Hacker News Reader

Comment by meekrohprocess | Hacker News Reader

Civil asset forfeiture makes it really annoying to travel through some of the prettiest parts of America.

Say that you like the parks and forests in places like Montana, Arkansas, Utah, New Mexico, etc. You're going to do a lot of driving along state highways with a lot of nice things packed away, and maybe a small water/dirt vehicle.

Most of those state highways have small towns every 20-80 miles where the speed limits briefly drop in increments of 10mph down to 30-40mph. In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one. You can feel the desire to just take everything that you own; it's palpable. I've gotten enough "warnings" to make a suit out of carbon-copy paper.

That's to say nothing of racial prejudices in many areas of the US, and you'll probably have to stop for CBP checkpoints in states like New Mexico, even in the middle of 80mph+ interstates.

It was a bad situation in 2018-2019, and I can't see it getting much better when restrictions start to lift in 2021. We badly need our courts to strongly re-assert the 4th Amendment.

View on HN

Decades ago, it was well known in many areas that if you had a military sticker on your car you were to be pulled over whenever possible. They did this because they knew you weren't a local.

It seems the courts treat the 4th amendment about as well as they do the 2nd and the 10th.

More than anything the War on Drugs, which Civil Asset Forfeiture is a part of, has lead to the direct destruction of the bill of rights.

This is one of the primary things that lead me to be a political and philosophical libertarian, and why I oppose prohibition completely (even for so called hard drugs)

Most people think anyone that oppose prohibition on weed or other drugs simply wants to use them, but for me it is recognition that the War on Drugs has lead to the complete subversion of every single right protected by the US Bill of rights, every single one.

Not just the 4th, 2nd, and 10th, but all of them

The War on Drugs is the mechanism through which an enormous amount of the bad laws and precedents have been created and permitted.

Add Mandatory Minimums and Three-Strike Laws to your list of reasons to hate it.

>The War on Drugs is the mechanism through which an enormous amount of the bad laws and precedents have been created and permitted.

>Add Mandatory Minimums and Three-Strike Laws to your list of reasons to hate it.

But don't forget the economic impact either:

1. We spend Billions on "interdiction" and "enforcement", even though the vast majority of folks who do use drugs that are currently illegal don't have a dependency problem, and treatment on demand for the small number that do would be significantly less expensive;

2. Putting someone in prison costs tens of thousands of dollars a year, and that person isn't contributing to the local economy where they lived, a double negative impact on the economy;

3. The stigma of a felony conviction usually makes most better paying jobs unavailable to folks convicted, further reducing economic output;

4. Building ever larger prisons and hiring more and more prison guards, administrators, etc. takes money away from other, more productive endeavors, often limiting economic growth due to lack of infrastructure, better quality of education and a host of other factors.

The goal isn’t prevention or increasing economic output, it’s to punish people for breaking social norms. And that goes triple for people of color. It promotes the power of the powerful, who can always make an exception for their friends while claiming with certitude that all other addicts are morally deficient.

So people can make arguments all day long that the War on Drugs is expensive and ineffective and unwinnable, but some people aren’t going to care, because it’s a long-running culture war that empowers the powerful.

I agree with your position and wish to add this quote:

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H.L. Mencken)

From your example, it sounds like they’re upholding the third amendment by giving soldiers no quarter.

When posters from rural areas complain about "coastal elites" (often a dogwhistle for PoC) stealing from their hard-earned living via taxes, this is one of the things that flashes through my mind. So many - SO many - of America's small towns cannot sustain themselves through honest business and labor.

https://texasmonitor.org/in-small-town-texas-speeding-driver...

These are the people who erase the visceral horror of slavery from textbooks, who detest cosmopolitanism, who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants). But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so, that they have to move. That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism. But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s

have never been pulled over in the manner you describe and drive through those states all the time. sounds like a made up or embellished story

You must have shorter hair than the OP.

I have been. New Mexico in particular with out of state plates I've been pulled over 3 times for little to nothing.

Then I moved to NM and have lived here for over a decade (with NM plates) and have been pulled over once and let go with a warning.

I have to back OP up on the little towns, rapidly dropping speed limits and desire for revenue because it matches my experience completely.

Interstates are a different situation so maybe that's the difference in perception. Or maybe I just got unlucky. There were no dogs in any of the pull overs although in one case they did want to look through the car.

No need for the hyperbole.

Yes, plenty of people unjustly have their property seized.

No, the chance of it happening to you just driving through these states on a vacation is very, very low. For example, there were 400 total forfeitures in Utah in 2015[1] and well over 10M tourist visit the national parks in Utah alone.[2]

But yes, that 400 is 400 too many.

[1]https://ij.org/new-data-shows-utah-law-enforcement-overwhelm... [2]https://gardner.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019-TTtrifold.p...

Drive through El Paso, then tell me what you think about probable cause and illegal searches.

I've road tripped all over the US without ever encountering that kind of behavior. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but your characterization of expecting to be pulled over and have a dog search your car is a bit melodramatic.

I understand your misgivings, and I'll admit that I don't literally have enough carbon paper to make a suit out of warnings.

But I do have a lot of them, and no actual tickets from those areas. I have had multiple K-9 searches with a clean car, and I did regularly get pulled over for doing less than the posted speed limit.

I can't prove that civil asset forfeiture is the reason, but my vehicle would have been a juicy target because of the things attached to it.

Doing less than the speed limit is indeed strange, that behavior is probably exhibited by drunk/doped up drivers more often than sober drivers. The fact that you get warnings demonstrates that they pull overs are not due to ill will, if they wanted to steal from you they were half way there: too slow is probable cause for a traffic stop and they could easily plant some drugs or just lie, the statement of a police officer is evidence. Set your cruise control at the speed limit or 1 mph over and don't swerve.

Driving below the speed limit is strange, driving above the speed limit is illegal.

Almost sounds like the police can pull over and search whoever they like, weird.

Driving over the speed limit is speeding, therefore actionable. Driving under the speed limit indicates impairment, therefore actionable. Driving exactly at the speed limit indicates a wise-ass and we can't have that.

I just finished taking a defensive driving course to get a speeding ticket washed.

The course material mentioned a couple of times that, quote, "driving at an unsafe speed" is illegal. And what's unsafe takes into account the prevailing conditions (so you can be ticketed when going the speed limit if, say, it's raining), and also the fact that deltas in speed are more dangerous than absolute speed (so if the speed limit is 55, everybody else is going 60, and you're going 40, you may well get a ticket 'cause you're creating a danger.

Almost sounds like the police can pull over and search whoever they like

Yep, that's true within 100 miles of the border - an area that accounts for the vast majority of US residents. I've been stopped several times near the Mexico border for no real reason; one office asks me questions for a minute or two, just long enough for their drug-sniffing dog to make the full round of my car and come up empty.

>> Almost sounds like the police can pull over and search whoever they like

> Yep, that's true within 100 miles of the border - an area that accounts for the vast majority of US residents.

If you're outside that 100 miles they can just make something up.

so obeying the law is strange behavior or probable cause...

I find that very interesting.

> Doing less than the speed limit is indeed strange

It really depends on locale; Some states (hello states rights southern states) have a 10 - 15mph speed trap (reform the police) style law from the speed limits in 1975. Some people drive on military bases, where, if they go 1mph over, it can affect their career.

Me neither, but I also know people who do experience that. The difference is that I'm a white guy and they are not.

The only time I ever got pulled over in that part of the country is when I was doing about a hundred mph. I think that was a bit unfair since the road was straighter than an arrow from horizon to horizon, but breaking dumb laws is still lawbreaking I guess.

Driving a hundred mph on a remote, empty road can be one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do. Large animals can and will jump right out in front of you; more than usual as they're not habituated to the dangers of cars.

I remember once driving through West Texas on US-90 (the highway, not the interstate) in the evening on a cross-country drive. I don't think I passed more than a handful of cars, if that, but after barely missing several antelope despite driving well under the speed limit, I just called it a night and pulled into the next motel I found.

It really drove home the point that the dangers aren't only the obvious ones. So even on a straight, empty road as flat as Kansas[1] and in broad daylight I would never go so fast. Who knows what might jump out at you, from any which way.

[1] I've driven US-50 coast-to-coast. Not much of interest in Kansas other than experiencing exactly how flat it is, particularly the western portion coming down from Colorado.

Also, if your tire is damaged (visible to the exterior of the tire or otherwise), fast speeds could cause a blowout. A blowout at fast speed can induce a rollover.

If your going to speed, at least make sure your car is in good shape the best you can.

I agree. This occurred about a week I had the car in the shop to be checked out before the trip. I only had about a thousand miles on it since it was last in a garage.

Totaled a car doing around 90mph on I-90 outside of Buffalo, WY when a deer jumped into the side of the car. It hasn't changed my driving behaviors, but I start to sweat bullets when the sun sets.

Large animals are part of the reason most people I know who can afford to do so drive large pickups and SUVs around these parts. My mother-in-law seems to have a deer run-in every other year.

Bad drivers live big cars where they are safer, and everyone else is not.

If there's no other traffic around and nothing to hit I don't see how you can find fault with him going 100+mph. It's like any other dangerous thing people willingly do (e.g. rock climbing). It's also only like 15mph faster than the light traffic on a clear day speed on most beltway interstates to put it in perspective.

Because the United States--or most countries, for that matter--doesn't have autobahns. Interstates have all kinds of potential hazards owing to their multi-purpose function. But especially on rural highways that aren't limited access there's a ton more, like driveways hidden behind signage, or some kid on a 4-wheeler flying out a drainage swale.

Just because you think you're alone on a road doesn't mean you actually are. I'm not clutching pearls. I grew up in a rural area with relatively long (but not Texas long) distances between points of interest, and where people often flew down rural county roads. There're reasons car accidents are so frequent out in those parts. You get lulled into a sense of complacency until the tragic moment you realize your perception was wrong. Having grew up in said rural area, I'm probably less risk averse than most people. But I don't feel the need to point out the crazy stuff I've done or seen growing up to establish my credibility; some stuff is just objectively dangerous to oneself and bystanders, and driving 100mph on American public roads is one of them. And, to be clear, pointing out the danger is not the same thing as admonishing people for doing it. Pretending it's anything else but dangerous, though, just leads to people making even more dangerous decisions. The OP said the law was dumb; it's not dumb because it is dangerous. Full stop.

Large animals in the middle of nowhere on land so flat you can see for miles? I hit a deer once in Pennsylvania so I'm wary of the possibility, but that only concerns me when visibility next to the roads is poor. If there were corn fields or tall grass next to the road I'd be going slow.

I’m a white guy. I can absolutely attest to the type of policing the parent comment is referencing. I’ve grown up in and traveled all over the midwestern and southwestern United States and I can tell you right now, police in rural areas absolutely _are_ looking for any and every excuse in the book to pull you over, search your vehicle, and question you far more intensely than the situation warrants. I’ve also had my car searched by K-9 after getting pulled over for an alleged turn signal violation, so it’s definitely not melodramatic or hyperbolic. For reference, I was driving a stock Acura with in-state plates when that happened. Not anything flashy or suspect. They rely on asset forfeiture for income to make up budget differences and it’s absolutely immoral to leverage law enforcement like that. They know that what they seize goes directly into their budgets and they act on it. More than likely we have the war on drugs to thank for it, too, but that’s a different argument for a different day.

Your comment echoes my experience... in New York City. I’m white too, and I’d gotten pulled over more times in NYC than anywhere else. There’s always something: you drove over the yellow line for a second; your hands weren’t on 10 and 2; we may have seen a cell phone at your ear; why does your car have a big dent? The NYPD is one huge pain in the ass.

I live in Florida now; sheriff’s deputies in my county are very chill. They wave and say hello, and they don’t care why there’s something weird in the back of my truck.

Huh, this is strange. My experience has been the opposoite When did you live in NYC? I'm not white (I'm of Indian / South Asian ancestry.) I lived in NYC for years, and even owned and drove my own car in NYC for a few years (2017, 2018, and 2019). There were many times that I'd been speeding, and I've never been pulled over for speeding (not even once) inside of NYC. I've only been pulled over by NYPD once, and that one time was not without reason (I had made a right turn where right turn were not allowed). That one time they were pretty professional.

There was even a time when I was distracted, and drove partially through a red light (in Queens), and the car coming from the other side was a NYPD cruiser. If I hadn't braked, I would have hit them. The officers inside the NYPD cruiser glared at me (with a very angry face), and I braked, and then reversed back to behind the red light. But they went on their way (and didn't give me a ticket or anything). I'm not sure why my experience has been so different. Maybe the NYPD changed after wave of BLM/etc. protests that started in 2014?

Lack of evidence isn’t evidence of lack. Presence of evidence is evidence of presence.

That is to say just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen - and because it happened to other people, we know it does happen in spite of it never having happened to you.

Thankfully, the libertarian party of Florida successfully lobbied Tallahassee, and civil asset forfeiture is no longer legal in Florida.

Florida is an amazing state, I wish I lived there. DeSantis has successfully banned local governments from future coronavirus restrictions including lockdowns/shutdowns.

There is 100% chance I will lose a substantial amount of money due to a lockdown, there is %99+ chance I will survive the virus. Of course this risk profile isn't for everyone but that's the beauty of personal liberty: the freedom to make the choice that's right for you.

> Of course this risk profile isn't for everyone but that's the beauty of personal liberty: the freedom to make the choice that's right for you.

But your personal choice does determine if you put the lives of not only everyone around you but also your entire community at risk. Does that count for anything?

Personal protection is just that: personal. If masks are not adequate to protect you from others who may not be following best practices then I think the PPE standards need to be adjusted. You cannot trust/expect everyone to adhere to them perfectly.

I live in an area that isn't Florida but does not adhere to quarantine guidelines. Personally, I don't know of anyone who has been sick. We wash our hands and take basic precautions and anecdotally that has been sufficient.

Personal disclaimer: I am anti lockdown. This is causing substantial damage to our economy and I depend on my community having the financial means to purchase my services and products.

I work in construction and the majority of the jobsites do not wear masks. We are all ok. If you are feeling sick then don't be an asshole and show up to work. Everyone I know has followed this basic guideline. Of course you will say you can have it and be asymptomatic etc and we could discuss this ad nauseum but I will just tell you I am not open to changing my mind. I have an absolutism mentality on this position. I don't think we know enough about the virus to make these types of detrimental restrictions. For example we now know putting someone on a ventilator for an extended period of time typically does more harm than good.

> Personal protection is just that: personal. If masks are not adequate to protect you from others who may not be following best practices then I think the PPE standards need to be adjusted.

That's not the point of using a mask at all. It never was, to begin with.

Masks are intended to limit or eliminate the chance you infect people around you. Sure, they also help you not breed in particles, but masks are quite literally a filter you place over your mouth and nose to stop the droplets you're emitting from spreading around.

The rationale is that covid carriers can spread the disease for over a week without even suspecting they have it. They spread the disease by spraying infected droplets through their airways. Thus, the right thing to do is to be on the safe side and ensure we cannot contribute to spread the disease.

If the whole community acts responsibly and takes basic measures to stop the disease from spreading, the disease stops spreading and the epidemic is reigned in.

You wear a mask to protect the community and ensure everyone around you stays safe. You're intentionally putting everyone around you and everyone you contact with at risk if you not only refuse to take basic precautions such as wearing a mask but also engage with people who also refuse to do so.

NYPD is extremely corrupt. I know someone who became an officer there and quit and moved to long island due to the pressure for corruption/hazing/etc.

Another friend of mine is a retired NYPD lieutenant and I forgot exactly what happened but he told me a story of someone claiming to be innocent and his response was "How do you think I became lieutenant?"

Don't fuck with the white shirts.

While we're sharing anecdata, here's mine: I've driven all over this country, in almost every state, frequently in rural areas, and usually speeding (and not trivially).

I've rarely been stopped and never felt like the police were trying to seize my vehicle or acting more intensely than the situation warrants.

I don't know what the difference is, but I can second GP's statement that the experience you and GGP had isn't universal.

I know it happens, and for some unlucky people it happens more than once, but I think discussions like this tend to overstate how often it occurs because of self selection bias.

I definitely understand that I might be the unlucky one, I'm in no way implying it's the norm, and the selection bias is definitely a thing here - but what I'm trying to convey is that it's far more common than people think, and that even if it's pretty uncommon to rare, the consequences can be far worse than warranted or earned, and in many cases can be devastating, which is unacceptable for a system that is entirely constructed and can be changed with some legislation and enforcement.

Your first comment was certainly implying that its the norm:

> I can tell you right now, police in rural areas absolutely _are_ looking for any and every excuse in the book to pull you over, search your vehicle, and question you far more intensely than the situation warrants.

As was the root comment in this thread:

> In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one.

That's what I'm disputing here, not the injustice of CAF when it happens. Even people who oppose civil asset forfeiture (including me) still feel comfortable traveling throughout the nation.

I'm not suggesting that people don't travel - my personal opinion is quite the opposite - I'm only saying that it's more common than people think and part of my statement to that was a personal anecdote in agreement with the OP because I've experienced nearly the exact phenomenon they described.

I would not call that "implying the norm".

Regardless, CAF needs to be abolished and I wish the crowd that cares so much about the Constitution would care about Amendments that aren't the 2nd and 1st.

In this case we're not looking for the universal or the average, we need to fix these awful things happening to these people - even one example is too much and we have way kore than that, and you should be happy it hasn't happened to you yet, because it's nothing more than luck.

> I don't know what the difference is, but I can second GP's statement that the experience you and GGP had isn't universal.

How frequent should that problem be until it's recognized as a problem?

From where I'm standing, civil asset forfeiture sounds like blatant corruption and outright stealing made good on paper.

I completely agree; many of these cases are unjust, there are undoubtedly many cases of corruption, and the law should be changed.

I only take issue with the suggestion in this thread that we should be afraid to travel around the nation because of these rare events. There's far more reason to be afraid of dying in a crash.

I’m not saying you should be afraid of traveling the U.S.

I’m saying I’ve traveled the U.S. a /lot/ in several different capacities (from personal trips to touring with bands) and that rural areas by and large have given me more problems in terms of police than urban areas ever have.

I’m not implying that you should be afraid to travel - I’m saying quite plainly that the incentives around CAF are severely misaligned and that cops are very aware of this fact and abuse it when they can, and that takes different forms but one of those is mundane traffic stops that turn into roadside interrogations.

Thankfully my state requires a conviction for asset forfeiture to remain. Otherwise you are entitled it back within a set period of time.

But then again, our cops aren't exactly despised or severely strapped for cash. They're mostly like the cop from wayne's world.

Reducing illegitimate traffic stops is one of the side-benefits I see as more cars become self driving.

I've had a lot of problems crossing the borders between Colorado and neighboring states, presumably because my Colorado plates are considered probable cause that I'm smuggling marijuana. It's always "oh I thought your tail light was out but now I see it's not", "your registration has expired... oh I must have read it wrong". I've been ticketed for things that when I showed up to court were laughed at or dismissed for not even being a thing. I've yet to have a drug dog search the car, but I've had a handful of very confrontational and aggressive police officers get in my face and take a good look around my car making vague comments about how something fishy is going on, asking where I'm going, where I've come from, who's who in the car, etc.

It's worth noting that these civil asset forfeiture programs were sold to a lot of these small towns as a way of generating revenue off of popular drug routes.

E.g., a town is off a highway that's a known part of a drug route. A consultant comes in to the police dept. and does a powerpoint showing an average annual amount of drug money they can confiscate in order to fund the police/town budget. And the consultant probably has numbers from other towns who did the same. Boom-- you've got yet another civil asset forfeiture program in yet another small town.

So you get this town's police pulling over a larger and larger set of people who fit whatever description they've taught themselves rakes in the dough. There's a big incentive to do this, and to enlarge the set of who can be pulled because-- until relatively recently-- there has been very little risk.

I'm going to rankly speculate that the value of the OP's stuff he was lugging was high enough for such officers to take the time to pull OP over. But since OP didn't fit the drug runner description and the officer couldn't find any other pretense, they let them go.

I'll also rankly speculate you've carried stuff of much less value visible to an officer who sees you drive by.

Race almost certainly plays into this as well, but I haven't read a study to know the numbers on that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com