"It can happen to you," is usually a nice statement that talks about love or winning the lottery or something to that effect. Not this time.
What if I told you that you can be pulled over, have cash (a couple grand) in your car, or valuables of any kind, or the car itself, on the side of the road by the police and they can voucher your car or cash or jewelry and sieze it with no arrest, charges, or due process at all?
Not in America, right? Wrong. Watch this.
The War on Drugs is winding down. States are finding that it's basically filling their jails with non-violent offenders who are small time (virtually micro-time) offenders using or selling ten dollars or a hundred dollars of marijuana. They're finding that it's not worth putting someone in jail for 25,000 dollars a year for a 20 dollar bag of drugs.
Well you don't have to be Sam Walton to figure that out.
But the result is simple. The War on Drugs has been going on for so long that now a lot of people are employed by it, particularly police.
But now that the War on Drugs is being rethought and reconcieved there's a problem. Police departments still need money. Police still need to be paid. District Attorney's Offices still have to justify their use.
For the full story see this article by Jen Stillman in the New Yorker (an example of excellent journalism).
What's happened is that now normal everyday people are being pulled over and their goods are being taken. Now it's not the college educated well paid well heeled that are being abused by these civil forfeiture laws. It's the poor. It's the working class. It's the barely surviving middle class who can't afford a lawyer from their flush bank accounts back at home, who don't know how to work the system.
The result: working class and lower middle class people are being robbed by their local police departments with no charges, no claims, no due process, no convictions, no lawyers (because civil forfeiture does not require a lawyer to be provided to the indigent).
The result: The War on Drugs has a new victim which requires no due process at all. That victim: Y.O.U.
What if I told you that you can be pulled over, have cash (a couple grand) in your car, or valuables of any kind, or the car itself, on the side of the road by the police and they can voucher your car or cash or jewelry and sieze it with no arrest, charges, or due process at all?
Not in America, right? Wrong. Watch this.
The War on Drugs is winding down. States are finding that it's basically filling their jails with non-violent offenders who are small time (virtually micro-time) offenders using or selling ten dollars or a hundred dollars of marijuana. They're finding that it's not worth putting someone in jail for 25,000 dollars a year for a 20 dollar bag of drugs.
Well you don't have to be Sam Walton to figure that out.
But the result is simple. The War on Drugs has been going on for so long that now a lot of people are employed by it, particularly police.
But now that the War on Drugs is being rethought and reconcieved there's a problem. Police departments still need money. Police still need to be paid. District Attorney's Offices still have to justify their use.
For the full story see this article by Jen Stillman in the New Yorker (an example of excellent journalism).
What's happened is that now normal everyday people are being pulled over and their goods are being taken. Now it's not the college educated well paid well heeled that are being abused by these civil forfeiture laws. It's the poor. It's the working class. It's the barely surviving middle class who can't afford a lawyer from their flush bank accounts back at home, who don't know how to work the system.
The result: working class and lower middle class people are being robbed by their local police departments with no charges, no claims, no due process, no convictions, no lawyers (because civil forfeiture does not require a lawyer to be provided to the indigent).
The result: The War on Drugs has a new victim which requires no due process at all. That victim: Y.O.U.
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