71% of Americans Oppose Civil Asset Forfeiture | Hacker News Reader

71% of Americans Oppose Civil Asset Forfeiture

today.yougov.com

132 pointsDiabloD332 comments

58% would follow the drugs, 30% would follow the money? Following the drugs would catch smaller fish at each step.

Also 72% of people were unfamiliar with the term.

Serious question, does being unfamiliar with the term for which the survey is named taint the significance of the answers given?

Not if you ask probing questions that also explain the term which they have. I do wonder about the 58% though. Does the question assume that a drug deal has definitely taken place? Personally I would only choose to follow the drugs if there was uncertainty about the crime having actually taken place.

The person leaving with the money is not leaving with the necessary evidence that a crime has occurred. It is not illegal to carry money (most of the time).

You follow the guy with the drugs, so that you can seize the drugs and place them into evidence. That, combined with the LEO witness of the transaction, provides probable cause to get a warrant for the person who left with the money. You presumably also have the guy who left with the drugs in custody, and the prosecutor might be able to convince him to testify against the other party.

If you follow the guy with the money, the only evidence you have is the LEO witness testimony. As we have been repeatedly reminded in the smartphone age, that sometimes contradicts the objective evidence. (That is a polite way of saying that some cops lie in order to achieve a desired enforcement outcome.) The jury couldn't know for sure whether the cop saw a drug deal and decided to go after the "bigger fish", or whether he just saw a guy with a lot of cash and came up with a plausible pretext for taking it.

Cops should chase the hard evidence necessary to secure a conviction, not the potential forfeiture targets that pay for all those cop toys.

(Of course, there was no third option that might satisfy someone who opposes the continuation of the "war on drugs".)

Very good point. I suppose the question is a false choice in the first place. The officer should just write down both tag numbers with a "worst drug deal ever" note...

> Serious question, does being unfamiliar with the term for which the survey is named taint the significance of the answers given?

Being a poll on a website taints the significance from the start. A sample size of 1000 is usually enough to get you some insight into the mind of a large population, but it has to be an accurate representative sample. A poll sponsored by HuffPo is unlikely to be a representative sample of the US.

YouGov is a reputable polling company. They're regularly used by British newspapers on all sides of politics (it was a British startup, the CEO's daughter was a friend's roommate).

The polls are sent to people registered with YouGov, who get paid a tiny amount. When I was a student it seemed worth my time, but I didn't get many polls -- probably there are lots of people in that demographic. Once I was employed I got more polls, but it wasn't worth my time.

The demographic breakdown is given in the PDF.

30% would be okay with permanently seizing money as long as they "suspect" it might be connected with a crime.

Put a different way, 30% of those interviewed are perfectly fine with the "Arrest the black guy driving a nice car" routine.

It says: "To the best of your knowledge", not SHOULD. The should one is after that, which says:

"Law enforcement should be able to permanently seize money or other property if they suspect it’s connected to criminal activity, even if no charges have been filed . . . . . 7%"

So 7% are ok with that routine.

There is no reason whatsoever to imagine such a correlation. Despite the standard narrative, it really is possible to be wrong about things for reasons besides racism!

The interesting part is that 72% never heard of the term. That typically show how people are deeply involved... Ok they disagree, but, do they do anything about it? No! They were not even aware of it in the first place. That's the problem here in my opinion. People need to know what kind of fucked up things the government is doing, maybe then we'd have enough engagement to change anything.

They were not even aware of it in the first place.

I just asked two people around me if they knew what Civil Asset Forfeiture was. Both said no. I then asked them if they had heard about the police confiscating the money from the guy who was driving back from Las Vegas after he won a jackpot. They both said yes.

Sometimes it's not a lack of awareness of the issue, it's a lack of awareness of what the the technical or legal term is.

Wait, you mean that policing shouldn't be a revenue generating activity? What a radical concept!

I don't even see it in those terms. In some contexts policing clearly can be a revenue generating activity (e.g. private security guards). Civil asset forfeiture is awful regardless of whether the policing is generating revenue.

Ah, but that doesn't matter, does it? Because the program's defenders get to point to big piles of drug money and cigarette boats and say "hey, you don't want drug dealers to keep their ill-gotten gains, do you?" And the issue is clouded enough that nothing has to change. It's enough to make you sick.

Assert Forfeiture as it exists today is farcical:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...

The practice does lead to inane case names (in rem cases do, in general), but by far this is the greatest: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I_Am_The_Beast_etc._v._Michig...

Presumably this has to do with most Americans having at least some understanding that Amendment IV exists, as well as likely believing that any judicial arguments in favor of civil forfeiture are unconstitutional bullshit.

Even the Magna Charta did contain a passage saying, that the ruler can not deprive a free man from his property without proper trial.

When this is now changed by law trickery of modern governments, we fall back into times of non-liberty.

It is the same as with the "war against terror" -- in the "war against criminals" we sacrifice basic freedoms and thus the basis of our societies. Even worse, we make out of those who shall persecute criminals, criminals themselves (because there are already plenty of cases documented, where the policemen use this to get advantages for themselves from innocent victims).

The other 29% are cops and government employees

No, they aren't, which is even worse.

and I bet 90%+ of people are against police committing crimes

but that's not going to change anything

Government officials breaking laws or abusing their office should be held to a much higher standard, and I would like to think most people agree here.

> I bet 90% of people are against police comitting crimes

Survey Question: Would you agree or disagree with a police officer or federal agent holding a suspected terrorist longer than 24 hours without charging them with a crime?

This is the sort of question that I think more than 10% might agree with. Then, police have endorsement to commit crimes which trend up proportionately to what they can get away with. Substitute terrorist for paedo or rapist, etc. However, this question negates the fact that the implementation and scope may be larger than how it is framed.

I hope 90% of people would uphold AT MINIMUM, the US constitutional laws in the bill of rights. But you and I might be disappointed

Here's a good article about Civil Forfeiture written by Pennsylvania State Rep Jim Cox:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thinktank/Pa-must-reform-...

It says "These are the topline results of a YouGov/Huffington Post survey of 1000 US adults interviewed August 25-27, 2015 on Joe Biden."

What does Joe Biden have to do with this? The string "Biden" does not appear in the full results PDF...

Are civil penalties against corporations (e.g. SEC/CFTC fines, mortgage crisis fines) examples of civil asset forfeiture?

No, fines and civil forfeiture are completely different.

Forfeiture would be more like the EPA confiscating (and then auctioning off) a factory because it might have been polluting too much maybe, with the onus on the company to prove that they weren't polluting. Or the SEC confiscating all the money you made on an insider trade, and then demanding you prove that you didn't insider trade before getting the money back.

Just to be clear, the order to show cause process of a civil case involving the SEC is this: pay up or prove to the agency beyond some standard of proof that you didn't do what we said you did.

The differences are that they don't take the money in advance and offer you the option of fighting the case.

Thanks for the clarification.

(Perhaps the most important difference is that if you're being fined by the SEC, you've probably got lawyers who are ready to defend you. One of the most egregious things about civil forfeiture is the way it preys on poor people.)

Asset forfeiture suits are structured as in rem proceedings. You are not charging the presumed owner with a crime, nor accusing that person of a civil offense. You are literally accusing an inanimate object of being involved in a crime.

For instance, you might charge a $20 bill with being used to buy methamphetamine. So you take the $20 from the person who was holding it. The identity or presumed innocence of that person is entirely irrelevant. Then you set the $20 bill down at the defendant's table in court and loudly accuse it of being a very, very naughty banknote, who ought to be punished severely, then reformed utterly by being spent for a righteous cause. The judge then casts a severe gaze down upon the money from the bench, and asks the money if it has anything to say in its own defense. Andrew Jackson remains mute.

Meanwhile, everyone else--those who had not been rendered permanently insane by their forfeiture classes in law school--look on and think to themselves "WTF? This is nucking futs."

The (former) owner of the $20 then has to prove that they have standing to represent the $20. Then they have to prove its innocence, because it is not a human, or even a corporate fiction of a person, and therefore does not have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Everyone outside the existing system sees it like this: the cops stole $20 from some guy, who was never convicted, or even charged with a crime. Then they put him through the legal wringer before even giving him the opportunity to get it back.

A fine has an accused party, and the accuser has to show evidence that the accused was violating a law, regulation, contract, or some other agreement before that fine can be collected. The fine would then be collected after the criminal conviction or civil judgment happened.

The logical place to use forfeiture is where no owner or presumed owner can be found, and there is clear evidence of criminal activity. If you find an abandoned car with stolen plates and a missing VIN, and it had 20kg of cocaine and a stolen AR-15 in the trunk, the state would probably forfeit the car. Anyone coming forward to claim ownership would presumably be charged criminally. You only resort to in rem when no actual person can be found to take responsibility.

That makes some amount of sense.

Unfortunately, forfeiture has warped into a legal mechanism for highway robbery.

100℅ of police departments support it.

Seized assets should be sold and put into social security.. not into new toys for pigs.

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