Comment by lewis500 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lewis500 | Hacker News Reader

Only as I get older do I realize how incredibly bad elements of law enforcement in the US can be, and legally so. Few cops and agents are bad, but it is a system with little filtering, personally or institutionally, of the bad elements. Civil asset forfeiture is overwhelmingly unpopular, but when states try to reform it the law enforcement groups rally around it mightily. Essentially they want the right to steal money because they need money; nobody really makes a sincere argument the situation is any different than that. In Alabama they recently tried to reform it. In an op ed by the leaders of district attorneys and sheriffs, the authors wrote “What incentive would local police and sheriffs have to invest manpower, resources and time in these operations if they don't receive proceeds to cover their costs?” I dunno: it seems like if they are professional cops they should just solve crimes and such that seem important; by “investing manpower” they are not investing like a firm does but pulling resources from elsewhere to spend trying to take things from oblivious people. Also in alabama, sheriffs are allowed to take extra money from the food programs at the county jail, and they buy themselves vacation homes this way. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-sheriff-legally-pockete...

As an outside perspective, how do you quantify, that only "Few cops and agents are bad". If your job contains robbing people, I would rationally word it the other way around. Hopefully there are quite a few cops who dont follow the rules and subvert the system of organized theft. But if you take policies like civil forfeiture or for example police union cards for family members this sounds like organized crime to quite a few people not living in the US.

"Hopefully there are quite a few cops who dont follow the rules and subvert the system of organized theft"

There is no rule that says they have to do asset forfeiture. It's a choice. One of the biggest problems in the US is that laws are not very clear and clarification is left up to the courts.

Well, it's criminal, and it's organized.

Classic quote from Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

I don't think it matters whether few or many cops or agents are bad.

The source of harm is the forfeiture law.

With such laws in place, even a single bad actor can do enormous damage. We need to repeal the civil forfeiture laws.

> it is a system with little filtering, personally or institutionally, of the bad elements

Wrong. It is a system that explicitly filters out the good elements.

"US Court Ruling: You Can Be “Too Smart” to Be a Cop. Police department disqualifies anyone whose IQ is “too high" (https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be-too-...)

"Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops"(https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...)

That's the same thing as barring someone for being overqualified, isn't it?

I can't think of many jobs you'd be turned away from for being too smart.

One rationalisation is that hiring someone "too smart" for the work required means that they'll soon become bored and move on, so your effort invested in training them is wasted.

This is exactly what I’ve heard the justification is.

For a modern American police force in the Bay Area, for example, taking a candidate from academy entrant to fully qualified officer is a six-figure cost.

That's why many Bay Area LEOs focus their recruiting on recent graduates from other Bay Area forces.

"What incentive would local police and sheriffs have to invest manpower, resources and time in these operations if they don't receive proceeds to cover their costs?”

This feels to me like the end result of "govt should be run like a business!" thinking. Every election cycle we hear about govt should be run like a family budget, and getting out of debt, etc. And govt should run like a business, because that's efficient, etc.

I found this interesting article from Pew Research on how the perspective of the public sharply differs from how the police perceive the current state of affairs.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/01/11/police-views-publi...

I partially disagree with your statement that this is legal behavior by law enforcement.

It's one of those situations where IIRC the Supreme Court's relevant ruling from long ago was just plain wrong.

I think just about every sane adult agrees that this violates the Bill of Rights, regardless of any SCOTUS opinions to the contrary.

Yeah, it seems to be pretty clear. They justify it on the technicality that they are not charging you, but an inanimate object with no rights; but honestly they could do this with almost anything you own, including your own body, through reasoning which is only slightly more ludicrous.

Even "wrong" decisions have the force of law.

I haven't read any specific cases, but I wonder if 5th (and 4th) Amendment issues were raised at trial in the first place; perhaps those protections weren't even put in play properly.

[Update] an example of this concern is raised elsewhere in this thread[0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17211885

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