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While civil forfeiture is scary, my (very very brief) stint doing criminal law as a public defender showed me that there's also a bigger side of this -- seizing

• itistoday2 11y ago
  I am concerned that by calling it "civil forfeiture" this article is using language to mask a very basic crime. What was described in this article is called stealing or theft. To call it anything else is to mask and downplay what was done to this man. It is to enable the very act that was committed. George Carlin observed this as a dangerous trend in our language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc Call it "civil forfeiture" once if you have to (perhaps as a footnote). But to repeatedly use such "soft language" is to delay an end to such injustice.
  • thedufer 11y ago
    Civil forfeiture isn't "soft language", it's a precise legal term. You may not agree with the principle (I certainly don't), but calling it theft is no different from a libertarian doing the same with taxation.
    • itistoday2 11y ago
      > Civil forfeiture isn't "soft language", it's a precise legal term. It is both. > calling it theft is no different from a libertarian doing the same with taxation. Taxation today is theft.
      • itistoday2 11y ago
        In common usage, theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. We are unable to give consent (consent implies choice), so it is theft through coercion (prison). See "group fund" for a voluntary form of taxation: http://groupcurrency.org http://groupcurrency.org
        • rhino369 11y ago
          Guess who defines who the rightful owner of property is? Government.
          • itistoday2 11y ago
            > Guess who defines who the rightful owner of property is? Government. A compelling argument. In that case this appears to be a non-story, and I'm not sure what the fuss is about.
        • vidarh 11y ago
          I always find this line of discussion amusing, given that most forms of property only meaningfully exists in the presence of coercion or violence to restrict others access, yet in my experience the people who gives the "tax is theft" line tend to be right wing libertarians who also tend to want strong enforcement of private property laws and tends to be totally humourless about it if Proudhons "property is theft" is brought up as a counterpoint.
          • itistoday2 11y ago
            I've lived long enough to be called "right wing" for the first time in my life... that is a first (I think). As far as Proudhon (first time hearing this), it seems he was referring to land only, and that "property did not extend to exclusive possession of labor-made wealth." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft! It's unclear to me how someone can "own" a piece of land which they did not create but stumbled upon. To me it just seems like a situation where the person with the biggest gun wins, and has nothing to do with "property". So in that sense, perhaps, yes, claiming ownership over something you did not create (Earth) might very well be interpreted as theft. However, the notion of "land property" is a potentially convoluted rabbit hole that is very different from a straightforward discussion about taking money people earned with their own labor under the threat of force.
    • zaroth 11y ago
      What's the articulable suspicion? "He had the money, so we took it" about sums it up. In its time, I believe civil forfeiture can serve a just and necessary purpose, but this is not it.
    • Goronmon 11y ago
      You may not agree with the principle (I certainly don't), but calling it theft is no different from a libertarian doing the same with taxation. I would say that calling civil forfeiture as theft makes more sense then comparing civil forfeiture to taxation. Unless you live in an area where "taxation" means armed men come to your house and demand all your cash on April 15th. Honestly, I don't really buy the argument that in cases like this, its wrong to call the action theft. I don't find the terms mutually exclusive depending on the context.
      • thedufer 11y ago
        > Unless you live in an area where "taxation" means armed men come to your house and demand all your cash on April 15th. They don't bother with armed men. If I refuse to pay long enough, they just take it straight out of my paycheck (wage garnishment). No need to intimidate someone when you own their bank.
      • LordKano 11y ago
        Unless you live in an area where "taxation" means armed men come to your house and demand all your cash on April 15th. It's the threat of armed men being sent for them that compels most people to pay their taxes and file the return. Both taxation and civil forfeiture have much in common with theft.
    • hinkley 11y ago
      Are you saying you haven't noticed the systemic pattern of baking soft language into laws? Have you not noticed the names they put on bills to get them through Congress (state or federal)? Right to Work? No Child Left Behind? DOMA, Internet Freedom Act. Hell, the Affordable Care Act (I SAID IT, sue me!) These guys have it figured out, and when we figure it out they just change tactics. If they're that brazenly Orwellian on the title page how can they not be spending time softening the text in the middle?
      • sdoering 11y ago
        In Germany we have a great blog dedicated to detecting these words and dismantling them. And showing what they really mean and what the cover. It is called "Neusprech.org" (newspeak.org translated). Really a great resource.
    • guelo 11y ago
      We shouldn't use technical jargon because it obscures the plain fact that they are stealing.
    • mapt 11y ago
      It's a hell of a lot different from a popularly-legislated general tax on the economy. These people are committing literal armed robbery, in order to fund themselves. It is explicitly contrary to the Fifth Amendment of the constitution, in spirit and in letter. They are pulling people over and rifling through their wallets for cash. That's not supposed to be how constitutional liberal democracy works, at a very fundamental level. "nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."" "Civil asset forfeiture" precisely resembles the worst caricature of the behavior we were attempting to defend against when we wrote that. And it's affecting everybody going through police jurisdictions that rely on that revenue, not just the minorities that the drug war was designed to persecute in order to get Reagan & Bush Sr re-elected. I understand some of the politics of why the executive and the legislature ramped this up - perceptions that a generation of children was being lost to a class of sinister urban drug-pushers, and a desire for vigilante justice even when we couldn't convict them of anything. I don't understand how any judge anywhere could approve any of it. They're supposed to be above that. If you accept these legal fictions into your worldview, what's the point of having a justice system at all? This should have been ended decades ago, when hysteria about the 'crack epidemic' wore down. As far as I'm concerned, when a local cop steals money from you and claims he has a form that says that's okay, that's a reason for the FBI or Internal Affairs to come in and prosecute that person. Because they stopped being a legitimate representative of the people in any capacity: they stopped shepherding law-abiding citizens and started feeding on them. We used to have a word for that, 'dirty cops', and we used to believe, or at least hope, they were aberrations.
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Under some legal systems I can execute a homosexual for merely being a homosexual. But don't you dare call that murder. Under some legal systems you can own a sex slave, but don't you dare call it rape. Under some legal systems the government can take what they want because the law allows them, but don't you dare call it theft.
  • zaroth 11y ago
    You could imagine reading it this way: DEA agents confronted the only black man in the train car and demanded he open his bags, shook him down, and stole his cash. In a brazen theft which DEA agents later claimed was legal under the veil of "civil forfeiture" the state prosecutor has refused to press charges, and the judge on the case has refused to provide relief for the plaintiff... I hope we continue to see a relentless stream of articles highlighting these cases one after another until finally the outcry builds loud enough for something substantive to be done at the federal level. It's to the point where we need an 'Audit the Fed' level response to scrutinize every dollar seized, and victims should be compensated in full, with interest. I wonder how the story would have gone differently if the man had refused to consent to the search. Probably not much better, heck, that would probably be considered 'evidence' against his money. I also wonder what the burden of proof is for showing the source of the funds. If you walk into court with bank statements and W-2s, why is it so hard to get the money back? Judges are obstructing this for some reason, and I think that's an angle to the story we haven't seen much reported.
    • meric 11y ago
      That's a good idea for a blog.
    • bobbles 11y ago
      > I wonder how the story would have gone differently if the man had refused to consent to the search. Probably taze the guy, then shoot him 7 times in the back as he runs off
      • venomsnake 11y ago
        This is so last year. Current trends in LE is to first shoot the guy than taze him
        • Mtinie 11y ago
          ...and then ask if you consent to a search of your bag.
        • 11y ago
  • sdoering 11y ago
    Well in medieval times we called these people "robber knights" [1]. <!-- BO sarcasm --> Good to see, that the US are capable of learning from history by importing great achievements and ideas of former times from the old world. <!-- EO sarcasm --> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron
  • Houshalter 11y ago
    George Orwell wrote a fantastic essay on this that is worth reading: >In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. https://web.archive.org/web/20120106011107/http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/index.cgi/work/essays/language.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120106011107/http://www.k-1.co...
    • dba7dba 11y ago
      dropping of the atom bombs on Japan I respectfully disagree that it's indefensible. It was either 100,000 Japanese civilians in those 2 cities OR million or more American casualties. AND if the invasion had taken place, millions and millions of Japanese civilians would've died also. I agree, with proper PR language, anything can be made look half decent and therefore tolerable.
      • myth_buster 11y ago
        I respectfully disagree that it's indefensible. It was either 100,000 Japanese civilians in those 2 cities OR million or more American casualties. AND if the invasion had taken place, millions and millions of Japanese civilians would've died also. I respectfully disagree with your defense as it's speculative.
        • 11y ago
  • juliangregorian 11y ago
    Double-plus ungood.
  • evanpw 11y ago
    I agree with your conclusion, but this is an example of the "worst argument in the world": http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst_argument_in_the/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/e95/the_noncentral_fallacy_the_worst...
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • giltleaf 11y ago
    This is a good point and I'm struggling to grasp how deep this article indicates this problem goes. I just finished reading Emergency by Neil Strauss and this just motivates me more and more.
  • copsarebastards 11y ago
    It's not just theft, it's conspiracy to commit armed robbery.
  • mikeash 11y ago
    There's a great deal of reluctance in the media to use anything but official terms for these things. For a widespread recent example, see the constant usage of "enhanced interrogation" and a complete absence of the word "torture" except when repeating its usage by someone else.
• nyolfen 11y ago
  >We've moved away from a society where the police were there to truly protect and serve the community (think 1950's/60's beat cop lol maybe if you're white welcome to the logic that everyone has had to operate under
  • Camillo 11y ago
    AFAIK, before the war on drugs, civil forfeiture had seen significant use during Prohibition, against cars used to transport contraband. Which means most of the targets would have been white bootleggers. But I'm being pedantic. I do agree with the spirit of your comment - it is vital that we immediately divide along race lines, lest any actual change take place.
  • guelo 11y ago
    Everybody in Andy Grifith's idyllic town was white. Meanwhile half the country lived under legally sanctioned apartheid.
• simoncion 11y ago
  Hey. Do you have the expertise needed to weigh in on my question? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9536840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9536840 Thanks!
• forrestthewoods 11y ago
  Fuck that. Even criminals deserve fair legal council. And to not be treated like filthy animals. Shame on you. Edit: downvotes deserved. I read it several times and still interpreted the first paragraph to be in support of taking money because it denied full legal access. My brain flipped a word into "good". Despite being a public defender no less! Leaving comment anyways because that seems like the honest thing to do. Sorry.
  • mattlutze 11y ago
    OP was a public defender.
  • vidarh 11y ago
    It would seem you might want to read the comment you replied to again.
    • forrestthewoods 11y ago
      Yup
• hackercurious 11y ago
  The State of New Mexico has just banned asset forfeiture. HB 560, introduced by New Mexico Rep. Zachary Cook and passed unanimously in the legislature, replaces civil asset forfeiture with criminal forfeiture, which requires a conviction of a person as a prerequisite to losing property tied to a crime. The new law means that New Mexico now has the strongest protections against wrongful asset seizures in the country. Link to the bill: http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/15%20Regular/final/HB0560.pdf http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/15%20Regular/final/HB0560.pd...
  • fsck--off 11y ago
    The WaPo article (the submission) mentions this bill, but finishes: "But New Mexico's law only affects state law enforcement officials. As a result, in New Mexico — and everywhere else, for that matter — DEA agents will be able to board your train, ask you where you're going and take all your cash if they don't like your story, all without ever charging you with a crime."
    • kzrdude 11y ago
      It sounds like a semi-criminalization of cash in practice.
      • spacemanmatt 11y ago
        Not at all. They steal bank accounts, boats, cars, and houses as well.
        • soylentcola 11y ago
          Sure, but I've got about as much money in my bank account (as opposed to cash) and nobody has ever asked me to prove it wasn't gained illicitly if I wanted it back. I've got friends with boats, I've owned cars, and currently living in a house owned by my SO. None of us has been targeted just for having those things. While I'm sure that they wouldn't hesitate to seize those assets if any of us were charged with some sort of drug offense, it doesn't come close to the way cash is treated. In this case and in others, the mere possession of a large sum of cash can be grounds for suspicion and seizure. It's like you don't really have a right to keep your money unless it's accessed via some plastic card or routing number.
• gadders 11y ago
  There is a good novelisation of this process in the Dean Koontz book Dark Rivers of the Heart. Worth a read.
• vfclists 11y ago
  How many commenters here have a deep personal commitment to press their representatives to change this law? Is this all jaw-jaw and no action?
  • spacemanmatt 11y ago
    Are you really proposing they represent me? http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fil...
• dragontamer 11y ago
  We've moved away from a society where the police were there to truly protect and serve the community (think 1950's/60's beat cop walking the blocks during his shift) to a totalitarian police state (constant erosion of the 4th amendment, nexus centers, sweeping overreaches of the third party doctrine, stingrays, and mass deployment of license plate scanners). Big Brother would be proud. Erm... a little bit of revisionist history there. You do realize that Martin Luther King Jr. was under watch by FBI Plants his entire public life, and warrantlessly spied upon under COINTELPRO? You do realize that Fred Hampton was drugged by an FBI Plant, before 40+ Police raided his home and shot him dead with automatic weapons as he slept? (also part of COINTELPRO program) The problems of policing are the same problems that have occurred for years. There were _always_ good cops who did their business correctly, there have _always_ been bad cops who have abused the system. As for the system... obviously it is constantly under flux, but I do think we're making improvements over the long run. I argue that today's system is superior to the 1950s. Anyone who disagrees with me is welcome to offer the first blow in a debate here and now. But mind you, good luck beating out COINTELPRO... which was not only warrantless spying on innocent Americans... but also was involved in direct assassinations in broad daylight. Its as if people have _completely_ forgotten about 1950s history. Red Scare? COINTELPRO? Civil Rights? Black Panthers getting assassinated by police? Lynching in the streets? McCarthyism? House Un-American Activities Committee? The Office of Censorship? These American institutions were shut down as the civil rights movement gained steam in the 1960s. Good gosh people. Life is better today. Not perfect... but better by all measurements. Learn some history, and stop pretending that the 1950s were a peaceful time. In the 1950s, you'd lose your job if
• vijayr 11y ago
  With some states banning civil forfeiture and many states legalizing marijuana etc, there still seems to be some tiny hope. On the whole though, yeah, it does seem bad.
• JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Why is this? I mean, are the police forces so (money) broke that they've needed to make up the difference by becoming this way? Or are they truly corrupt (I find this unlikely)?
  • dublinben 11y ago
    Law enforcement isn't entirely corrupt, it is just fulfilling its purpose, i.e. to protect the interests of the powerful.
• rebootthesystem 11y ago
  What's happened to our country is the equivalent of "death by a thousand cuts". I place blame on having devolved into a system where we have professional politicians and voters who are either apathetic, under-informed or both.
• Shivetya 11y ago
  when government agencies can bypass courts and assign fines, not offer jury trials, what safety does the common man have? Civil forfeiture is a major problem but the abuse of using administrative law judges (ALJs) is becoming a big one as well.
• jrs235 11y ago
  I can't recall the where I heard this before but I once heard that drug dealers purchase and wear expensive gold necklaces because if/when they get busted and booked, cash can [more easily] be confiscated (forfeited) by the police and assumed to be "dirty" drug money while gold necklaces need to be inventoried and kept safe as personal belongings. Then the dealer can get bail money from a friend with them knowing they can go and pawn the necklace to obtain cash.
• jrs235 11y ago
  Here's another example of how dreadful civil forfeiture is: https://mises.org/blog/war-cash-destroys-small-entrepreneur https://mises.org/blog/war-cash-destroys-small-entrepreneur