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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible thing and laws need to be changed, but it’s an absolute aberration.

Define “aberration”? As of 2015, police via civil forfeiture stole more than burglars. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

An estimated $68.8 billion over 20 years approximately, between state and federal authorities. The Institute for Justice has published a couple of their Policing for Profit profiles (that attempts to keep track of and update on civil asset forfeiture figures and progress/regression), with the most recent in 2020.

California is averaging $25m per year the past 17 years; Illinois is averaging $33m per year; Texas is averaging $18m per year; Florida is averaging $49m per year. Some of the best states are Idaho, Montana, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, Colorado, West Virginia, Iowa, Wyoming, Hawaii, Oregon, Connecticut and Missouri.

Here's an infographic by the Institute for Justice for 2018, sizing the states by their civil asset forfeiture thefts (note, the color of the box doesn't coordinate to the scale of theft, that coordinates to state law grades):

https://i.imgur.com/sqg4FiC.jpg

It's too bad these scumbags aren't targeting Michael Dell ($50b), Jim Walton ($65b) or MacKenzie Scott ($61b) with civil asset forfeiture. Sorry MacKenzie, that Amazon stock no longer belongs to you, it has been 'impounded' by the Washington State Police. It's being held as, uhm, evidence that you may have had a role in the operation of a massive counterfeit goods ring. Congress or the Supreme Court might finally get around to stopping the practice (or maybe they'd just place a ceiling on how much you can steal from one person).

So what are the odds that it happens to a given American or tourist?

Ideally we could accept that this (or any other given topic) is bad without feeling the need to exaggerate its significance to ourselves. This is what I miss the most about the pre-Twitter days.

Bring on the downvotes.

if you are tourist you might as well paint a bullseye on your car. How a tourist is going to fight in a foreign country against police of that country?

This is pretty easily testable. If tourists have “a bullseye” on them, then surely we would expect a significant share of tourists have experienced CF—say 25%. So where is the evidence that a quarter of tourists to the US have said experience?

Not all civil forfeiture is theft. Too much of it is, to be sure, but it is still mostly used to forfeit proceedings of crime.

It’s all theft. Restitution and fines can be assessed without guilty-until-proven-innocent forfeiture.

If a person committed a crime and you can prove it, charge them with the crime then take whatever assets you can prove were gained from criminal activity. There is no merit in civil asset forfeiture whatsoever, regardless if it is done to criminals or everyone else.

it is absolutely not an aberration, it is the status quo, it happens to thousands of people a year, it's happened on camera during many episodes of C.O.P.S. (an old popular TV show where camera crews follow police officers around doing their police job), and it mostly happens to non white people (of course) but it also happens to white male citizens, too — some of whom happen to be software engineers going to buy a used car off craigslist or some shit, who have posted to this very website (can't find the link now, as my kids are rioting, but it's there)

I think gp means by aberration, "it's not something that most people have to worry about". Which is true. If even 10% of Americans had to deal with this it would become illegal. The police prey on those they think they can get away with, and those who have a lot of assets to forfeit (but not too much). They are often right.

Yes, this is correct, and I can’t imagine any other definition of the word. Accepting the claim that this happens to thousands every year, that still puts us in “odds of being struck by lightning” territory. It’s still wrong, the laws should be changed, but no one should fear coming to the US on account of it.

What makes you think you and I aren't the kind of people the police can get away with preying on?

Even if you fit the skin color type, AND the car type AND the speeding profile, you'd probably STILL have to make multiple trips driving up and down states where your license plate doesn't match to bring the likelihood up above "aberrant"... You would be driving so much you wouldn't have time to read and comment hn. (I just drove across four states and there was no time for hn, and I'm an addict).

Yeah, I cited the white HN craigslist car buyer as a kind of 'it can happen to even us!!'abberation. Probably 99% of civil forfeitures are seized from black/hispanic people.

E.g., yes, "those they (police) think they can get away with" but not "those who have a lot of assets to forfeit".

I think most of the cases I've read about on this site were like (non-white) people flying with, say, $25,000 (and who could credibly claim that was roughly their total liquid net worth).

It is possible for 99% of civil asset forfeitures to happen to minorities AND for 99% of minorities to not have to deal with them.

Also, If you are a minority, and the police stop you while driving, you are probably more worried about other things like police violence, than civil asset forfeiture (this doesn't excuse civil asset forfeiture ofc)

I recall an episode of COPS where the Sheriff (?) of Multnomah County Oregon was grinning into the camera, declaring how good he's going to look driving around a pickup truck that they'd just confiscated.

Multnomah County featured a lot on COPS. That Sheriff was camera ready.

No, it's not an aberration. Cops in various departments around the country take classes to do this most effectively.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asset+forfeiture+classes&t=lm&ia=w...

That doesn’t refute my “aberration” claim. If you can demonstrate that even 1% of citizens or tourists have been subjected to civil forfeiture then I’ll withdraw my claim. But I’m pretty sure CF is on the order of “struck by lightning”.

Of course, the reading comprehension of people in this thread has been aggressively low, so I will repeat that none of this vindicates CF.

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