MinisterDmitry Medvedev.
The EU Times also reports that some recent suspicious actions by President Barack Obama could be indicative of plans falling into place.
Interesting to note is that the Obama regime’s “master plan” to steal their citizen’s wealth that is no longer protected was detailed by the global management consulting giant, and the world’s leading advisor on business strategy, The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) who in their 2011 September report titled Collateral Damage: Back to Mesopotamia? The Threat of Debt Restructuring warned of the US governments plan confiscate up to 30% of not just the Americans people bank accounts, but also of their other wealth.”
If you’re wondering why the news in America doesn’t mention the possibility that 20-30% of your savings could be confiscated, keep in mind that the mainstream media will not be benefitted by providing this information. The MSM is a tool of the government, the wealthy, and the special interest groups – all of whom will be exempt from these outright thefts of funds.”
” Cyprus said on Saturday it was looking at seizing a quarter of the value of big deposits at its largest bank as it races to raise the funds for a bailout from the European Union and avert financial collapse.
Finance Minister Michael Sarris said “significant progress” had been made in talks in Nicosia with officials from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
He confirmed discussions were centered on a possible levy of around 25 percent on holdings of over 100,000 euros at Bank of Cyprus, and expressed hope that a package could be ready by the end of the day for approval by parliament.”
” Do property rights count for nothing anymore? This question lies at the heart of my column this week for Hoover’s Defining Ideas.
This month, the Supreme Court will hear a case, coming out of Florida, addressing the longstanding conflict between the constitutional protection of property rights and the state’s desire to preserve its pristine wetlands from destruction by real estate development. The current law on this thorny topic, in Florida as elsewhere, gives the state the final authority to decide whether these wetlands should be developed. The state can let the development proceed as planned when its effects on the wetlands are minimal. But whenever the effects are more substantial, the state can refuse to permit the development of the land unless the landowner agrees to “mitigate” any resultant harm to the environment. I explain further over at Defining Ideas. ”
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