Eric Holder moves to limit police asset theft operations

[Ideologue]

See, this is rich.  You'll defend all kinds of ancillary, meaningless liberty, like to privacy, or to contract, or to get a bad education, but not the absolutely fundamental right not to have your shit arbitrarily jacked by a half-rogue arm of the government.  Conservatism!

[Martinus]

See, this is rich.  You'll defend all kinds of ancillary, meaningless liberty, like to privacy, or to contract, or to get a bad education, but not the absolutely fundamental right not to have your shit arbitrarily jacked by a half-rogue arm of the government.  Conservatism!

This is defamation, pure and simple. I don't recall BB ever defending any liberty.

[dps]

Maybe forfeiture works differently in Canada.  Care to elaborate on that, BB?

[MadImmortalMan]

Maybe forfeiture works differently in Canada.  Care to elaborate on that, BB?

He likes his margarita machine.

[grumbler]

See, this is rich.  You'll defend all kinds of ancillary, meaningless liberty, like to privacy, or to contract, or to get a bad education, but not the absolutely fundamental right not to have your shit arbitrarily jacked by a half-rogue arm of the government.  Conservatism!

This is defamation, pure and simple. I don't recall BB ever defending any liberty.

[Norgy]

You are all criminals!  On the other hand, I don't know.  I haven't made up my mind as I don't know enough about the issue.

John Oliver did a thing about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks

That's basically all I know about civil forfeiture, and if Holder's moving against such machinations, I can only think it's a good thing.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Maybe forfeiture works differently in Canada.  Care to elaborate on that, BB?

He likes his margarita machine.

It was a legit purchase, and a necessity in any police department.

[Tonitrus]

In some hometown news...

Let police seize sex-buyers' cars, cash?
While intended to discourage sex trafficking, a bill proposed in the Legislature would invite abusive "policing for profit," opponents say, and direct only 10 percent of the seized assets toward efforts to prevent prostitution.

By Joseph O'Sullivan
Seattle Times Olympia bureau


OLYMPIA — Tim Heffer believes so strongly that sex trafficking is tantamount to slavery that he compares the cars and trucks owned by people buying sex to slave ships.

Heffer, executive director of the Olympia-based Justice and Mercy Foundation, told state lawmakers as much when he testified in support of HB 1558, which would allow law enforcement to seize the cars and money of people arrested for soliciting a prostitute, even if they are never convicted.

"Rather than one large ship, they're smaller vessels, a myriad of vessels," Heffer told lawmakers Friday in a House Public Safety Committee hearing. "And we need to take these ships away from traffickers and buyers."

Rep. Dick Muri, the prime sponsor of the bipartisan bill, told lawmakers the proposal aligns with efforts in Seattle and elsewhere to "flip the narrative" on sex workers. Prosecutors and law enforcement from around the Seattle region announced in October a program to reduce demand locally for prostitution by 20 percent over the next two years.

"Our laws in the past have treated the exploited sex worker as an immoral participant," Muri, R-Steilacoom, told fellow lawmakers. "This bill takes the important step in sending the message that it is the buyer of sex that is keeping the cancer alive."

Civil forfeiture, however, has recently come under fire. A few weeks ago, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder declared a new policy to limit the federal government's role in civil forfeitures.

Holder's announcement came just months after a Washington Post report found that since 2001, law-enforcement agencies around the nation have seized money from 62,000 citizens without ever indicting them. The $2.5 billion taken in those instances was shared among local, state and federal governments, according to the report.

The Post investigation found that law enforcement spent hundreds of millions of dollars of that money to buy armored cars, guns, surveillance gear and luxury vehicles, and to pay for travel and, in one case, to hire a clown named Sparkles for a community event. In 40 percent of cases in which someone challenged a forfeiture, the government wound up returning the money, according to the report.

The potential for local law enforcement to make similar spending decisions was a point not lost on the opponents of Muri's bill.

Chelsea Moore, who testified on behalf of the Sex Workers Outreach Project of Seattle, noted that the bill directs only 10 percent of the proceeds from the seized assets — such as vehicles and money — to efforts to prevent prostitution. The rest would pay for investigations, prosecution, court costs and advertising, among other things.

"Civil forfeiture encourages policing for profit," Moore told lawmakers.

Moore added that the recent incidents involving the Seattle Police Department — which have included a white officer's arrest of a 69-year-old black man using a golf club as a cane, and the pepper-spraying by police of a teacher attending a Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally — should make people skeptical.

"This is at a time when the community is incredibly wary of the Seattle P.D.'s abuses," said Moore.

Doug Honig, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, says his organization opposes the bill.

"The government shouldn't be taking people's property before they're convicted of wrongdoing," Honig said in an interview.

Honig pointed to the decades-long drug war, where civil forfeiture has been used, as evidence that it doesn't reduce crime.

"We've seen a lot of abuses in the way it's used in the war on drugs," he said. "It hasn't been effective ... and we don't see why it would be any more effective in this situation."

The state Attorney General's Office did not respond Friday to questions regarding the bill or the practice of civil forfeiture.

[Ed Anger]

*snort*

Mr. Heffer needs to douche more

[Ideologue]

Gee, I wonder what would be a really simple way to get rid of the negative aspects of the sex trade?  Does it have the words "nationalized" and "legal" in it?  You bet it does.  Also, "amendment to the Affordable Care Act."

[Tonitrus]

Like narcotics (unlike marijuana, we'd probably never legalize stuff like meth), even if prostitution were legalized, there'd still be illegal, black market aspects (e.g. exploited, and/or underage girls). 

[Ideologue]

Not in Ideologue's America.

[Siege]

What are the practical applications of this regulation?
Will druggies keep their property until found guilty?
Can they use their drug money to pay for bail?
Etc?