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Leaked Handbook Reveals How ICE Uses Civil Forfeiture To Seize Millions

radcen

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How can there not be a perverse incentive when the department doing the seizing depends on the proceeds for their budget?

Civil forfeiture is a perverse practice in virtually any capacity. I honestly don't know how it's legal.
 
Civil forfeiture needs to be outlawed ASAP!
It's a vile practice but I don't expect any big changes.
AG Sessions approves of it's use. Why I don't know.
 
How can there not be a perverse incentive when the department doing the seizing depends on the proceeds for their budget?

ICE primarily focuses on dealing with illegal immigrants. I don't really care if their property gets seized.
 
Civil forfeiture needs to be outlawed ASAP!
It's a vile practice but I don't expect any big changes.
AG Sessions approves of it's use. Why I don't know.

Sessions likes it because he is an unprincipled man, an agent of the state. I suspect his deep south religious bias has something to do with it.
 
ICE primarily focuses on dealing with illegal immigrants. I don't really care if their property gets seized.

Yeah, you see, that's the problem with civil forfeiture. Innocents get caught up in the dragnets all the time, and they often don't get their property back. ;)
 
Sessions likes it because he is an unprincipled man, an agent of the state. I suspect his deep south religious bias has something to do with it.

This has been around way before Sessions was AG.... just a name calling post because there is nothing else to complain about.
You would suspect wrongly!
 
How can there not be a perverse incentive when the department doing the seizing depends on the proceeds for their budget?

I don’t know enough about civil forfeiture, or criminal for that matter. It’s legal apparently. Not quite sure why we think this handbook was leaked. Not like it’s classified or anything,

Personally, I think we should do more of it. When a drug czar buys a $12 million home and can’t show where the funds came from? Seize it. When they’re driving beautiful expensive cars? Seize them. Not sure how ICE uses it... but many other local, state and Federal agencies do.

What’s the deal? People shouldn’t be able to break the law with impunity and then spend their ill gotten gains to support a lavish out in the open lifestyle. One of the most famous gangster busts in history was Al Capone. A deadly Mafioso crime boss who dropped the hammer on countless souls. The way they finally put him away was for income tax evasion. More of that!
 
This has been around way before Sessions was AG.... just a name calling post because there is nothing else to complain about.
You would suspect wrongly!

Yes, Radcen and I have been posting about asset forfeiture here for at least a year, and the practice has been condemned by many for years and decades at least. The authorities like that form of highway robbery, I do not.

Well, let's bring Sessions in here and ask him how his religion has informed his worldview. My suspicions may turn out to be correct.
 
ICE primarily focuses on dealing with illegal immigrants. I don't really care if their property gets seized.

It's just adorable that you think only property of illegal immigrants is seized.
 
I don’t know enough about civil forfeiture, or criminal for that matter. It’s legal apparently. Not quite sure why we think this handbook was leaked. Not like it’s classified or anything,

Personally, I think we should do more of it. When a drug czar buys a $12 million home and can’t show where the funds came from? Seize it. When they’re driving beautiful expensive cars? Seize them. Not sure how ICE uses it... but many other local, state and Federal agencies do.

What’s the deal? People shouldn’t be able to break the law with impunity and then spend their ill gotten gains to support a lavish out in the open lifestyle. One of the most famous gangster busts in history was Al Capone. A deadly Mafioso crime boss who dropped the hammer on countless souls. The way they finally put him away was for income tax evasion. More of that!

Short list of Why You Should Hate Civil Forfeiture:

1) Due process doesn't apply. It's not on the state to prove in court you are guilty and therefore they can take the stuff. It's on you to prove they wrongfully took the stuff.
1a) The police don't even have to have any evidence of a crime. Merely carrying a large amount of cash "could be drug related" and that's good enough.
2) Many police departments love to have ****ty records of this stuff. They seized "cash" from your wallet. What's that, you say it was $300? All we have here is twenty bucks.
3) The grounds for siezure are incredibly broad. Your kid sold a bag of weed when he borrowed your car? Guess what? It's the state's car now. Also maybe your house because he probably kept the weed in your house at some point not that we need to actually prove that. Your house is a drug dealer's house and therefore it's our house now.
4) The above mostly applies if you're black or latino because blatant racial profiling is rampant in this practice.

Your problem, as with many right-wingers on criminal justice issues, is that you think law enforcement is this benevolent group of "good guys." Weird, when you're supposed to distrust the government so much ;)
 
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Short list of Why You Should Hate Civil Forfeiture:

1) Due process doesn't apply. It's not on the state to prove in court you are guilty and therefore they can take the stuff. It's on you to prove they wrongfully took the stuff.
1a) The police don't even have to have any evidence of a crime. Merely carrying a large amount of cash "could be drug related" and that's good enough.
2) Many police departments love to have ****ty records of this stuff. They seized "cash" from your wallet. What's that, you say it was $300? All we have here is twenty bucks.
3) The grounds for siezure are incredibly broad. Your kid sold a bag of weed when he borrowed your car? Guess what? It's the state's car now. Also maybe your house because he probably kept the weed in your house at some point not that we need to actually prove that. Your house is a drug dealer's house and therefore it's our house now.
4) The above mostly applies if you're black or latino because blatant racial profiling is rampant in this practice.

Your problem, as with many right-wingers on criminal justice issues, is that you think law enforcement is this benevolent group of "good guys." Weird, when you're supposed to distrust the government so much ;)

If much of what you say is true, I agree, it’s a horrible practice. Unfortunately, I don’t buy it.
 
If much of what you say is true, I agree, it’s a horrible practice. Unfortunately, I don’t buy it.

Yes, I assumed your partisan bias wouldn't let you believe anything bad about law enforcement.

And you're never going to research the topic, are you? Here, try John Oliver. It's a more easily-digested tip of the iceberg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks
 
Don't like John Oliver, Mags?

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/michigan/miedce/2:2010cv10675/246489/115/

In 2012, the city of Detroit seized over 40 cars at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit at a popular event called "Funk Night."

Because the venue did not have a liquor license.

The city argued that merely driving to a location that illegal alcohol sales took place was grounds for seizure of the vehicles.

The city admitted this was standard operating procedure.

Each person there had to pay $900 to get their car out of impound.
 
It's just adorable that you think only property of illegal immigrants is seized.

I've been vehemently against asset forfeiture in every other instance. Cool your jets. I'm not shedding any tears for illegal immigrants.
 
ICE primarily focuses on dealing with illegal immigrants. I don't really care if their property gets seized.

Civil forfeiture isn't just used on illegal aliens, that's the problem with it.
 
I don’t know enough about civil forfeiture, or criminal for that matter. It’s legal apparently. Not quite sure why we think this handbook was leaked. Not like it’s classified or anything,

Personally, I think we should do more of it. When a drug czar buys a $12 million home and can’t show where the funds came from? Seize it. When they’re driving beautiful expensive cars? Seize them. Not sure how ICE uses it... but many other local, state and Federal agencies do.

What’s the deal? People shouldn’t be able to break the law with impunity and then spend their ill gotten gains to support a lavish out in the open lifestyle. One of the most famous gangster busts in history was Al Capone. A deadly Mafioso crime boss who dropped the hammer on countless souls. The way they finally put him away was for income tax evasion. More of that!

How many “drug czars” do you think are running around out there?
 
I don’t know enough about civil forfeiture, or criminal for that matter. It’s legal apparently. Not quite sure why we think this handbook was leaked. Not like it’s classified or anything,

Personally, I think we should do more of it. When a drug czar buys a $12 million home and can’t show where the funds came from? Seize it. When they’re driving beautiful expensive cars? Seize them. Not sure how ICE uses it... but many other local, state and Federal agencies do.

What’s the deal? People shouldn’t be able to break the law with impunity and then spend their ill gotten gains to support a lavish out in the open lifestyle. One of the most famous gangster busts in history was Al Capone. A deadly Mafioso crime boss who dropped the hammer on countless souls. The way they finally put him away was for income tax evasion. More of that!

They appealed to that kind of sentiment to expand its use. But it's yet another thing that sounds good on paper but is abused in practice.

It's easy to justify it by making up a hypothetical where a mean criminal uses his criminal money to do bad things and hire the most expensive lawyers to defend himself from his crimes. That's what they counted on when expanding its use.



They counted on people not pausing to ask "wait...but....isn't there a huge potential for injustice when the prosecution can seize someone's assets BEFORE proving them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, thereby foisting that person onto a deliberately underfunded public defense system and, in turn, increasing their chances of conviction of an offense the government may not have been otherwise able to prove?"

They counted on people trusting government agents - and lets make no bones about it, regardless of the general publics' desire to put anyone who supposedly "fights crimes" on a pedestal, police and prosecutors are government agents - to simply do good because they say they're doing good, because they say they're keeping you safe.

They counted on people ignoring all the potential dangers and bad incentives involved in civil forfeiture based on a fiction that it just nabs the bad guys. It doesn't. And as one can see if one looks into it, Civil Forfeiture isn't used simply to stop "drug czars" from enjoying their money. It's used to beef up various departments' budgets, which in turn means that you cannot simply assume that it's just "bad guys" targeted.

And of course, if one cares about the constitution, one might still be concerned about the fact that it's used to target people who haven't been proven to be bad guys yet.







______________________________________
Also, this doesn't have the slightest ****ing thing to do with using income tax evasion to put one legitimately bad person away almost 100 years ago.

Also also, the fact that you can point to one slimey move that had a good result doesn't mean the results are always good or the move justified.

Also also also "apparently legal" =/= justification.
 
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