7 ms·

Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year (2015)

dovdovdov 9y ago
also catching up with the murder rate...
- TokenDiversity 9y ago
  Funny you mention that. I was reading about the Australian woman killed after calling 911 and the news was all over the place. Then suddenly the coverage stopped. I don't even have to mention it and everybody can already guess why it happened "suddenly".
  - OzzyB 9y ago
    It's a travesty we have to "guess". Note how all the Officers' body cams were conveniently switch off during this horrific incident. I doubt we will ever know let alone get significant change to what is a very disturbing problem.
    - OzzyB 9y ago
      Nice downvotes, stay classy HN. :D
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    I can't guess. Please fill me in. It's front page news here in Oz. But the article I am reading - understandably - concentrates on why the body camera was off. I am more concerned by the fact that it seems (according to meager, circumstantial evidenence we have) that the policeman turned up and shot what seems to be an innocent witness.
  - AckSyn 9y ago
    I guess I'll say it. They cut off the reporting as soon as they mentioned/discovered he was a Somalian refugee named Mohamed Noor that was rushed through the police academy. The media couldn't push their sensationalist garbage so they stopped reporting.
  - syshum 9y ago
    The coverage Stopped? Funny I am seeing new updates as info is made available Google News has 2 stories on the front page and simply search shows new stories being posted in regular intervals with the lastest on 34 mins ago so no the coverage has not stopped
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmorici 9y ago
    It's been in the top three stories on Google news since it happened and still is this morning.
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  are you implying that there is a correlation between civil forfeiture and Murder rate?
  - throwawaymanbot 9y ago
    I can only imagine why I got negative votes for my comment
cmurf 9y ago
We have an AG who wants to take even more stuff from people. Highway men. That's what this country needs. “We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions
- justadeveloper2 9y ago
  I don't know why someone downvoted you for this because it was news just the other day that Sessions said this. While I think Sessions is perhaps competent as AG, I don't know why he has such zeal for asset forfeiture. Why can't we have people in these positions who are consistent? We ostensibly have an Administration that wants to support the Constitution and rule of law, and then they go supporting policies and laws that are completely out of line with our Bill of Rights. I don't get it except statism is a brain disorder. I still say the Obama Administration was even worse--Lynch used her office as a political weapon. Holder should have been prosecuted for Fast & Furious. It's a mess. I am no criminal, but I avoid cops at all costs just so I don't 'accidentally' get shot. Also, we need to stop allowing police to have qualified immunity. Their role in US society has been elevated above regular citizens even though they are regular citizens. Their training is "shoot until slide lock" and to always meet force with equivalent and higher force. I live near Minneapolis and I can tell you that after Castile, I thought things would get better, but no, cops are shooting dogs, people, everything! The Burnsville police killed a guy who was whacked out on drugs--the guy had a knife, but he wasn't hurting anyone and when he tried to run away after a botched attempt at getting him out of his car, they shot him in the back for 'reasons.' Their egregious and troubling behavior was later deemed as 'following procedure.' I think we can see that not reigning in this bad behavior is going to lead to us having to deal with death squads who act under the color of law, such as they have in the Philippines and Nicaragua, and basically every third world country.
  - pmorici 9y ago
    Sessions probably supports it because he is going out of his way to be "pro police" and police departments love civil asset forfeiture because the assets that get seized go directly toward their department budgets. It is a major conflict of interest for the police.
honestoHeminway 9y ago
The Firefighters The Firefighters' Guild has been formed and dissolved repeatedly throughout the history of Ankh-Morpork. Usually formed in response to fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city, the guild is usually dissolved in response to... er, fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city. The Guild suffers from the undying capitalist spirit of Ankh-Morpork, as those men who are paid per-fire extinguished eventually begin to guarantee a regular supply of fires to be put out. This has led to the frequent destruction of large portions of the city and ultimately to the Guild's being banned.
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  Eventually, the colonists realized that, even with this small army of paid rat killers, they were failing to make a dent in the rat population. They proceeded to Plan B, offering any enterprising civilian the opportunity to get in on the hunt. A bounty was set—one cent per rat—and all you had to do to claim it was submit a rat’s tail to the municipal offices. That way, the government wouldn’t be overrun with bulky rat corpses. “I always think about that,” Dr. Vann says. “Who is the poor guy counting all these rat tails?” The Vietnamese, too, were pleased with the arrangement, but not for the same reason. In the beginning, rat-tails poured in as locals slaughtered them by the dozen. Their entrepreneurial spirit took over though, and soon enough, French health officials began to notice a strange phenomenon: tailless rats proliferating in the outskirts of the capital. Upon further investigation, it became apparent that the Vietnamese were breeding rats specifically to receive cash for their tails. Reports also suggest some people smuggled out-of-town rats into Hanoi. By 1906, there was an outbreak of plague as a result of the infected rat population. At least 263 people died, most of whom were Vietnamese. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
  - honestoHeminway 9y ago
    The easy solution is to scream "the goverment is to blame" - while the truth is "complex reality is to blame". These very same perverse incentives are raging in every company. The scale of goverment alone, with whom we all interact, and a lack of good PR-Work, makes them more visible. So how reduce this? Slowing down processes was the answer, basically, replace the lack of human thought and planning, with a meta-machine which was able to plan, think, react and control. Is there software to model this? To treat every part of a organisations process also as agents, and thus prevent free-loading and incentive perversion? Better even, a software that remodels a process, once free-loading appears? Also, in a world, where freeloading is soon to be the majoritys occupation, due to robots and NN taking over work, is it still meaning-full to apply this software? Are companys in such a world not just daycare-centers for otherwise unemployed grown-ups, and paid for that by society?
lr4444lr 9y ago
I detest civil forfeiture, but this is clickbait. The burglary figure is only reported theft. Also, the actual metric is value of goods, not number of takings. Obviously, assets in forfeiture are going to be bigger on average several times over than what a thief typically gets when rummaging a house in a 2 minute panic to get out before the authorities are signaled. EDIT: Also, if you read the article, it buries even one of the few redeeming aspects of civil forfeiture, payments to victims. If you buy a car and the police seize it because the VIN is tracked to a vehicle previously owned by a drug dealer who used it to ply his contraband but then sold it to pay his way as a fugitive, and once apprehended the car is then auctioned off and money is paid to the family of a victim he earlier had killed, that's part of a much bigger legal process. The remedy for the unfortunate person who bought the vehicle unawares in good faith is to go to his dealer and demand a refund or take him to court for misrepresenting the car, or if the paperwork looks good on the part of the dealer, he'll have to rely on his loss insurance.
- syshum 9y ago
  Your Hypothetical situation of victim payment NEVER happens Most Cars seized by the government are because they found some small amount of drugs are paraphernalia in the car and seized it I can not think of a single instances of what you claim playing out IRL, so I would love to see where your source is that shows cars seized by the government are legally bought off of former drug dealers then seized by the government from the new owners. Even under Asset Forfeiture I do not believe that would be legal. they are also seizing houses from parents because their child has small amount of pot... This defense of Civil Asset Forfeiture you have concocted in your mind is weak and not at all inline with reality
  - mijoharas 9y ago
    In general I agree with your statement. However, the article clearly states: > A big chunk of that 2014 deposit, for instance, was the $1.7 billion Bernie Madoff judgment, most of which flowed back to the victims.
    - 9y ago
dmux 9y ago
CT has banned civil forfeiture without a criminal conviction. A step in the right direction.
- Symmetry 9y ago
  Good for them. But my understanding is that local cops can still seize an asset, declare that it was really a Federal seizure, have the money assigned to federal government, then the federal government gives most of it back as a bounty. The whole program seems to be a way for the Feds to encourage local police to follow federal priorities rather than local priorities and sadly I'm sure the current attorney general will be looking for ways to do more of that.
  - syshum 9y ago
    Yep, and in CT is seems 93% of revenue cam from the Federal Sharing program http://ij.org/pfp-state-pages/pfp-Connecticut/ http://ij.org/pfp-state-pages/pfp-Connecticut/
    - camiller 9y ago
      That article only shows data through 2013, a number of states have changed their laws in the last four years.
  - cr1895 9y ago
    >The whole program seems to be a way for the Feds to encourage local police to follow federal priorities rather than local priorities and sadly I'm sure the current attorney general will be looking for ways to do more of that. Yes, exactly; I'm guessing today's article below is what prompted the OP to post the article they did. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/jeff-sessions-wants-police-to-take-more-cash-from-american-citizens/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/jeff-... "In 2015, Eric Holder's Justice Department issued a memo sharply curtailing a particular type of forfeiture practice that allowed local police to share part of their forfeiture proceeds with federal authorities. Known as “adoptive” forfeiture, it allowed state and local authorities to sidestep sometimes stricter state laws, processing forfeiture cases under the more permissive federal statute. ... In his speech Monday, Attorney General Sessions appeared to specifically call out adoptive forfeitures as an area for potential expansion. “Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate,” he said, “as is sharing with our partners.”"
lettergram 9y ago
Illinois just put the burden of proof on the prosecution (as opposed to the item(s) to prove their innocence) http://ij.org/press-release/illinois-overwhelmingly-approves-bill-protect-innocent-civil-forfeiture/ http://ij.org/press-release/illinois-overwhelmingly-approves...
- kevin_b_er 9y ago
  A step in the right direction, but it doesn't seem to have closed the federal loophole. Local police still seize your property and give it to the feds. Feds, on paper, have seized/stolen your property now. Feds give a nice kickback to local dept.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Yet another reminder that the US is sinking into a corrupt 3rd world country without a middle class or the rule of law.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  This is an excellent starting point. It's a bit less obvious than bans or restrictions on forfeiture, but it should have a major impact on helping innocent people keep their property. Entering the suit as a third party with a requirement to prove innocence is a bizarre and expensive obligation.
tbcj 9y ago
State and local governments are, at least, partially to blame for the increase as a consequence of decreased budgets given to law enforcement, including district attorneys' offices. That money is often used to make up budget shortfalls, and often nearly doesn't provide enough to competently and fully staff such offices.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >decreased budgets given to law enforcement They could make do with what they have if they made an honest effort to make do with it. The cost of a body on the job depends a lot on how you field that body. Equip the officer with the latest and greatest tech the cost of each officer-hour goes up significantly. Don't hire enough people and make people work overtime and the cost of an average officer-hour skyrockets Look at how small town 4-person departments in low crime areas operate. They can't simply ask for money because the town knows they don't need it.

also catching up with the murder rate...

TokenDiversity 9y ago
Funny you mention that. I was reading about the Australian woman killed after calling 911 and the news was all over the place. Then suddenly the coverage stopped. I don't even have to mention it and everybody can already guess why it happened "suddenly".
- OzzyB 9y ago
  It's a travesty we have to "guess". Note how all the Officers' body cams were conveniently switch off during this horrific incident. I doubt we will ever know let alone get significant change to what is a very disturbing problem.
  - OzzyB 9y ago
    Nice downvotes, stay classy HN. :D
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  I can't guess. Please fill me in. It's front page news here in Oz. But the article I am reading - understandably - concentrates on why the body camera was off. I am more concerned by the fact that it seems (according to meager, circumstantial evidenence we have) that the policeman turned up and shot what seems to be an innocent witness.
- AckSyn 9y ago
  I guess I'll say it. They cut off the reporting as soon as they mentioned/discovered he was a Somalian refugee named Mohamed Noor that was rushed through the police academy. The media couldn't push their sensationalist garbage so they stopped reporting.
- syshum 9y ago
  The coverage Stopped? Funny I am seeing new updates as info is made available Google News has 2 stories on the front page and simply search shows new stories being posted in regular intervals with the lastest on 34 mins ago so no the coverage has not stopped
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pmorici 9y ago
  It's been in the top three stories on Google news since it happened and still is this morning.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
are you implying that there is a correlation between civil forfeiture and Murder rate?
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  I can only imagine why I got negative votes for my comment

We have an AG who wants to take even more stuff from people. Highway men. That's what this country needs. “We hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers,” Sessions

justadeveloper2 9y ago
I don't know why someone downvoted you for this because it was news just the other day that Sessions said this. While I think Sessions is perhaps competent as AG, I don't know why he has such zeal for asset forfeiture. Why can't we have people in these positions who are consistent? We ostensibly have an Administration that wants to support the Constitution and rule of law, and then they go supporting policies and laws that are completely out of line with our Bill of Rights. I don't get it except statism is a brain disorder. I still say the Obama Administration was even worse--Lynch used her office as a political weapon. Holder should have been prosecuted for Fast & Furious. It's a mess. I am no criminal, but I avoid cops at all costs just so I don't 'accidentally' get shot. Also, we need to stop allowing police to have qualified immunity. Their role in US society has been elevated above regular citizens even though they are regular citizens. Their training is "shoot until slide lock" and to always meet force with equivalent and higher force. I live near Minneapolis and I can tell you that after Castile, I thought things would get better, but no, cops are shooting dogs, people, everything! The Burnsville police killed a guy who was whacked out on drugs--the guy had a knife, but he wasn't hurting anyone and when he tried to run away after a botched attempt at getting him out of his car, they shot him in the back for 'reasons.' Their egregious and troubling behavior was later deemed as 'following procedure.' I think we can see that not reigning in this bad behavior is going to lead to us having to deal with death squads who act under the color of law, such as they have in the Philippines and Nicaragua, and basically every third world country.
- pmorici 9y ago
  Sessions probably supports it because he is going out of his way to be "pro police" and police departments love civil asset forfeiture because the assets that get seized go directly toward their department budgets. It is a major conflict of interest for the police.

honestoHeminway 9y ago

The Firefighters The Firefighters' Guild has been formed and dissolved repeatedly throughout the history of Ankh-Morpork. Usually formed in response to fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city, the guild is usually dissolved in response to... er, fires which cause significant damage to large parts of the city. The Guild suffers from the undying capitalist spirit of Ankh-Morpork, as those men who are paid per-fire extinguished eventually begin to guarantee a regular supply of fires to be put out. This has led to the frequent destruction of large portions of the city and ultimately to the Guild's being banned.

nosuchthing 9y ago
Eventually, the colonists realized that, even with this small army of paid rat killers, they were failing to make a dent in the rat population. They proceeded to Plan B, offering any enterprising civilian the opportunity to get in on the hunt. A bounty was set—one cent per rat—and all you had to do to claim it was submit a rat’s tail to the municipal offices. That way, the government wouldn’t be overrun with bulky rat corpses. “I always think about that,” Dr. Vann says. “Who is the poor guy counting all these rat tails?” The Vietnamese, too, were pleased with the arrangement, but not for the same reason. In the beginning, rat-tails poured in as locals slaughtered them by the dozen. Their entrepreneurial spirit took over though, and soon enough, French health officials began to notice a strange phenomenon: tailless rats proliferating in the outskirts of the capital. Upon further investigation, it became apparent that the Vietnamese were breeding rats specifically to receive cash for their tails. Reports also suggest some people smuggled out-of-town rats into Hanoi. By 1906, there was an outbreak of plague as a result of the infected rat population. At least 263 people died, most of whom were Vietnamese. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  The easy solution is to scream "the goverment is to blame" - while the truth is "complex reality is to blame". These very same perverse incentives are raging in every company. The scale of goverment alone, with whom we all interact, and a lack of good PR-Work, makes them more visible. So how reduce this? Slowing down processes was the answer, basically, replace the lack of human thought and planning, with a meta-machine which was able to plan, think, react and control. Is there software to model this? To treat every part of a organisations process also as agents, and thus prevent free-loading and incentive perversion? Better even, a software that remodels a process, once free-loading appears? Also, in a world, where freeloading is soon to be the majoritys occupation, due to robots and NN taking over work, is it still meaning-full to apply this software? Are companys in such a world not just daycare-centers for otherwise unemployed grown-ups, and paid for that by society?

lr4444lr 9y ago

I detest civil forfeiture, but this is clickbait. The burglary figure is only reported theft. Also, the actual metric is value of goods, not number of takings. Obviously, assets in forfeiture are going to be bigger on average several times over than what a thief typically gets when rummaging a house in a 2 minute panic to get out before the authorities are signaled. EDIT: Also, if you read the article, it buries even one of the few redeeming aspects of civil forfeiture, payments to victims. If you buy a car and the police seize it because the VIN is tracked to a vehicle previously owned by a drug dealer who used it to ply his contraband but then sold it to pay his way as a fugitive, and once apprehended the car is then auctioned off and money is paid to the family of a victim he earlier had killed, that's part of a much bigger legal process. The remedy for the unfortunate person who bought the vehicle unawares in good faith is to go to his dealer and demand a refund or take him to court for misrepresenting the car, or if the paperwork looks good on the part of the dealer, he'll have to rely on his loss insurance.

syshum 9y ago
Your Hypothetical situation of victim payment NEVER happens Most Cars seized by the government are because they found some small amount of drugs are paraphernalia in the car and seized it I can not think of a single instances of what you claim playing out IRL, so I would love to see where your source is that shows cars seized by the government are legally bought off of former drug dealers then seized by the government from the new owners. Even under Asset Forfeiture I do not believe that would be legal. they are also seizing houses from parents because their child has small amount of pot... This defense of Civil Asset Forfeiture you have concocted in your mind is weak and not at all inline with reality
- mijoharas 9y ago
  In general I agree with your statement. However, the article clearly states: > A big chunk of that 2014 deposit, for instance, was the $1.7 billion Bernie Madoff judgment, most of which flowed back to the victims.
  - 9y ago

dmux 9y ago

CT has banned civil forfeiture without a criminal conviction. A step in the right direction.

Symmetry 9y ago
Good for them. But my understanding is that local cops can still seize an asset, declare that it was really a Federal seizure, have the money assigned to federal government, then the federal government gives most of it back as a bounty. The whole program seems to be a way for the Feds to encourage local police to follow federal priorities rather than local priorities and sadly I'm sure the current attorney general will be looking for ways to do more of that.
- syshum 9y ago
  Yep, and in CT is seems 93% of revenue cam from the Federal Sharing program http://ij.org/pfp-state-pages/pfp-Connecticut/ http://ij.org/pfp-state-pages/pfp-Connecticut/
  - camiller 9y ago
    That article only shows data through 2013, a number of states have changed their laws in the last four years.
- cr1895 9y ago
  >The whole program seems to be a way for the Feds to encourage local police to follow federal priorities rather than local priorities and sadly I'm sure the current attorney general will be looking for ways to do more of that. Yes, exactly; I'm guessing today's article below is what prompted the OP to post the article they did. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/jeff-sessions-wants-police-to-take-more-cash-from-american-citizens/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/17/jeff-... "In 2015, Eric Holder's Justice Department issued a memo sharply curtailing a particular type of forfeiture practice that allowed local police to share part of their forfeiture proceeds with federal authorities. Known as “adoptive” forfeiture, it allowed state and local authorities to sidestep sometimes stricter state laws, processing forfeiture cases under the more permissive federal statute. ... In his speech Monday, Attorney General Sessions appeared to specifically call out adoptive forfeitures as an area for potential expansion. “Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate,” he said, “as is sharing with our partners.”"

lettergram 9y ago

Illinois just put the burden of proof on the prosecution (as opposed to the item(s) to prove their innocence) http://ij.org/press-release/illinois-overwhelmingly-approves-bill-protect-innocent-civil-forfeiture/ http://ij.org/press-release/illinois-overwhelmingly-approves...

kevin_b_er 9y ago
A step in the right direction, but it doesn't seem to have closed the federal loophole. Local police still seize your property and give it to the feds. Feds, on paper, have seized/stolen your property now. Feds give a nice kickback to local dept.
- Retric 9y ago
  Yet another reminder that the US is sinking into a corrupt 3rd world country without a middle class or the rule of law.
Bartweiss 9y ago
This is an excellent starting point. It's a bit less obvious than bans or restrictions on forfeiture, but it should have a major impact on helping innocent people keep their property. Entering the suit as a third party with a requirement to prove innocence is a bizarre and expensive obligation.

tbcj 9y ago

State and local governments are, at least, partially to blame for the increase as a consequence of decreased budgets given to law enforcement, including district attorneys' offices. That money is often used to make up budget shortfalls, and often nearly doesn't provide enough to competently and fully staff such offices.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>decreased budgets given to law enforcement They could make do with what they have if they made an honest effort to make do with it. The cost of a body on the job depends a lot on how you field that body. Equip the officer with the latest and greatest tech the cost of each officer-hour goes up significantly. Don't hire enough people and make people work overtime and the cost of an average officer-hour skyrockets Look at how small town 4-person departments in low crime areas operate. They can't simply ask for money because the town knows they don't need it.