5 ms·

The concern I have with civil asset forfeiture is that the seized property goes directly to the sheriff. This gives the police a financial incentive to seize as

The concern I have with civil asset forfeiture is that the seized property goes directly to the sheriff. This gives the police a financial incentive to seize assets. Law enforcement is not an activity that should be conducted with a profit motive. Even with limitations on what can be taken and when, I'd be more comfortable if it went into the state's general fund, or better a fund for recompensating victims of crime or accidents.

cmdkeen 12y ago
It's pretty similar to all these tiny city jurisdictions which finance significant portions of their revenue via fines, especially those that cover a couple of miles of major roads.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  related: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/03/hampton-fl.html http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/03/hampton-fl.html From the link (which you should check out): > Hampton[, Florida] has existed, for whatever reason, since about 1925. Home to fewer than 500 people, it is located east of Highway 301 in north-central Florida. Some would say, actually, that it is located on Highway 301, as a result of an amendment to the town's borders in the mid-1990s. See if you can spot the amendment on the map below: I kind of wonder how this practice squares with the famous ideal of "no taxation without representation". What we have here is a town of <500 people who voted themselves the power to levy taxes on unrelated drivers passing not even through, but nearby. The drivers, obviously, were not consulted. Why is the town supposed to have this power in the first place?
  - a3n 12y ago
    > I kind of wonder how this practice squares with the famous ideal of "no taxation without representation". Any restriction will be worked around. In general, these rackets allow municipalities to avoid raising taxes, or even bothering to ask, and it allows politicians to crow about not raising taxes, yet still have the revenue that honestly and openly enacted taxes would bring.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      But I'm not trying to focus on the fact that they're raising revenue by calling their new taxes "traffic fines". That's true, and it's bad, but what's really "special" here is that they've legally enacted the holy grail, a tax on foreigners living abroad. Why would the town residents care even if this were actually called a tax? Conversely, why is the town supposed to be allowed to tax non-residents?
      - a3n 12y ago
        > why is the town supposed to be allowed to tax non-residents? The argument would be the same for all speed trap/tax collection stations. It's not for revenue, it's for public safety. They would be irresponsible to not enforce speed limits. In the case of the town in the article, it would be dangerous for drivers to not suddenly slow down from 65 mph to 55 mph for the 0.2 miles that the road passes through the town. In general, it may help to keep in mind that you and I are nothing but resources for corporations, governments, law enforcement, spy agencies and other criminal organizations. The United States is a consumer paradise, in the same way that Argentina is a beef paradise. The land of the free range citizen.
  - lmm 12y ago
    The idea that people (collectively) have all sorts of rights to "their" land is pretty fundamental. If you're going to go after this there are bigger issues e.g. why does a country like Brunei with a tiny number of residents "own" the vast nearby oil reserves?
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      National borders are a military question. If you looked at the link, or just skimmed the quote I selected from it, you must have noticed that the town didn't decide to tax its own area; it annexed a nearby portion of a freeway and taxed that (seriously, go look at the picture). How do you think Malaysia would respond if Brunei suddenly claimed ownership of nearby Malaysian territory?
      - msandford 12y ago
        It's not a freeway, it's a highway. I went to school in Gainesville, FL and that road is on the way to Jacksonville, FL and it was a huge pain in the ass. There was only a mile or two of road that the city "owned" and there were ALWAYS cops out. The speed limit went from 65 down to 40 a mile before the one stop light and then a mile after the stop light, back to 65. Florida actually enacted a law saying that a city may derive no more than 25% of its revenue from fines specifically because of this city. I'm sure they immediately broke the law and just cooked the books for years until recently there was a big scandal and the city nearly had its charter revoked. http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/us/hampton-florida-corruption-survival/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/us/hampton-florida-corruption-...
        thaumasiotes 12y ago
        My apologies; to me there is no difference between a freeway and a highway.
        msandford 12y ago
        No worries! The reason I make the distinction is that here in the US typically a freeway is something that has controlled access (on and off ramps) and no traffic controls like stop lights, stop signs, etc. Highways are much more up to interpretation but typically have higher speeds (hence highways) but may well have lights, much less controlled access, etc.
  - bpodgursky 12y ago
    Cities in the United states have no authority not granted to them by the state. If the people of Florida felt strongly about it and organized, they could have the speeding zone removed.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      Well, I asked > Why is the town supposed to have this power in the first place? not "why does the town have this power in the first place?" The scenario you describe is ludicrous; Hampton received state attention when it ticketed a representative, not because there was a grassroots movement in the other 99.99% of Florida. Some perspective: - They annexed a 0.2 mile stretch of highway. Imagine trying to keep track of all the roads in your state in 1000-foot increments. - Hampton appears to be, by eyeball, somewhere between 1 and 4 square miles (eyeballing this isn't totally ludicrous because, with the exception of the since-abolished freeway patch, it's a square). Call it 4 square miles. Florida is 70,000 square miles. So the level of scrutiny required here does not and cannot exist. Why does a tiny hamlet that happens to be located near a freeway get the right to unilaterally declare that the freeway is now part of town and start hitting up everyone who passes by for cash? There's no sane reason for them to have this power.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
Rumford 12y ago
I'd argue that the profit motive is fine, private security works without this problem. The issue with asset forfeiture laws is that they create an incentive to violate the fourth amendment. The funny thing about this New Mexico law -- all it does is echo the Constitution. It shouldn't be necessary.
- clavalle 12y ago
  >I'd argue that the profit motive is fine, private security works without this problem. The payment incentive is very different for private security. They don't get to seize property. The more relevant analogy would be privateers. Turns out they did have similar problems going off their assigned duties and sometimes dropping their charter altogether and just becoming pirates.
  - Rumford 12y ago
    Sure, that's pretty much my point. It's all about the incentives. When the job description and rewards say "take people's stuff," then that's what they'll do.
NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
The evidence suggests this isn't a fix. Some states do have the proceeds of civil forfeiture go directly to the general fund... still abused. Until recently, there was even the loophole of bringing the feds in, have them seize it, and then they'd give 90% back to the PD. To some extent, this still works despite Holder's speech to the contrary. The AG has failed to reign in federal law enforcement agencies who refuse to follow the order given. Civil asset forfeiture can't be reformed. Period. It has to be abolished.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  Frankly, I think requiring that the property owner has to be convicted of a crime before the property can be seized qualifies as a real "reform".
  - abruzzi 12y ago
    And that is functionally the difference between "civil" asset forfeiture and "criminal" asset forfeiture. To be sure even criminal asset forfeiture can be abused, but it is significantly more difficult, and you have to be convicted first. And at some level criminal asset forfeiture is a just response because without it you create perverse incentives (a white collar crime that nets you 100 million and 5 years in jail, is a very good exchange of time for money if there is no forfeiture to take the "ill gotten gains.") What I'd like to know is if NM is the first state to ban civil AF? I'm happy to be a NM resident today, but I wonder if we are a aberration? Not to over simplify, but liberals tend to favor limits on police power, and conservatives tend to be split between the so-called "law and order" conservatives who want power the police and harsh sentences, and the libertarian conservatives who want strong limits on police powers. NM tends to have a lot more libertarian conservatives than a lot of other parts of the country making us a good location for this law.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> The concern I have with civil asset forfeiture is that the seized property goes directly to the sheriff. It usually doesn't; most state law forfeitures go to general funds, not the seizing law enforcement agency. Local agencies doing forfeitures under federal law were allowed to keep some of the proceeds directly, but these forfeitures have been curtailed (the asset sharing with agencies still exists, but the opportunities for locals to seize assets under federal law or have them "adopted" as federal seizures have been reduced.)

cmdkeen 12y ago

It's pretty similar to all these tiny city jurisdictions which finance significant portions of their revenue via fines, especially those that cover a couple of miles of major roads.

thaumasiotes 12y ago
related: http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/03/hampton-fl.html http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/03/hampton-fl.html From the link (which you should check out): > Hampton[, Florida] has existed, for whatever reason, since about 1925. Home to fewer than 500 people, it is located east of Highway 301 in north-central Florida. Some would say, actually, that it is located on Highway 301, as a result of an amendment to the town's borders in the mid-1990s. See if you can spot the amendment on the map below: I kind of wonder how this practice squares with the famous ideal of "no taxation without representation". What we have here is a town of <500 people who voted themselves the power to levy taxes on unrelated drivers passing not even through, but nearby. The drivers, obviously, were not consulted. Why is the town supposed to have this power in the first place?
- a3n 12y ago
  > I kind of wonder how this practice squares with the famous ideal of "no taxation without representation". Any restriction will be worked around. In general, these rackets allow municipalities to avoid raising taxes, or even bothering to ask, and it allows politicians to crow about not raising taxes, yet still have the revenue that honestly and openly enacted taxes would bring.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    But I'm not trying to focus on the fact that they're raising revenue by calling their new taxes "traffic fines". That's true, and it's bad, but what's really "special" here is that they've legally enacted the holy grail, a tax on foreigners living abroad. Why would the town residents care even if this were actually called a tax? Conversely, why is the town supposed to be allowed to tax non-residents?
    - a3n 12y ago
      > why is the town supposed to be allowed to tax non-residents? The argument would be the same for all speed trap/tax collection stations. It's not for revenue, it's for public safety. They would be irresponsible to not enforce speed limits. In the case of the town in the article, it would be dangerous for drivers to not suddenly slow down from 65 mph to 55 mph for the 0.2 miles that the road passes through the town. In general, it may help to keep in mind that you and I are nothing but resources for corporations, governments, law enforcement, spy agencies and other criminal organizations. The United States is a consumer paradise, in the same way that Argentina is a beef paradise. The land of the free range citizen.
- lmm 12y ago
  The idea that people (collectively) have all sorts of rights to "their" land is pretty fundamental. If you're going to go after this there are bigger issues e.g. why does a country like Brunei with a tiny number of residents "own" the vast nearby oil reserves?
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    National borders are a military question. If you looked at the link, or just skimmed the quote I selected from it, you must have noticed that the town didn't decide to tax its own area; it annexed a nearby portion of a freeway and taxed that (seriously, go look at the picture). How do you think Malaysia would respond if Brunei suddenly claimed ownership of nearby Malaysian territory?
    - msandford 12y ago
      It's not a freeway, it's a highway. I went to school in Gainesville, FL and that road is on the way to Jacksonville, FL and it was a huge pain in the ass. There was only a mile or two of road that the city "owned" and there were ALWAYS cops out. The speed limit went from 65 down to 40 a mile before the one stop light and then a mile after the stop light, back to 65. Florida actually enacted a law saying that a city may derive no more than 25% of its revenue from fines specifically because of this city. I'm sure they immediately broke the law and just cooked the books for years until recently there was a big scandal and the city nearly had its charter revoked. http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/us/hampton-florida-corruption-survival/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/29/us/hampton-florida-corruption-...
      - thaumasiotes 12y ago
        My apologies; to me there is no difference between a freeway and a highway.
        msandford 12y ago
        No worries! The reason I make the distinction is that here in the US typically a freeway is something that has controlled access (on and off ramps) and no traffic controls like stop lights, stop signs, etc. Highways are much more up to interpretation but typically have higher speeds (hence highways) but may well have lights, much less controlled access, etc.
- bpodgursky 12y ago
  Cities in the United states have no authority not granted to them by the state. If the people of Florida felt strongly about it and organized, they could have the speeding zone removed.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    Well, I asked > Why is the town supposed to have this power in the first place? not "why does the town have this power in the first place?" The scenario you describe is ludicrous; Hampton received state attention when it ticketed a representative, not because there was a grassroots movement in the other 99.99% of Florida. Some perspective: - They annexed a 0.2 mile stretch of highway. Imagine trying to keep track of all the roads in your state in 1000-foot increments. - Hampton appears to be, by eyeball, somewhere between 1 and 4 square miles (eyeballing this isn't totally ludicrous because, with the exception of the since-abolished freeway patch, it's a square). Call it 4 square miles. Florida is 70,000 square miles. So the level of scrutiny required here does not and cannot exist. Why does a tiny hamlet that happens to be located near a freeway get the right to unilaterally declare that the freeway is now part of town and start hitting up everyone who passes by for cash? There's no sane reason for them to have this power.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

Rumford 12y ago

I'd argue that the profit motive is fine, private security works without this problem. The issue with asset forfeiture laws is that they create an incentive to violate the fourth amendment. The funny thing about this New Mexico law -- all it does is echo the Constitution. It shouldn't be necessary.

clavalle 12y ago
>I'd argue that the profit motive is fine, private security works without this problem. The payment incentive is very different for private security. They don't get to seize property. The more relevant analogy would be privateers. Turns out they did have similar problems going off their assigned duties and sometimes dropping their charter altogether and just becoming pirates.
- Rumford 12y ago
  Sure, that's pretty much my point. It's all about the incentives. When the job description and rewards say "take people's stuff," then that's what they'll do.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

The evidence suggests this isn't a fix. Some states do have the proceeds of civil forfeiture go directly to the general fund... still abused. Until recently, there was even the loophole of bringing the feds in, have them seize it, and then they'd give 90% back to the PD. To some extent, this still works despite Holder's speech to the contrary. The AG has failed to reign in federal law enforcement agencies who refuse to follow the order given. Civil asset forfeiture can't be reformed. Period. It has to be abolished.

thaumasiotes 12y ago
Frankly, I think requiring that the property owner has to be convicted of a crime before the property can be seized qualifies as a real "reform".
- abruzzi 12y ago
  And that is functionally the difference between "civil" asset forfeiture and "criminal" asset forfeiture. To be sure even criminal asset forfeiture can be abused, but it is significantly more difficult, and you have to be convicted first. And at some level criminal asset forfeiture is a just response because without it you create perverse incentives (a white collar crime that nets you 100 million and 5 years in jail, is a very good exchange of time for money if there is no forfeiture to take the "ill gotten gains.") What I'd like to know is if NM is the first state to ban civil AF? I'm happy to be a NM resident today, but I wonder if we are a aberration? Not to over simplify, but liberals tend to favor limits on police power, and conservatives tend to be split between the so-called "law and order" conservatives who want power the police and harsh sentences, and the libertarian conservatives who want strong limits on police powers. NM tends to have a lot more libertarian conservatives than a lot of other parts of the country making us a good location for this law.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The concern I have with civil asset forfeiture is that the seized property goes directly to the sheriff. It usually doesn't; most state law forfeitures go to general funds, not the seizing law enforcement agency. Local agencies doing forfeitures under federal law were allowed to keep some of the proceeds directly, but these forfeitures have been curtailed (the asset sharing with agencies still exists, but the opportunities for locals to seize assets under federal law or have them "adopted" as federal seizures have been reduced.)