Sooner or later, the cops will start to prey on the middle class. After all, that is were the money happens to be. After all, it merely takes suspicion.
This has to end of course. We also must end the war on drugs. We win the war by cutting of the income of a drug dealer. That is easily done by making the drugs free and demanding rehab for victims. Then all this criminality can end.
Even the Mafia will be massively down sized and long overdue.
..
Asset Forfeiture and the Destruction of American Liberty
by
https://www.fff.org/2019/12/02/asset-forfeiture-and-the-destruction-of-american-liberty/
For centuries, it has been an
established tenet of Western jurisprudence that a person cannot be
punished for a crime unless the government first convicts him of the
crime in a court of law. After the Constitution called the federal
government into existence, our American ancestors demanded that this
principle be enshrined in the Bill of Rights because they were convinced
that federal officials would end up violating it.
The Fifth Amendment states in part: “No
person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous
crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury…. nor be
deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
What is “due process of law”? It is a
phrase whose origin stretches all the way to Magna Carta in the year
1215. It means “notice and hearing.” In a criminal case, that means the
federal government is prohibited from depriving a person of life,
liberty, and property without a formally issued grand-jury indictment
and a formal trial, where the government must prove a person’s guilt
beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, it means that the government
must provide advance notice and a formal hearing or trial before it can
deprive a person of his property.
The centuries-old judicial principle of
due process of law was destroyed when Congress enacted what are called
asset-forfeiture laws, which are part of the decades-long federal effort
to win the war on drugs, which is arguably the most failed, deadly,
destructive, and racially bigoted government program in our nation’s
history.
Realizing that all of their previous
efforts to “win” the war on drugs had failed, the feds came up with what
they considered was a brilliant idea, but one that actually has turned
out to be one great big crooked and corrupt racket that forcibly takes
money out of the pockets of law-abiding citizens and puts it in the
coffers of state cops and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration,
in direct contravention of the due process clause of the Fifth
Amendment.
Here is how the system works. The state
police decide to stop a late-model car traveling down the highway that
is being driven, say, by an African-American. The cop might come up with
some excuse for the stop, such as a defective tail light. After asking
for a driver’s license and car registration, the cop will ask the driver
if it’s okay if he searches the vehicle. The driver, who has nothing to
hide, says yes. The cop finds a case containing $10,000 in cash. The
driver explains that he is on his way to buy a used car for his son.
What happens then? Under traditional
rules of jurisprudence, nothing should happen except to let driver
proceed on his way, with, at most, a citation for a defective tail
light. The driver has not committed any other offenses. Under our system
of justice, he should be free to be on his way.
But that’s not what happens under the
asset-forfeiture law. The law permits the cops to assume that the cash
must be “drug money.” Thus, the law now permits the cop to just take the
driver’s money and transport it back to the police station, where the
loot is divided up between the police department and the DEA.
Notice something important about this
process: There are no criminal charges filed against the driver. There
is no advance notice of the seizure. There is no hearing or trial before
the seizure. People, especially poorer people, are having their money
seized and taken from them by the cops in direct violation of the due
process clause of the Fifth Amendment (as well as the due process clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment).
The cops say to their victim: If you don’t like what we are doing to you, you can sue us. And they can. But as a practical matter,
most don’t. They just resign themselves to the theft of their money.
After all, most of them don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to file a
lawsuit in the hope of getting their money back. Even if they do, they
know that they’ll have to pay the lawyer $300-$500 an hour, with no
assurance that they will prevail in the litigation. It’s just not worth
it to most people, especially most poorer people.
It’s a classic case of highway robbery at
the hands of the state. It’s also a classic example of how Americans
have had their liberty destroyed by their own government, which was
precisely what our ancestors were trying to prevent when they enacted
the Bill of Rights.
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