11 ms·

Inside the Chicago Police Department’s secret budget

233 points by zmanian 10y ago

djsumdog 10y ago
Civil forfeiture, plea bargains and losing the ability to vote are all great detriments to our society. They prevent those who are involved in crimes from being able to get back on their feet and show an increasing number of those in the justice system don't believe in rehabilitation. It's labelling theory in practice and it's the reason the US has the highest incarceration and repeat incarceration rate of the western world. Plea bargains reward disloyalty and often allow some of the worst people a ticket out of their crimes by implicating someone else. It's just a game and prosecutors want their stats to go up, no matter what is good for society. I don't even want to touch the sex offender registry. I'll just say this. Australia's registry is confidential.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > sex offender registry If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. If that's not the case, then anything past their incarceration / parole is blatantly unfair.
  - slouch 10y ago
    ...especially because urinating in public can land you on the list for life.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      some sources for slouch's post http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-make-you-a-sex-offender-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-... https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/11/us-sex-offender-laws-may-do-more-harm-good https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/11/us-sex-offender-laws-may...
      - ihsw 10y ago
        Taking a piss in woods managed by Fish and Wildlife Services will land on on the sex offender registry, if caught. It's absurd.
        RonanTheGrey 10y ago
        Holy crap I didn't realize it was that easy. That's incredibly scary, because presence on that list basically destroys your life, your family's life, and your ability to ever build a life - all because it is public and used for every background check under the sun instead of obviously protected professions like teaching, etc.
        ihsw 10y ago
        It's considered exposing yourself. Yes very scary.
        koolba 10y ago
        > Taking a piss in woods managed by Fish and Wildlife Services will land on on the sex offender registry, if caught. It's absurd. That's seriously absurd. Are the any instances of this being enforced in a public park? I've read of many cases of getting added to the registry from public urination, but they're all in cities[1]. [1]: And usually it's not even in "public". It'd be behind a dumpster or the end of an alley. Yes it's not something we as a society want, but who in their right mind puts that person in the same category as a pedophile.
        eth0up 10y ago
        1. http://www.menshealth.com/guy-wisdom/you-might-be-sex-offender-and-not-know-it http://www.menshealth.com/guy-wisdom/you-might-be-sex-offend... mentions a few frightening accounts of arrests (one behind a garbage bin resulting in deportation), but not in parks 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/punishment-that-doesnt-fit-the-crime.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/punishment-... - mentions the matter
  - adekok 10y ago
    > If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. Well, no. After multiple DUIs, someone can have their license taken away permanently. The justice system has a long history of restricting peoples behavior who are (a) out of jail, but (b) still a danger to themselves or others.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      I am talking specifically about sex offenders.
    - hossbeast 10y ago
      Long history doesn't make it right
      - LyndsySimon 10y ago
        According to the courts, it makes it legal.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. We should recognize that we cannot always judge that correctly. So you either let people out who might still be a danger, or you keep people locked up who might not be a danger. (And, in fact, you do both - all you can do is adjust the proportions.) But people scream really loudly if you keep people locked up who arguably are no longer a danger...
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Of course we aren't going to get it right 100% of the time[1], but either they are rehabilitated & "served their debt to society" or they aren't. The whole sex offender list is a half-ass way to cover the bases. We need to get over ourselves and pick: they need to be incarcerated[2] or they can rejoin society. The list is incarceration on the prisoner's dime and puts them at the fringe forever. Lumping all of these into one pot is another foolish idea with the list. 1) heck, we don't get guilty / not guilty right which is why I'm against the death penalty 2) in some form
  - boundring 10y ago
    Civil commitment actually results in this. Repeat sex offenders are effectively jailed for life.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    > If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. This is not how justice works. If you want to create some other form of government, that's fine, just don't call prison justice.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Belief is the standard for justice in a theocracy.
- MichaelAza 10y ago
  While I agree that the U.S. and other criminal systems do not stress rehabilitation enough (or at all), the problem with all the things you mentioned aren't rehabilitation-centered. Civil forfeiture is plain unconstitutional. The legal idea behind it, that property is charged with a crime, and so it doesn't matter if a person is guilty/inocnent or even charged is simply absurd. Plea bargains cause people to plead guilty even if they aren't because they fear the lengthy process of litigation that is many times stacked against them. In doing so they may, depending on juresdiction, lose access to wealfare and other forms of government help that is many times vital to these people. As to losing the abbility to vote after being convicted, it's blatantly undemocratic and absurd. A person convicted of a crime loses some rights but that is done for the benefit of society and the convict himself, to allow hime to rehabilitate and become a productive member of society. A convict shouldn't lose rights if they don't directly contribute to the societies well being or his own. A person voting doesn't constitute a danger to society.
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    Every time I see one of those silly "Can you believe those wacky laws still on the books!?" articles I think, y'know, it being illegal to spit on the sidewalk in Hoboken (or whatever) is a hell of a lot less bizarre than the fact that inanimate objects can be held liable in a court of law for the actions of animate humans. The picture that goes with it should be something like a Toyota Corolla sitting behind the defense's table, with somber lawyers around it.
    - SilasX 10y ago
      >The picture that goes with it should be something like a Toyota Corolla sitting behind the defense's table, with somber lawyers around it. Heh, my go-to scenario is a stack of $100 bills on the stand, being questioned: "Is it true, Misters Franklin, you facilitated the purchase of over a kilo of uncut Colombian cocaine, yes-or-no?" '...' "Aha! Their silence proves their guilt!" (I know, Fifth Amendment and all, but still...)
  - rayiner 10y ago
    > Civil forfeiture is plain unconstitutional. The legal idea behind it, that property is charged with a crime, and so it doesn't matter if a person is guilty/inocnent or even charged is simply absurd. Civil forfeiture isn't a punishment for guilt or innocence. It's an adjudication that, more likely than not, nobody has an interest in the property that the law will protect. Say the police raid a mob stash house and find $10 million in cash. Even if the court cannot figure out exactly who owns the money, it can determine by a preponderance of the evidence that nobody has a legitimate property interest in it because it's more likely than not the proceeds of a crime. Same thing if the property is contraband (drugs, automatic firearms, child porn etc.) There is no need to figure out who owns the property then charge that person because nobody could have a legitimate legal right to contraband. Due process doesn't require anything more than that. The idea that the "property is charged with a crime" is mistaking the form of the action for the underlying rationale. The cases are styled "U.S. v. 10 cupcakes" because the case is about the legal status of the property, not about any particular person's guilt or innocence. Now, I think civil asset forfeiture creates more risk of abuse than it is worth, and we should get rid of it. But it's not based on some outlandish legal theory like you imply. If there was a sensible way to cabin it to its purpose (seizing assets that are found in circumstances where it is obvious they are the proceeds of crime), it might even be a good idea.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Cooperating with prosecutors, to find evidence against bigger fish, shouldn't result in a more lenient sentence?
  - badlucklottery 10y ago
    When it works correctly, absolutely. The problem is that often times it doesn't lead to bigger fish but more fish of equal or lesser size since the system often values quantity over quality when it comes to felony convictions. You'll see this a lot of times when they catch a mid-level dealer. The dealer will roll on the street-level dealers instead of their supplier since it yields dozens of easy felony drug convictions instead of one really difficult case that could eat a ton of resources and still be lost.
    - SilasX 10y ago
      Which would still not be an argument against the existence of plea bargaining, as the OP was advocating.
      - badlucklottery 10y ago
        Looking back I don't see that the OP mentioned the other big issue with plea bargaining: when innocent people plead guilty because it's often the best choice. My bad for adding my own context onto it. Decent writeup: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop... tl;dr: the current system incentivizes defendants (especially poor ones) to plead guilty regardless of innocence. This is caused by a combination of prosecutors/judges trying to be "tough on crime", overloaded public defenders, excessive bail, mandatory minimums and several other things. I don't think plea bargaining is absolutely unfixable or evil but I also don't think it's a well-functioning part of the system as-is. I believe this is one of those cases where removing an option might be better for the justice system as a whole.
        SilasX 10y ago
crooked-v 10y ago
I find it absurd that civil forfeiture would be "reformed" instead of recognized as blatantly unconstitutional.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  If you are found with a big pile of drugs and 100k in cash.. it is not unreasonable to take the cash away. Otherwise you would be allowed to profit from an illegal activity. Giving that money to the guy doing the arresting or the court doing the trial is the problem....
  - adekok 10y ago
    I'll upvote because you're not entirely wrong. It's entirely reasonable to require that the proceeds of criminal activity be taken from the criminals. Whether it's a stolen car, drugs, or money made from selling a stolen car and drugs. It's all (mostly) similar. The devil is in the details, though. The rampant "theft by cop" is where you have money, and they take it. No charges, much less conviction. It's "guilty until proven innocent", which violates one of the fundamental principles of our justice system. It's outright corruption.
    - wyldfire 10y ago
      > Whether it's a stolen car, drugs, or money made from selling a stolen car and drugs. It's all (mostly) similar. It's not that similar IMO. Stolen cars have owners to whom you can return the property, or litigants who can sue you to replace it. But selling contraband, unlike theft, doesn't have a victim that can be compensated by returning the proceeds. The government steps in and declares themselves the victims of this crime and claims the proceeds.
      - ocschwar 10y ago
        So far so good. The problem is they do it before convicting you of anything.
protomyth 10y ago
"The judge said, 'I can't give you back your car, because it would be right back on the road with drugs.' " (Karkula declined to comment for this story.) This is why civil forfeiture should be banned. I'm still of the opinion that any ticket money should be handed over to a superfund with strict rules on spending never to return to the police or judicial coffers.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Why not all go to Charity? Anything else is a conflict of interests. Send it to an out of state charity. I am fine with taking a car used in a crime away, but you can't give the money to the person who took the car nor the court that decides..
  - nickff 10y ago
    There are already a number of arrangements where corporations can pay penalties to 'approved' charities instead of the regulator as part or all of an agreement; these deals have been problematic, as the government officials appear to be using the arrangements to favor interest groups and potential future employers. I am not saying your idea is a bad one, but I think it is useful to know where the potential problems lie.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Its that part of government's version of giving a contract to a company then being hired by said company after leaving government. Both should be illegal.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    > Why not all go to Charity? Without getting too political, several charities only benefit the people who set them up and picking charities is a major political exercise. > I am fine with taking a car used in a crime away I'm not, per the story that's exactly what they did. > but you can't give the money to the person who took the car nor the court that decides Any money received by the government as a result of someone doing something illegal should not be in the hands of the courts or police. I'd rather it not be decided by anyone and just used in some fund.
bdavisx 10y ago
I wonder if there are any statistics on race vs. forfeiture.
- kelvin0 10y ago
  Good point, but I wonder if there is not a stronger correlation to income (the lower your income, higher the chance to get caught in civil forfeiture).
- hood_syntax 10y ago
  I'm sure there are, but let's be real: you don't have to bring race into the argument to convince anyone this is immoral and unconstitutional.
  - mildbow 10y ago
    Depending on the result, bringing race into it might lead to people feeling insulated from it, and therefore not care as much ("it only happens to black people. But, I'm not black").
    - hood_syntax 10y ago
      I agree with you on that point. An unfortunate artifact of drawing correlations along tribal lines.
- 1_listerine_pls 10y ago
  While not related to race, cops have been caught tracking the rich to seize whatever cash they had in their cars.
- djtriptych 10y ago
  My interest in race here is that these practices were probably inflicted on blacks _first_, probably without white objection. It's decades later and the laws that allowed police to terrorize blacks are gradually being extended to all races. I worry that this pattern will repeat itself.
atombath 10y ago
Shown here are two good reasons for why people don't respect the police anymore. They take your assets due to a subtle association to a crime. They spend it without oversight on tools of mass surveillance. Ultimately, both of these things exacerbate crime. Quite an occupying force nowadays.
- simplemath 10y ago
  There are many police departments that should be brought up on RICO charges.
- prawn 10y ago
  They're clearly in the wrong on these things, but I wonder how hard it is to resist a strong "us vs those thugs" reaction when you're dealing with criminals day after day. Do they view this as collateral damage? There are innocent lives lost in military action. Does the prevailing attitude and a sense of permitting some collateral damage make it easier for them to excuse this sort of behaviour?
snsr 10y ago
"Civil forfeiture" is theft. It's also plainly unconstitutional.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  Except, it's plainly not. Seriously. It's been around since the 1600's and every supreme court that has ever existed in the US has found it constitutional. You can claim they are all wrong, it's literally not unconstitutional, because in our system, that's what the supreme court decides. Now, there are more reasonable arguments that some of the current approaches do not comport with due process, but that's not as blanket a statement as you are making here.
  - snsr 10y ago
    It's unjust, particularly in it's current implementation, and it completely circumvents due-process. At least in the US, which wasn't a nation in 1600, this is a prohibition-era deterrent that was reinstated by Reagan to punish drug users, and has been more currently used to fund law enforcement agencies in an astonishingly offensive manner.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      Sure, i'd agree it's unjust in some of the current implementation (there are something like 800+ federal statutes that have some form of asset forfeiture, so you'd need to be more specific which you think are unjust) While i think, policy wise, it's as dumb as the next guy, I'm just pointing out this is being painted with too broad a brush from a constitutional standpoint
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    It galls me so much because I'm usually the one arguing your position, but when it comes to civil asset forfeiture I have to say there's no possible way the SCOTUS has it right. You would honestly be hard-pressed to find too many other legal practices in such regular use today that so fly in the face of any plain or complicated reading of the 4th amendment. It's not even a little bit wrong, it's staggeringly wrong. It's not a weird technical nuance of law. It's not something the framers never addressed, or an issue that's only come up since the drafting. Yes, the practice of it has a long history that extends long before the US but so did/does slavery, government-sanctioned torture, genocide and collective punishment but nobody's wandering around saying we should allow those because starting the 1700s someone thought they were good ideas.
akama 10y ago
Hi, I'm one of the people who worked on some of the data visualization for this story. The people behind this worked very hard and did an excellent job. I would also like to point out, this is why police transparency is very important in modern society.
- alexbeloi 10y ago
  The outside blue field on the pie chart has no title when you hover over it (purchases under $5000). And having the text be upside down for half of the chart is pretty bad (another way to do it: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2015/07/pie-chart-234234234.jpg.662x0_q70_crop-scale.jpg http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2015/07/pie-chart-...) This comment is meant in good faith, it's an important story and topic and visualizing the impact is very useful. I appreciate the work that went into it. edit: I just noticed you can click on the fields, very cool!
  - akama 10y ago
    Thanks for the suggestions, I didn't think about flipping the text for that half of the chart but that's a good idea. I'm not sure about the blank label but I'll look into that.
adekok 10y ago
"Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-... Who, exactly, do we need protection from?
- nickff 10y ago
  This is one argument that many anarchists make; the truth is that (at the very least) an order of magnitude more people were killed by their own governments in the 20th century than were killed by their fellow citizens. Hobbes was wrong.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    Is it accurate to imply that the Soviets and Chinese had any sense of ownership of their governments? Especially with the forced starvation of Ukraine, it was practically a foreign occupation (this is muddy, Kyiv is a historic center of Russia). I don't think it's a refutation of Hobbes that a dictator could seize control of a state and perpetrate mass murder.
    - nickff 10y ago
      Hobbes made the case that a totalitarian dictator was the least likely to perpetrate mass murder; according to his ideas, the democracies would be more violent.
      - adekok 10y ago
        Hobbes was wrong. http://popten.net/2010/05/top-ten-most-evil-dictators-of-all-time-in-order-of-kill-count/ http://popten.net/2010/05/top-ten-most-evil-dictators-of-all... No democratic country has killed millions of it's own citizens. Even Hitler waited until he changed the law to give himself dictatorial powers.
- vehementi 10y ago
  That would be true if we found Trump was a criminal and took his $10B or whatever -- that would surely dwarf petty burglars' total thefts. The mere "is this number larger" criterion is not sufficient for your insinuation
Sleaker 10y ago
Woah, seems crazy that the police can keep something that was technically stolen property and not return it to the original owner. How can a judge argue that it will just be used to transfer drugs again, it's not the drug offender's property and she wasn't accessory... That's not relevant to the case, the owner isn't using it to traffic drugs. IANAL, just confused.
- madcowherd 10y ago
  I'm also perplexed about this. Anyone's car could be stolen, and then used to commit any number of crimes. Maybe the woman in the article didn't report the car as stolen?
  - Sleaker 10y ago
    maybe, because it was her own son and she didn't want him to face more jailtime? I thought it didn't matter though, I thought the owner could choose not to prosecute, or tell them to drop the case.. or maybe that's on a state-by-state level.
silvercoast 10y ago
I've had my property stolen by the police twice. The first time was 14 years ago when I was falsely accused of stealing two cell phones. There was a video surveillance tape of the theft, two other guys clearly did it but the store employee tried to claim I knew them. He happened to be the boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend. It took me a year to fight it and when the charges were finally dismissed, I got all my property back except my $500 cell phone. It was a basic misdemeanor charge but I was threatened with an unrelated felony if I didn't take a plea deal. I refused and the prosecutor moved to withdraw the case citing lack of evidence, preventing me from winning via acquittal. The fact that I was falsely accused of stealing two cheap cell phones and then the police stole my phone instilled a permanent distrust in the police. Then recently, I got involved in a dispute with a roommate and all my property was taken to a police warehouse. When I went to get it, the police officer told me there had been a robbery and all my stuff was stolen. About $6000 worth including priceless family items. I'm a white guy who doesn't break the law, although I am a bit politically active and rebellious. What I have experienced by the police and justice system is enraging and disenfrancising. If I was surrounded by poverty and crime, and had no hope for the future, I could see myself becoming emboldened against the police and turn into a life of crime. The way they treat people is wrong. The plea bargin system is a worse crime than most of the petty offenses people do. The way they treat you in jail is malicious and purposely antagonistic. It's a mild form of torture that doesn't rise to sensational levels but it perpetuates and sustains an atmosphere of distrust and hatred towards authority figures.
- kmfrk 10y ago
  Was this Chicago, too?
  - cozzyd 10y ago
    Based on the name of the newly-created account (Gold Coast is a Chicago neighborhood), I would guess so.
- Spooks 10y ago
  I was just curious how your insurance handled this? I would guess they would probe an investigation, but maybe not. At least the police would have all the records of the items stolen. Though the family items would be terrible to lose
wehadfun 10y ago
This is why we need to stop only caring about the presidential election and focus on local politics.
Bud 10y ago
Civil forfeiture must end. But until it can be ended, the least we can do is to make certain that any forfeited funds do NOT go to the police departments which hold power over deciding these cases. The funds should go to the federal government so that there is no local incentive to unjustly seize assets from citizens. That much should be obvious, in a democracy, right?
throw004 10y ago
$19000 for one month's use of cellphones? Sounds like corruption to me.
- soylentcola 10y ago
  Nah, Chicago's a big Verizon town.
Grollicus 10y ago
Why is this on HN? Who cares how Americans abuse their poor? Whats that to do with technology?
gravypod 10y ago
"Routine> 18.6 million" Holy crap.
zmanian 10y ago
Governor Brown signed a massive civil forfeiture reform for California today. https://www.aclunc.org/news/gov-brown-signs-historic-bill-rein-asset-forfeiture-abuse-paving-way-other-states?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=news&utm_medium=facebook https://www.aclunc.org/news/gov-brown-signs-historic-bill-re...
xg15 10y ago
All the other reasons in the thread why civil asset forfeiture is bad aside, it seems to me like a cood vehicle for corruption, too. Imagine I run a drug cartel and want to make a deal with some corrupt cops. How can I pay them without raising suspicion? Simple: - Open a new bank account and transfer the payment to it; - Given an "anonymous" hint to the cops that the bank account is connected to the cartel; (indeed it is) - The corrupt cops could seize the money using asset forfeiture and even make a nice PR show how it allows them to make progress in the war against drugs...

233 points by zmanian 10y ago

Civil forfeiture, plea bargains and losing the ability to vote are all great detriments to our society. They prevent those who are involved in crimes from being able to get back on their feet and show an increasing number of those in the justice system don't believe in rehabilitation. It's labelling theory in practice and it's the reason the US has the highest incarceration and repeat incarceration rate of the western world. Plea bargains reward disloyalty and often allow some of the worst people a ticket out of their crimes by implicating someone else. It's just a game and prosecutors want their stats to go up, no matter what is good for society. I don't even want to touch the sex offender registry. I'll just say this. Australia's registry is confidential.

protomyth 10y ago
> sex offender registry If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. If that's not the case, then anything past their incarceration / parole is blatantly unfair.
- slouch 10y ago
  ...especially because urinating in public can land you on the list for life.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    some sources for slouch's post http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-make-you-a-sex-offender-2013-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-... https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/11/us-sex-offender-laws-may-do-more-harm-good https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/09/11/us-sex-offender-laws-may...
    - ihsw 10y ago
      Taking a piss in woods managed by Fish and Wildlife Services will land on on the sex offender registry, if caught. It's absurd.
      - RonanTheGrey 10y ago
        Holy crap I didn't realize it was that easy. That's incredibly scary, because presence on that list basically destroys your life, your family's life, and your ability to ever build a life - all because it is public and used for every background check under the sun instead of obviously protected professions like teaching, etc.
        ihsw 10y ago
        It's considered exposing yourself. Yes very scary.
      - koolba 10y ago
        > Taking a piss in woods managed by Fish and Wildlife Services will land on on the sex offender registry, if caught. It's absurd. That's seriously absurd. Are the any instances of this being enforced in a public park? I've read of many cases of getting added to the registry from public urination, but they're all in cities[1]. [1]: And usually it's not even in "public". It'd be behind a dumpster or the end of an alley. Yes it's not something we as a society want, but who in their right mind puts that person in the same category as a pedophile.
        eth0up 10y ago
        1. http://www.menshealth.com/guy-wisdom/you-might-be-sex-offender-and-not-know-it http://www.menshealth.com/guy-wisdom/you-might-be-sex-offend... mentions a few frightening accounts of arrests (one behind a garbage bin resulting in deportation), but not in parks 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/punishment-that-doesnt-fit-the-crime.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/punishment-... - mentions the matter
- adekok 10y ago
  > If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. Well, no. After multiple DUIs, someone can have their license taken away permanently. The justice system has a long history of restricting peoples behavior who are (a) out of jail, but (b) still a danger to themselves or others.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    I am talking specifically about sex offenders.
  - hossbeast 10y ago
    Long history doesn't make it right
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      According to the courts, it makes it legal.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. We should recognize that we cannot always judge that correctly. So you either let people out who might still be a danger, or you keep people locked up who might not be a danger. (And, in fact, you do both - all you can do is adjust the proportions.) But people scream really loudly if you keep people locked up who arguably are no longer a danger...
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Of course we aren't going to get it right 100% of the time[1], but either they are rehabilitated & "served their debt to society" or they aren't. The whole sex offender list is a half-ass way to cover the bases. We need to get over ourselves and pick: they need to be incarcerated[2] or they can rejoin society. The list is incarceration on the prisoner's dime and puts them at the fringe forever. Lumping all of these into one pot is another foolish idea with the list. 1) heck, we don't get guilty / not guilty right which is why I'm against the death penalty 2) in some form
- boundring 10y ago
  Civil commitment actually results in this. Repeat sex offenders are effectively jailed for life.
- duaneb 10y ago
  > If we as a society believe the person is still a danger, then we shouldn't let them out, ever. This is not how justice works. If you want to create some other form of government, that's fine, just don't call prison justice.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Belief is the standard for justice in a theocracy.
MichaelAza 10y ago
While I agree that the U.S. and other criminal systems do not stress rehabilitation enough (or at all), the problem with all the things you mentioned aren't rehabilitation-centered. Civil forfeiture is plain unconstitutional. The legal idea behind it, that property is charged with a crime, and so it doesn't matter if a person is guilty/inocnent or even charged is simply absurd. Plea bargains cause people to plead guilty even if they aren't because they fear the lengthy process of litigation that is many times stacked against them. In doing so they may, depending on juresdiction, lose access to wealfare and other forms of government help that is many times vital to these people. As to losing the abbility to vote after being convicted, it's blatantly undemocratic and absurd. A person convicted of a crime loses some rights but that is done for the benefit of society and the convict himself, to allow hime to rehabilitate and become a productive member of society. A convict shouldn't lose rights if they don't directly contribute to the societies well being or his own. A person voting doesn't constitute a danger to society.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  Every time I see one of those silly "Can you believe those wacky laws still on the books!?" articles I think, y'know, it being illegal to spit on the sidewalk in Hoboken (or whatever) is a hell of a lot less bizarre than the fact that inanimate objects can be held liable in a court of law for the actions of animate humans. The picture that goes with it should be something like a Toyota Corolla sitting behind the defense's table, with somber lawyers around it.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    >The picture that goes with it should be something like a Toyota Corolla sitting behind the defense's table, with somber lawyers around it. Heh, my go-to scenario is a stack of $100 bills on the stand, being questioned: "Is it true, Misters Franklin, you facilitated the purchase of over a kilo of uncut Colombian cocaine, yes-or-no?" '...' "Aha! Their silence proves their guilt!" (I know, Fifth Amendment and all, but still...)
- rayiner 10y ago
  > Civil forfeiture is plain unconstitutional. The legal idea behind it, that property is charged with a crime, and so it doesn't matter if a person is guilty/inocnent or even charged is simply absurd. Civil forfeiture isn't a punishment for guilt or innocence. It's an adjudication that, more likely than not, nobody has an interest in the property that the law will protect. Say the police raid a mob stash house and find $10 million in cash. Even if the court cannot figure out exactly who owns the money, it can determine by a preponderance of the evidence that nobody has a legitimate property interest in it because it's more likely than not the proceeds of a crime. Same thing if the property is contraband (drugs, automatic firearms, child porn etc.) There is no need to figure out who owns the property then charge that person because nobody could have a legitimate legal right to contraband. Due process doesn't require anything more than that. The idea that the "property is charged with a crime" is mistaking the form of the action for the underlying rationale. The cases are styled "U.S. v. 10 cupcakes" because the case is about the legal status of the property, not about any particular person's guilt or innocence. Now, I think civil asset forfeiture creates more risk of abuse than it is worth, and we should get rid of it. But it's not based on some outlandish legal theory like you imply. If there was a sensible way to cabin it to its purpose (seizing assets that are found in circumstances where it is obvious they are the proceeds of crime), it might even be a good idea.
SilasX 10y ago
Cooperating with prosecutors, to find evidence against bigger fish, shouldn't result in a more lenient sentence?
- badlucklottery 10y ago
  When it works correctly, absolutely. The problem is that often times it doesn't lead to bigger fish but more fish of equal or lesser size since the system often values quantity over quality when it comes to felony convictions. You'll see this a lot of times when they catch a mid-level dealer. The dealer will roll on the street-level dealers instead of their supplier since it yields dozens of easy felony drug convictions instead of one really difficult case that could eat a ton of resources and still be lost.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    Which would still not be an argument against the existence of plea bargaining, as the OP was advocating.
    - badlucklottery 10y ago
      Looking back I don't see that the OP mentioned the other big issue with plea bargaining: when innocent people plead guilty because it's often the best choice. My bad for adding my own context onto it. Decent writeup: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop... tl;dr: the current system incentivizes defendants (especially poor ones) to plead guilty regardless of innocence. This is caused by a combination of prosecutors/judges trying to be "tough on crime", overloaded public defenders, excessive bail, mandatory minimums and several other things. I don't think plea bargaining is absolutely unfixable or evil but I also don't think it's a well-functioning part of the system as-is. I believe this is one of those cases where removing an option might be better for the justice system as a whole.
      - SilasX 10y ago

crooked-v 10y ago

I find it absurd that civil forfeiture would be "reformed" instead of recognized as blatantly unconstitutional.

brianwawok 10y ago
If you are found with a big pile of drugs and 100k in cash.. it is not unreasonable to take the cash away. Otherwise you would be allowed to profit from an illegal activity. Giving that money to the guy doing the arresting or the court doing the trial is the problem....
- adekok 10y ago
  I'll upvote because you're not entirely wrong. It's entirely reasonable to require that the proceeds of criminal activity be taken from the criminals. Whether it's a stolen car, drugs, or money made from selling a stolen car and drugs. It's all (mostly) similar. The devil is in the details, though. The rampant "theft by cop" is where you have money, and they take it. No charges, much less conviction. It's "guilty until proven innocent", which violates one of the fundamental principles of our justice system. It's outright corruption.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    > Whether it's a stolen car, drugs, or money made from selling a stolen car and drugs. It's all (mostly) similar. It's not that similar IMO. Stolen cars have owners to whom you can return the property, or litigants who can sue you to replace it. But selling contraband, unlike theft, doesn't have a victim that can be compensated by returning the proceeds. The government steps in and declares themselves the victims of this crime and claims the proceeds.
    - ocschwar 10y ago
      So far so good. The problem is they do it before convicting you of anything.

protomyth 10y ago

"The judge said, 'I can't give you back your car, because it would be right back on the road with drugs.' " (Karkula declined to comment for this story.) This is why civil forfeiture should be banned. I'm still of the opinion that any ticket money should be handed over to a superfund with strict rules on spending never to return to the police or judicial coffers.

brianwawok 10y ago
Why not all go to Charity? Anything else is a conflict of interests. Send it to an out of state charity. I am fine with taking a car used in a crime away, but you can't give the money to the person who took the car nor the court that decides..
- nickff 10y ago
  There are already a number of arrangements where corporations can pay penalties to 'approved' charities instead of the regulator as part or all of an agreement; these deals have been problematic, as the government officials appear to be using the arrangements to favor interest groups and potential future employers. I am not saying your idea is a bad one, but I think it is useful to know where the potential problems lie.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Its that part of government's version of giving a contract to a company then being hired by said company after leaving government. Both should be illegal.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > Why not all go to Charity? Without getting too political, several charities only benefit the people who set them up and picking charities is a major political exercise. > I am fine with taking a car used in a crime away I'm not, per the story that's exactly what they did. > but you can't give the money to the person who took the car nor the court that decides Any money received by the government as a result of someone doing something illegal should not be in the hands of the courts or police. I'd rather it not be decided by anyone and just used in some fund.

bdavisx 10y ago

I wonder if there are any statistics on race vs. forfeiture.

kelvin0 10y ago
Good point, but I wonder if there is not a stronger correlation to income (the lower your income, higher the chance to get caught in civil forfeiture).
hood_syntax 10y ago
I'm sure there are, but let's be real: you don't have to bring race into the argument to convince anyone this is immoral and unconstitutional.
- mildbow 10y ago
  Depending on the result, bringing race into it might lead to people feeling insulated from it, and therefore not care as much ("it only happens to black people. But, I'm not black").
  - hood_syntax 10y ago
    I agree with you on that point. An unfortunate artifact of drawing correlations along tribal lines.
1_listerine_pls 10y ago
While not related to race, cops have been caught tracking the rich to seize whatever cash they had in their cars.
djtriptych 10y ago
My interest in race here is that these practices were probably inflicted on blacks _first_, probably without white objection. It's decades later and the laws that allowed police to terrorize blacks are gradually being extended to all races. I worry that this pattern will repeat itself.

atombath 10y ago

Shown here are two good reasons for why people don't respect the police anymore. They take your assets due to a subtle association to a crime. They spend it without oversight on tools of mass surveillance. Ultimately, both of these things exacerbate crime. Quite an occupying force nowadays.

simplemath 10y ago
There are many police departments that should be brought up on RICO charges.
prawn 10y ago
They're clearly in the wrong on these things, but I wonder how hard it is to resist a strong "us vs those thugs" reaction when you're dealing with criminals day after day. Do they view this as collateral damage? There are innocent lives lost in military action. Does the prevailing attitude and a sense of permitting some collateral damage make it easier for them to excuse this sort of behaviour?

snsr 10y ago

"Civil forfeiture" is theft. It's also plainly unconstitutional.

DannyBee 10y ago
Except, it's plainly not. Seriously. It's been around since the 1600's and every supreme court that has ever existed in the US has found it constitutional. You can claim they are all wrong, it's literally not unconstitutional, because in our system, that's what the supreme court decides. Now, there are more reasonable arguments that some of the current approaches do not comport with due process, but that's not as blanket a statement as you are making here.
- snsr 10y ago
  It's unjust, particularly in it's current implementation, and it completely circumvents due-process. At least in the US, which wasn't a nation in 1600, this is a prohibition-era deterrent that was reinstated by Reagan to punish drug users, and has been more currently used to fund law enforcement agencies in an astonishingly offensive manner.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    Sure, i'd agree it's unjust in some of the current implementation (there are something like 800+ federal statutes that have some form of asset forfeiture, so you'd need to be more specific which you think are unjust) While i think, policy wise, it's as dumb as the next guy, I'm just pointing out this is being painted with too broad a brush from a constitutional standpoint
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  It galls me so much because I'm usually the one arguing your position, but when it comes to civil asset forfeiture I have to say there's no possible way the SCOTUS has it right. You would honestly be hard-pressed to find too many other legal practices in such regular use today that so fly in the face of any plain or complicated reading of the 4th amendment. It's not even a little bit wrong, it's staggeringly wrong. It's not a weird technical nuance of law. It's not something the framers never addressed, or an issue that's only come up since the drafting. Yes, the practice of it has a long history that extends long before the US but so did/does slavery, government-sanctioned torture, genocide and collective punishment but nobody's wandering around saying we should allow those because starting the 1700s someone thought they were good ideas.

akama 10y ago

Hi, I'm one of the people who worked on some of the data visualization for this story. The people behind this worked very hard and did an excellent job. I would also like to point out, this is why police transparency is very important in modern society.

alexbeloi 10y ago
The outside blue field on the pie chart has no title when you hover over it (purchases under $5000). And having the text be upside down for half of the chart is pretty bad (another way to do it: http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2015/07/pie-chart-234234234.jpg.662x0_q70_crop-scale.jpg http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2015/07/pie-chart-...) This comment is meant in good faith, it's an important story and topic and visualizing the impact is very useful. I appreciate the work that went into it. edit: I just noticed you can click on the fields, very cool!
- akama 10y ago
  Thanks for the suggestions, I didn't think about flipping the text for that half of the chart but that's a good idea. I'm not sure about the blank label but I'll look into that.

adekok 10y ago

"Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-... Who, exactly, do we need protection from?

nickff 10y ago
This is one argument that many anarchists make; the truth is that (at the very least) an order of magnitude more people were killed by their own governments in the 20th century than were killed by their fellow citizens. Hobbes was wrong.
- linkregister 10y ago
  Is it accurate to imply that the Soviets and Chinese had any sense of ownership of their governments? Especially with the forced starvation of Ukraine, it was practically a foreign occupation (this is muddy, Kyiv is a historic center of Russia). I don't think it's a refutation of Hobbes that a dictator could seize control of a state and perpetrate mass murder.
  - nickff 10y ago
    Hobbes made the case that a totalitarian dictator was the least likely to perpetrate mass murder; according to his ideas, the democracies would be more violent.
    - adekok 10y ago
      Hobbes was wrong. http://popten.net/2010/05/top-ten-most-evil-dictators-of-all-time-in-order-of-kill-count/ http://popten.net/2010/05/top-ten-most-evil-dictators-of-all... No democratic country has killed millions of it's own citizens. Even Hitler waited until he changed the law to give himself dictatorial powers.
vehementi 10y ago
That would be true if we found Trump was a criminal and took his $10B or whatever -- that would surely dwarf petty burglars' total thefts. The mere "is this number larger" criterion is not sufficient for your insinuation

Sleaker 10y ago

Woah, seems crazy that the police can keep something that was technically stolen property and not return it to the original owner. How can a judge argue that it will just be used to transfer drugs again, it's not the drug offender's property and she wasn't accessory... That's not relevant to the case, the owner isn't using it to traffic drugs. IANAL, just confused.

madcowherd 10y ago
I'm also perplexed about this. Anyone's car could be stolen, and then used to commit any number of crimes. Maybe the woman in the article didn't report the car as stolen?
- Sleaker 10y ago
  maybe, because it was her own son and she didn't want him to face more jailtime? I thought it didn't matter though, I thought the owner could choose not to prosecute, or tell them to drop the case.. or maybe that's on a state-by-state level.

silvercoast 10y ago

I've had my property stolen by the police twice. The first time was 14 years ago when I was falsely accused of stealing two cell phones. There was a video surveillance tape of the theft, two other guys clearly did it but the store employee tried to claim I knew them. He happened to be the boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend. It took me a year to fight it and when the charges were finally dismissed, I got all my property back except my $500 cell phone. It was a basic misdemeanor charge but I was threatened with an unrelated felony if I didn't take a plea deal. I refused and the prosecutor moved to withdraw the case citing lack of evidence, preventing me from winning via acquittal. The fact that I was falsely accused of stealing two cheap cell phones and then the police stole my phone instilled a permanent distrust in the police. Then recently, I got involved in a dispute with a roommate and all my property was taken to a police warehouse. When I went to get it, the police officer told me there had been a robbery and all my stuff was stolen. About $6000 worth including priceless family items. I'm a white guy who doesn't break the law, although I am a bit politically active and rebellious. What I have experienced by the police and justice system is enraging and disenfrancising. If I was surrounded by poverty and crime, and had no hope for the future, I could see myself becoming emboldened against the police and turn into a life of crime. The way they treat people is wrong. The plea bargin system is a worse crime than most of the petty offenses people do. The way they treat you in jail is malicious and purposely antagonistic. It's a mild form of torture that doesn't rise to sensational levels but it perpetuates and sustains an atmosphere of distrust and hatred towards authority figures.

kmfrk 10y ago
Was this Chicago, too?
- cozzyd 10y ago
  Based on the name of the newly-created account (Gold Coast is a Chicago neighborhood), I would guess so.
Spooks 10y ago
I was just curious how your insurance handled this? I would guess they would probe an investigation, but maybe not. At least the police would have all the records of the items stolen. Though the family items would be terrible to lose

wehadfun 10y ago

This is why we need to stop only caring about the presidential election and focus on local politics.

Bud 10y ago

Civil forfeiture must end. But until it can be ended, the least we can do is to make certain that any forfeited funds do NOT go to the police departments which hold power over deciding these cases. The funds should go to the federal government so that there is no local incentive to unjustly seize assets from citizens. That much should be obvious, in a democracy, right?

throw004 10y ago

$19000 for one month's use of cellphones? Sounds like corruption to me.

soylentcola 10y ago
Nah, Chicago's a big Verizon town.

Grollicus 10y ago

Why is this on HN? Who cares how Americans abuse their poor? Whats that to do with technology?

gravypod 10y ago

"Routine> 18.6 million" Holy crap.

zmanian 10y ago

Governor Brown signed a massive civil forfeiture reform for California today. https://www.aclunc.org/news/gov-brown-signs-historic-bill-rein-asset-forfeiture-abuse-paving-way-other-states?utm_source=social&utm_campaign=news&utm_medium=facebook https://www.aclunc.org/news/gov-brown-signs-historic-bill-re...

xg15 10y ago

All the other reasons in the thread why civil asset forfeiture is bad aside, it seems to me like a cood vehicle for corruption, too. Imagine I run a drug cartel and want to make a deal with some corrupt cops. How can I pay them without raising suspicion? Simple: - Open a new bank account and transfer the payment to it; - Given an "anonymous" hint to the cops that the bank account is connected to the cartel; (indeed it is) - The corrupt cops could seize the money using asset forfeiture and even make a nice PR show how it allows them to make progress in the war against drugs...