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Comment by Jormundir | Hacker News Reader

They're using a legal loophole, charging the property with being complicit in a crime, not the person. So the piles of money they seize aren't protected by the constitution. This is obviously absurd, corrupt, ridiculous, etc. We have a very corrupt justice system.

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If the police catch you outside of an electronics store with a broken back door in the middle of the night walking away with a big screen TV do you think they should have to convict you of a crime before they take the TV from you?

And if you say "no" to that then where exactly do you draw the line in between law enforcement taking obviously stolen property and law enforcement taking personal property?

I don't ask this question rhetorically, I ask it because I'm honestly not sure.

Yes, I think they should have to charge you with a crime. If they're sure enough that you took it, they should be able to get a conviction. If they're not, they shouldn't take it.

> where exactly do you draw the line in between law enforcement taking obviously stolen property and law enforcement taking personal property?

The difference is the "obviously stolen" part. None of the ludicrous instances of civil asset forfeiture I have read involve property that is obviously (or even allegedly) stolen. Heck, half the time it's just a cop pulling someone over on a highway, stealing their cash, and sending them on their way.

Without data to support the claim, I'm pretty suspicious of the idea that half the time it's a cop taking money from some random person on a highway.

People have been posting these stories here for a while, here's a couple of examples:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st...

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/21/us/asset-seizures/

That first one was ok.

In general though I wish articles like this relied less on anecdote and more on data. I'm way more convinced by evidence of large scale issues than I am by a single story no matter how egregious.

I was talking only about blatant misuses of civil asset forfeiture, and the "half" figure wasn't meant to be taken literally. All I meant is that there are plenty of instances of civil asset forfeiture where there is not even the pretense of criminal involvement, where a police officer simply takes property from someone and it's up to them to fight to get it back.

The software I work on has plenty of bugs (as it was made by humans) but it's still pretty useful. I think to have any real discussion here we need some sort of data on error rates. Sure, it's sucks for the guy that gets his rightful property taken from him. But is that happening 10% of the time? 1% of the time? .01% of the time?

My opinion on the matter would change drastically depending on which one of those numbers reflects reality.

I don't understand. My position is that blatant abuses of civil asset forfeiture should happen less and should be punished severely. The standard required to seize assets should probably be higher, and there should be far less burden on the asset owner to reclaim their assets.

In your analogy, that's me saying that we should try to reduce the number of bugs in our software. I don't think this is controversial.

Ah. Then we agree!

I think I mixed up your opinion with some other folks who think we shouldn't have asset forfeiture at all. Sorry about that. My mistake.

If there is a suspicion of a crime they should be able to stop and search you (hence the reasonable clause). But if they only see you carrying a TV they should not be able to stop and take it. And that is what they've done. "You have a lot of money in your possession, it must have been ill gotten gains from a crime so we will take it." They do this without even knowing what crime was committed.

To add to that much of the property in criminal cases isn't claimed to begin with. When they bust a drug stash no one in their right mind would claim ownership on neither the drugs nor the money seized.

That money will get into evidence and will normally be returned the the federal reserve, the program allowed the DOJ to appropriate a portion of that money and distribute it to local law enforcement agencies to increase their funding.

Money and other assets will still be seized and they will still not be returned to the criminals they were seized form even if they do not go to trial this might seem unfair but those assets are unclaimed if they claim them they need to prove ownership and that will get them into a sea of trouble.

Where will this money go now, well most likely back to the fed or will be kept on the DOJ books, I really don't understand why people have trouble with this policy or why they hail the halt to it as some great achievement to civil rights.

Because the cops can simply pull you over for a bogus traffic violation, search you, seize any cash you have on you, and send you on your way. Now it's up to you to prove that your $3000 in cash was legitimate.

Costs more than $3000 to fight the case, so what are you going to do about it? The cops just stole your $3000 and there isn't shit you can do.

And now the government has stolen it from the cops. Well, it's better than nothing I guess.

It creates an obvious conflict of interest. The cops now have a reason to abuse their power. They get paid.

Take it from you and put it in evidence? Sure, but that is a time limited thing. The court will either rule it is your TV, and they should give it back to you, or it is ruled as stolen and given back to the proper owner. The part where they keep it is obviously wrong.

I'm fairly certain that when assets are forfeited any party has the opportunity to claim the property. There is no case where no claim is found valid and law enforcement gets to keep it.

From wheat I read, police have been pulling people over, and if there is cash in the car, "suspected" it might be used for drugs (even though the accused claims it's for other reasonable purchases) and then the person doesn't get the money, even after making a claim to get it back.

In your example it's not forfeiture, it's evidence. Evidence treated differently. It's either held until a verdict is reached or it's returned to its rightful owner.

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