When Law Enforcement uses Civil Forfeiture to seize property they are making a powerful statement. They are saying they take your property BECAUSE THEY CAN. There is no presumption of innocence. There is no trial.
These short-sighted actions achieve an immediate punitive goal, but do tremendous lasting harm to civil society. To all the rest of us, these acts look, smell, and quack like theft. As Law Enforcement sets the example that crime is OK, the foundations of our law are fractured. Brandeis was prophetic:
Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the meansâto declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminalâwould bring terrible retribution. Dissenting opinion of Justice Louis D. Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States
All of us who wish to live in a society of law must actively fight against the stupid, short-sighted use of Civil Forfeiture. No matter the short term benefit, the long term cost is too high.
âPolice always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.â
It wasnt meant to harm Joseph Rivers but if a website is advertising someones gofundme page, they basically are sponsoring it. People work hard for their money and its sad to see people to donate to a cause that possibly isnt so clear. Thats all, was definitely not meant to discredit the website.
Why is the burden of proof on Mr. Rivers that he had not obtained the money illegally, or that he didnât intend to use it illegally? Well, âinnocent until proven guiltyâ just went out the airlock in its underwear.
A Joseph Rivers. Was it this particular Joseph Rivers? Remember, the DEA agent just started snooping around everyone on the train. He didnât have a warrant for anyone. He was just driving trollies.
The crux of the story is that an agent of the government used his authority to rob an innocent-until-proven-guilty man who was legally possessing his own cash. The same can happen to you with unsettling ease; see the plethora of other stories.
If the guy intended to buy kittens to freeze-dry, powder, and sell as meow-meow, it is nobodyâs business unless there is enough of a proof. Real proof. Mere possession of money is not a proof of any intention, good or bad. And there are more good intentions done with money of this magnitude, generally.
You also did not provide a shred of evidence about said guy, other than some false positives from database lookups. Presumption of innocence therefore dictates to assume good intentions.
Then there are many many other stories of civil forfeitures that kind of shake the credibility of the state agents.
These days, a kid can play cops and robbers alone.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Thereâs nothing wrong with making an account participate in the discussion here, but it seems to me that an inordinate number of new accounts are created to take the side of assholes, and these new accounts post in one topic and then disappear.
This guy shows up to inform us that anyone pulling $10K or more out of the bank would have proof. Thatâs true, but it assumes he actually did pull $16K out of the bank.
Where he got the money has no bearing on whether or not he intended to buy drugs with the money.
A SIMPLE search for arrest records shows that a Joseph Rivers was previously arrested. Thereâs no evidence that the record @Joshua_Andrew found applies to the Joshua Rivers in the article.
Welcome to BoingBoing, @Joshua_Andrew. Iâm looking forward to more interesting posts from you on a wide variety of topics in the bbs.
In case anyone isnât clear, the DEA is the criminal in this story. They stole $16,000 from a man with no evidence, no warrant and no trial. It will probably cost this man as much as he lost to go through the legal hoops required to get his money back. Maybe more. Americaâs War on Drugs (War on Not-White People) is fucked up.
Dollars to donuts that the full amount never made it to evidence.
Hereâs a possible scenario: you shut the f@#k up and stop being a racist, classist asshole.
An unlikely, improbable scenario, granted. But that is the reason I posted the information. It is to inform people of possible scenarios. Take it or leave it.
Itâs definitely likely that there were a lot more passengers than DEA agents. But thereâs a lot of contributing factors to the bystander effect.
People on the train have somewhere to be, and think that if they just donât speak up, and comply, theyâll be on their way faster.
People are intimidated by badges.
If someone stepped in, then the mugging (with implied threat of violence) would almost certainly turn into multiple arrests, and everyone there would be witnesses and have to get involved with court, and nobody likes that.
If the passengers rose up against the agent and kicked him off the train, that train isnât going anywhere, and the agent can then summon an army of military grade SWAT officers to go in and tear gas and pepper spray and shoot everyone and call it an act of heroism. Then the survivors would be charged with at best obstruction of justice/interfering with an officer, but likely much worse.
Just because a trainload of people might speak up, and defend someone, that doesnât mean thereâs much short-term incentive to do so, especially when youâve already spent a lot of money to go somewhere and interfering with some blowhard âarmy jr.â cop means that you may have to postpone, or end up getting arrested too, or end up getting shot by that guy, or any of the dozens to hundreds of backup officers he can call in.
Itâs not like getting off an on a passenger train is super quick. And if youâre in a station, then youâre already penned in on that second count.
[quote=âJoshua_Andrew, post:10, topic:57425, full:trueâ] If the person had
withdrawn the money from the bank, then a simple bank slip would prove
that.
[/quote]
Yeah - no - thatâs bullshit. Itâs none of their fucking business where I got my money or how I keep it. It SHOULD be a burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in order for the gov. to seize ill gotten gains. But thanks to the War on Drugs, people all over the US are having shit confiscated and there is basically jack shit they can do about it. Getting the money or property back takes an act of god and a shit ton of lawyer fees.
Again, the confiscation system in the US is fucking bullshit.
Well, they couldâve done something⌠It just would have guaranteed that nobody gets anywhere ontime, and massively increases the likelihood of people getting shot and killed, arrested, or just headstompped to death. Since the DEA likes to think of itself as important, rather than the unnecessary McCarthyist pile of fetid shit is is.
