Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

A huge problem here is that the government has zero skin in the game. Random people working for some three letter agency are able to plunge you into a bureaucratic labyrinth at the flick of a wrist, and even violate their own guidelines with an extremely low probability of accountability or repercussion.

For example:

> Under federal forfeiture law, the government was required to initiate a forfeiture case within 90 days after the Kazazis responded to the seizure notice. If it failed to initiate a forfeiture case within that window, it would be required to promptly return the money to the claimants.

> That deadline passed over a month ago, on April 17. CBP has not filed a forfeiture complaint; nor has it returned the money.

This kind of behavior should be severely penalized. The Kazazis should be awarded a minimum of 10x the market value of the asset, or about $570,000, and NOT to be paid out of some magic bottomless government account funded by tax dollars, but directly from whomever the head of the offending department is.

Then the horrible life experiences they're afflicting on innocent individuals might actually be bumped up from "P4 - Low priority" to "P0 - Get this shit fixed now"

Better yet, the Albanian gentleman should be deputized to seize and hold the property of the officers who flagrantly violated their oaths and his rights, garnish their paychecks, and let them wait anxiously for him to get around to telling them 'why'.

That's returning to an older conception of justice, one that is rather harsh and violent: the law of talion[0]. While it may appeal to our gut feelings, it goes against the more humane enlightened form of justice we have nowadays. I wouldn’t want to go down that road.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye

They could in fact file what is called a "Bivens claim", directly against the individual agents involved.

Whether it would make the Feds more cooperative or not, is the question.

You start holing these cops personally accountable for this or any of the massive amounts of other disgusting actions they commit on a daily basis and I guarantee this fixes itself overnight. Cop murders someone, electric chair. Cops steals money, they pay back their entire life savings. It's about time we hold public servants to a higher set of standards rather than a lower one. If only there were such incentives, they'd be guaranteed to work. But there are no consequences to police even for murder, let alone theft.

This isn't what I intended to communicate at all. Lower level personnel behaving badly is just a symptom of the real problem, and punishing them would be an easy scapegoat for higher up authority.

Just like with a toxic CEO in a company, firing some employees isn't a long term solution to fixing the culture. The leaders, the heads of the departments, is where the accountability should be.

Absolutely. The supervisors and chiefs of the cops who murder, steal, or otherwise break the law should indeed also be held accountable. But so should the actual perpetrators. Because in many of these cases, it is actually the low level cops who decide to commit crimes without any outside influence. Theft like this probably does go all the way to the top, but when cops murder unarmed, innocent people who are no threat to them, that's more on the cop committing the murder more than anyone up high.

And those scumbags are the ones that get promoted because bringing money into the system is "good police work". The rot is so embedded.

It's a criminal conspiracy - you go after the leaders and the low level thugs.

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