I just stumbled upon someone asking how much cash he can carry on himself without a risk of a police officer taking it away. Then when I scrolled through comments it sounded like a police officer can decide to take away your money and NEVER EVER give it back!
Is that actually true??? I mean, the idea that police officer can take your money if they decide you have “too much” on you is insane already. But even if so, there is no way you can’t then go to police station or something and get it back!
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The government says “we *think* you got your property/money (it can be your house/estate if they want) illegally or let it be used in the commission of a crime, so we are taking it and if you want it back you have to hire a lawyer and sue us.”
If you (or someone else) smoke weed in your car – forfeit it
If you have a lot of money and cops assume it’s from selling drugs with zero evidence – forfeit it
There are laws against this in some states, so cops there send it to the feds who keep 20% of the money/value and give them 80% back.
They specifically use Civil Asset Forfeiture – which is legally a lawsuit against your property – instead of *criminal* asset forfeiture because criminal suits require 1) a conviction by a jury 2) a gov appointed lawyer for people who can’t afford one. Civil suits require neither of these.
Even though most defenders of this obvious form of theft say it’s to deter criminals, it’s mostly used against poor people who can’t hire lawyers to get their stuff back. Take a $3000 car from a person who would need to spend $3500 on a lawyer and take time off work to get it back, and what do you think they’ll do? They give up, and you sell the car for a couple thousand dollars, which is how cops make tons of money.
Cops will also just take large amounts of money and make you fight to try and get it back. They robbed a religious migrant group after one of their concerts this way.
Again, if it were about criminals, they would use criminal asset forfeiture. They don’t because it is about making money, and they make *billions* this way.
This could be completely off base but IIRC, I read a comment that the reason why the ‘stereotypical’ pimp is depicted with lots of gold chains was because it circumvented the civil asset forfeiture law.
Eg. They get arrested with thousands of dollars in cash that can easily be argued were proceeds of crime & then it gets confiscated.
But the gold chain is a personal item that can’t easily be seized (legally) so they give the chain to an associate (who wasn’t arrested or held) who goes to the pawn shop, gets the cash & thats the bail money.
Please correct if that’s wrong.
Oh yea in America the cops just be stealing anything they consider related to criminal activity. 8 out of ten times it never makes it back to the original owner unless it was drugs that they bought back from the police.
One of my friends in highschool was searched because “he had a suspiciously large amount of cash” which was seized because he was selling candy💀
John Oliver covered this in detail on his show. It is very messed up. Some states have banned it, but many still allow it.
its when the cops steal from you, legally. and its nearly impossible to get your money or property back.
it really is legalized theft that police engage in. anyone that says different just hasnt been robbed by a cop yet.
When I learned about this, I found it amazing how the land that is always crying “freedom” has legalized police theft. It also has legalized political corruption – lobbying.
The government pretends it’s legal to plunder your money and property on the pretext that you have to prove it’s yours, but it’s clearly forbidden by the Takings Clause. If it were ever litigated in an impartial forum, the whole scam would be thrown out.
The Supreme Court has been derelict in their duty to enforce the bill of rights many times. This is one of the most egregious examples.
One of the most egregious examples of this was the man driving a truck, heading to buy a new truck. He had something like $45,000 which came from several people who worked together as migrant farm workers. They had saved and saved and pooled their money to buy a new truck.
He was stopped, the money was seized and they never saw a penny of it. This made me want to cry, so sad.
Why is it so that companies can do huge crimes and never lose the money, they just get fines?
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