Interesting article. Here's the conclusion, from Wikipedia:
"In late 2012, the ACLU announced a settlement in the case, under which police must now observe rigorous rules during traffic stops in Tenaha and Shelby County: traffic stops will be videotaped, and the officer must give reason for the stop and for suspicion of criminal activity. Drivers are to be advised that they can refuse a search, and dogs will no longer be used in conducting traffic stops. Property determined to have been taken improperly must be returned within 30 business days. Also, asset forfeiture revenue from traffic stops must be donated to non-profit organizations, or used to pay for the officer training required by the settlement."
For once, the good guys won, although (like usual) no one was charged criminally in connection with it.
Everyone should donate to the ACLU, but try to give them a PO Box or something; their donation calls have crossed the line into "frustratingly annoying" more than once.
Hey thanks for sharing that. Glad to see there is some diversity when it comes to civil liberties advocates. (not that there is anything wrong with the ACLU as far as I can tell)
"Our four pillars of litigation are private property, economic liberty, free speech and school choice." - their website
What's the deal with school choice? Seems kinda random
One thing I wish advocacy groups allowed is donating towards narrower goals. For instance I support most of what the ACLU does, but I don't really care for their views on gay marriage and don't particularly want to fund that part. It would be great if I could donate to more specific parts of the organization (same goes for public radio, haha)
> What's the deal with school choice? Seems kinda random
There is a religious subset of the libertarian crowd that is all about those four issues. School choice means religious and/or home schooling (which tends to also be religion centered).
Their intersection with the civil liberties crowd is pretty small - they dislike acknowledging that there are systemic problems beyond their main issues. For example they don't believe in anti-discrimination laws because they say the market place (private property and economic liberty) will sort it all out - despite all historical evidence to the contrary.
For me, seeing that list would make me wary. My impression of such groups is that there are indeed some people who truly believe that but there are plenty for which it is simply cover for bigotry.
The enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend.
There is a religious subset of the libertarian crowd that is all about those four issues. School choice means religious and/or home schooling (which tends to also be religion centered).
School choice can also mean vouchers for semi-public technical or accelerated schools.
ACLU does quite a bit more than just support gay marriage, though. If they do a lot of things you think are great, and a few you're meh about, it's still good to donate.
The people who donate primarily for the gay marriage fight don't get to earmark their money either.
I don't see why they don't make it possible to earmark money - I think they would end up getting a LOT more funding:
People that don't want to fund gay marriage advocacy would donate to the issues that they find more important, and people that feel strongly about gay marriage would donate more because they know it would all go towards their pet issue.
Umm... did you actually read the link that you just cited? “Multiple factors are involved, but in general, lower to middle income couples usually benefit from filing as a married couple, while upper income couples are often penalized.”
Why do you oppose gay marriage? I'm not looking to start a debate, I won't even respond if you'd prefer (tho I'm sure others will...). I'm genuinely curious about the reasoning from someone who has given it critical thought and can articulate their viewpoint well.
Hey, the original parent poster: (I figure I'd weigh in)
I'm not strongly against gay marriage. I simply don't support it. Sorry if my explanation is a little disjointed. There isn't one particular issue that explains it all.
I see the whole issue as completely artificial. It was almost entirely created and started by Gavin Newsom (former mayor of SF). It was a demogogic move on his part to try to get support for his run for governor several years later.
Aside: Ironic it backfired and ended up pigeon holeing him as a far left politician.
No one talked about or wanted gay marriage before he brought it up.
A more nebulous reason is that society is moving away from marriage. People are more and more living in civil unions. Marriage has become a religious/traditional thing. So revising/redefining antiquated traditions to appease a group of people seems unnecessary.
I think the idea of redefining a term like marriage is also rather problematic for me. It's always described a union between a man and a woman, since like the times of Hammurabi - and now we're just redefining it? It seems a little absurd.
The address the issue, we created a new term. "Civil Unions". But for some reason this isn't good enough - and I don't know why. Seems like the real goal is to redefine a several thousand year old term - which kinda seems revisionist to me.
Another argument I've seen and that I've never seen addressed is: why do gay couples get to marry and not polyamorous people? Seems like there is a double standard here.I personally feel like if they're going to go through all of this, they might as well allow all marriage.
At the end of the day I wouldn't really care if gay marriage passed. What bothers me the most is that so much time, effort and money is spent on something that is a rather insignificant issue.
The right to visit loved ones at a hospital and the tax benefits are more symptomatic of broken hospital/tax laws than a huge national issue on par with the civil rights movement. I think calling gay marriage a civil rights issue is hyperbolic and disingenuous (and is polyamorous marriage a civil rights issue too?). I think there are way way way more important issues currently to deal. Thousands of people are rotting in jails for non violent crimes, thousands of people have their lives ruined by medical bills, thousands of people are forced into plea bargains for crimes they never committed. There is so much suffering happening around us, and we spend out time arguing about redefining marriage. It's just really frustrating for me to see this artificial debate occupy so much of the collective unconscious of the country (and now the world).
> But for some reason this isn't good enough - and I don't know why.
The same reason "separate but equal" wasn't good enough for black people in the mid 20th century: It isn't equal at all.
It's not about redefining a term or forcing people to think a certain way. It's about being recognized on a legal level as being equal.
> why do gay couples get to marry and not polyamorous people? Seems like there is a double standard here.
There's a stigma against polygamy due to it being used almost entirely as a way to abuse and imprison women and children. That's also ignoring the legal hurdles; for example, power of attorney gets tricky when there is more than one spouse. Same with inheritance.
> What bothers me the most is that so much time, effort and money is spent on something that is a rather insignificant issue.
You think it's insignificant because it doesn't affect you. However, for a lot of gay and lesbian couples, it's a huge issue in their lives for many reasons. The fact that you can't even imagine this being a serious issue for someone else is quite telling, and it's something all too common amongst people who argue against gay marriage.
You should take some time and look into yourself to see why you have such trouble empathizing with others.
>The same reason "separate but equal" wasn't good enough for black people in the mid 20th century: It isn't equal at all
"Separate but equal" when it comes to schools is very different than equality under the law; the latter being much easier to achieve and can be rectified by law when it falls short. Separate but equal in schools is intrinsically unequal, this is not true for civil unions. I know that the attempts to hitch gay marriage to the civil rights wagon is a stumbling block for some people.
> Another argument I've seen and that I've never seen addressed is: why do gay couples get to marry and not polyamorous people? Seems like there is a double standard here.
Restricting marriage to pairs of opposite sex plainly discriminates on sex in the same way that restricting marriage to pairs of the same race discriminated on race. Who you are permitted to marry is determined by your race/sex.
Limiting marriage to pairs does not discriminate in the same way. It may or may not be an inappropriate restriction, but its not the same type of discrimination that is at issue with either the opposite-sex or the same-race restrictions, so there is no "double-standard" in eliminating either or both of those restrictions and not eliminating the restriction to pairs.
I'm inclined to agree with you. Gay Marriage isn't a civil right's issue, it's a solution to a set of civil rights issues. Legalizing gay marriage doesn't help the child raised by his mom and an unrelated "auntie" who can't visit the kid in the hospital. It doesn't help the two best friends who have been living in a non-romantic domestic partnership for 20 years who can't both live and work in the same country.
I would prefer if we just make it illegal for anyone (IRS, immigration, employers, etc) to discriminate based on marital status. Problem solved.
Interestingly, I agree with a lot of what you said. I never understood the resistance to "civil unions". Why try to co-op a word with an established meaning when civil unions are in all practical respects exactly the same? I voted for gay marriage in the most recent election, but its always seemed like a non-issue to me. As long as there is no legal discrimination, who gives a flying fuck what its called?
> "Were there any drugs in the car? When Henderson and Boatright said no, the officer asked if he and his partner could search the car.
The officers found the couple’s cash and a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law, and escorted them across town to the police station."
The article doesn't say it outright, but does imply that they consented to the police search. Never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, should you do this. Even if you "have nothing to hide." These two thought they had nothing to hide too. But what you think doesn't matter when the officer's opinion on what is "suspicious" is all that matters. There is nothing whatsoever for you to gain from agreeing to a search of your property.
Don't give them probable cause and make them get a warrant. If you agree to a search you might as well hand your rights over at the same time. Depending on the officer(s) to exercise sound judgment and restraint when they have little to no incentive to do so is simply foolish.
How to decline a search without getting hostile or "looking suspicious" (pick one, or invent your own):
- "I'd really prefer not to, if that's okay. It just makes me uncomfortable, it's nothing personal."
- "I have a cousin who's a lawyer, and he said I should never let myself get searched or questioned without a lawyer. I feel like I should take his advice. I'm sure you understand."
- "I watched a video on the internet saying it's a bad idea to consent to a search, even for innocent people, and it made a pretty convincing case. Sorry to be so difficult, I know you're just doing your job."
Above all, stay calm, friendly, and respectful, all while standing firm.
From the article: "The report describes their children as possible decoys, meant to distract police as the couple breezed down the road, smoking marijuana. (None was found in the car, although Washington claimed to have smelled it.)"
Whatever you might say is moot, if the cops are willing to play that card.
It is important to remember that the police has an adversarial relationship to you. Their job is to look for reasons to arrest you. Asserting your rights or looking suspicious is not a crime.
> Above all, stay calm, friendly, and respectful, all while standing firm.
This advice cannot be repeated enough. Most of us deal with the police so infrequently that, in that adversarial context, we have very little practice on how to do it effectively. Worse yet, asserting your rights appears to violate many of the social strictures on not being rude and respecting authority. Quoting Sen no Rikyu, "that must be set aside".
Most of the time, most people get some level of service and protection, depending on various demographic, economic or geographic factors.
However, that changes if the police has probable cause to believe that you are
or could be suspected of having committed, in the process of commiting, or are about to commit a crime.
They are trained to look for indicators that provide that probable cause.
Once that happens, serving and protecting you is no longer their primary goal.
The police are expert at making that transition seamlessly while most civilians are bad at recognizing the change
or knowing that they have the right to withhold consent.
> "Liscense and registration and step out of the car"
> "Are you carryin' a weapon on you I know a lot of you are"
> I ain't steppin out of shit all my papers legit
> "Well, do you mind if I look round the car a little bit?"
> Well my glove compartment is locked so are the trunk in the back
> And I know my rights so you gon' need a warrant for that."
> "We'll see how smart you are when the K9's come."
I was surprised to read that arresting someone and impounding the car (and checking it with a drug dog during inventory) is legal for any traffic offense, including speeding by 1 MPH.
It depends on tone. If the cop starts aggressive, that's when you start using flat refusals. My suggestions were for the more common case: where the cop is casual, friendly and trying to lull you into a false sense of security. There can be value in playing a little dumb.
Exactly. Most officers aren't out to screw you over, but there are some who don't care how much they mess up your day/month/year/life. Lying to them, in any way, does not help you.
Ideally, you'd refer to an actual lawyer in your family or social circle, or your actual lawyer if you have one. It seems like a stretch though, that an officer would suspect or catch you on such a trivial lie. You could also just keep it vague: "I heard from a lawyer once that..."
Personally, I lean on "it makes me uncomfortable", which has the virtue of being both unfalsifiable and true.
(Side note: I wish I had a polite answer to "where are you headed tonight?", which is a question I don't feel I should be obligated to answer, but could turn the conversation hostile to refuse directly.)
The less you say, the better.
You don't have to explain yourself.
> I wish I had a polite answer to "where are you headed tonight?"
"I prefer not to answer" or "I'd rather not say" are both quite polite. If the questions persist, you can always say you'd prefer to answer questions in the presence of your attorney, which you should do anyway.
Without passing judgement on the advice, it doesn't sound to me like the cops in Tehana were going to be scrupulous about respecting the rights of the people they were stopping.
Surrely surreptiously recording the incident while repeatedly saying "I do not consent to this search" must provide some leverage when it comes to court.
That's not a lawful reason for suspicion in any of the many states where medical marijuana is legal; I don't recall the ruling offhand, but the court has said this.
There are only two states where there's any question about the legality of recording police officers in public without permission. The laws you're thinking of only require consent to record private conversations, and an interaction with a police officer on a public road is not private.
They were probably smoking marijuana. Who else has a pipe? Not that it justifies the fact that the smell of marijuana is a "get out of the 4th amendment free" card, mind you.
Not that I've ever smoked marijuana, but it's usually pretty easy to tell if a pipe has been used even once. Unless you cleaned your pipe in acetone before you left home, "it was a gift for a friend" is not going to cut it with a used pipe.
I don't know. Sometimes I think cooperating with cops can get you a lot---even consenting to a search. Especially (unfortunately) if you're white and upper class looking.
Refusing to do what a cop asks you to will pretty much always piss them off. Most of the time, that's okay, but sometimes you just want to be let on your way and be left alone.
> Sometimes I think cooperating with cops can get you a lot---even consenting to a search.
> Especially (unfortunately) if you're white and upper class looking
If "being white or upper class looking" gives you an advantage with the police then, by implication, not having those characteristics is a disadvantage.
This is exactly why laws exist and should, ideally, be applied impartially. I'd feel much better depending on the law than a cop's favorable feelings about me. I don't mind pissing off a cop of to assert my rights.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Please do not consent to any random searches. Cops can only do it legally if you consent. They will word it like you should consent, but please exercise your right to not not be searched! You can say no. While I have nothing illegal in my car I don't want cops rooting around in it on principal.
I am amazed how many people don't know they can and should decline a request to search. A friend of mine got pulled over for speeding and he told me "I had to let them search my car for drugs otherwise they were going to impound it."
An officer can force you out of the car, legally, and, if you have your cell phone in your hand, he could mistake it for a gun and kill you. It's enough to make me never want to leave my house.
If it makes you feel better the police can probably also break down your door on a no-knock warrant for the house next door and shoot you on your couch.
I'm sorry, I might be too unreasonable in my expectations, but the Bill of Rights are fundamental, basic starting rights in the United States. I think every citizen should have a basic understanding of just them, if nothing else.
Knowing your rights is important to not be taken advantage of. This should be taught in school.
I can tell you first hand that sometimes refusing to consent to a search simply doesn't matter. You'll be given the choice of allowing the illegal search, or having your car searched anyhow after you are removed from it at the point of a gun.
Right. But searching the car without consent requires probable cause. The point is not give consent.
Though I've seen cases where the defendant is charged with something and their car seized then the evidence is later found during an "inventory" of the vehicle.
You can't. Police have the authority to impound your car for any moving violation. They can inventory the contents of your car in the process.
Why doesn't this happen often? Fear of public outcry. That, and an officer needs the search to unearth evidence worth the paperwork and bother. Police officers have bosses just like you and me.
Your only recourse: follow traffic laws to the letter. Unfortunately, this is more difficult than it sounds.
This is good advice if there's a decent law firm nearby or you already have a good attorney on retainer. I'm guessing they had neither.
Keep in mind as soon as you decline the search, the cops will go out of their way to find multiple things to charge you with and then you have more problems than when they pulled you over.
...or they will just let you go. It does actually happen (http://youtu.be/8kfoDHYM9yM) and I would rather use my forth ammendment rights than be so scared not to that the United States turns into a police state.
The police "smelled pot". That's probable cause. It's possible that one of them had previously smoked some in the car, maybe some time ago (let's be honest - anyone who has a pipe in their car has probably used it, but that's not the kind of thing which will stand up in a court of law without also finding a stash).
But seizing a car because it's got a pipe in it is insane. Even if they had a small quantity of pot, that's crazy - a small stash for personal use doesn't make someone a dealer.
Hardly a chance, if you have a device that is used for criminal activity don't be surprised if that gives cops a reason to scrutinize you.
This article is so biased and reeks of agenda. There are no other more sympathetic people to do news stories for? My BS radar just off the charts. If you can look past the fair amount of cash in the car and the drug paraphernalia then there is a need for outrage. However, I can't.
While I might see a reason for seizure laws I could easily see them being abused. That said, the example given in the article isn't going to win over any opponents.
Where were the drugs? There was no solid evidence a crime had been committed. It is common for poorer people not to have bank accounts, which would explain the cash, and neither the cash nor the pipe are illegal.
It doesn't matter one tiny little bit if you think the people in question are drug runners, or even if they actually are, in fact, drug runners. All that matters is that the government took their property as a de facto punishment for having committed a crime (running drugs) without ever actually proving that they committed a crime.
So yeah, there was definitely an agenda here, but it seems to have been to demonstrate a genuinely scary trend in law enforcement and government overreach, which is exactly what it should be.
> This year, they’d decided to buy a used car in Linden, which had plenty for sale, and so they bundled their cash savings in their car’s center console.
I agree with the overreach of the law and possible, obvious abuses.
However, police are able to arrest for a crime at any point of the process. That said, other than ones that aren't reversible (like murder), they usually let you commit the crime and then arrest you. This makes it easier to prosecute you.
I don't necessarily have a problem with asset forfeiture just that it needs to be required to be associated with a conviction, there should be a cap on what the police get (to avoid overzealous use), and there should be a quick and logical appeal process to prevent innocents having property taken via 'splash damage'.
I'm pretty sure the pipe could and would be considered 'drug paraphernalia', and therefore possession is a misdemeanor in Texas.
Of course, pretty much everyone has 'drug paraphernalia' lying around somewhere. My coffee grinder, my wife's kitchen scales, our snack-sized sandwich bags, the spoons in our cutlery drawer...
Indeed, the article is biased and does reek of agenda.
It is biased against the idea of local police departments and prosecutors offices using the law to enrich themselves at the expense of those who can least afford it.
Nothing wrong with that agenda.
One could certainly give the benefit of the doubt to the police in any particular case where there's a large amount of cash drug paraphenelia involved. However, when this happens to a large number of people (who are never charged but their assets are seized) it's pretty clear what's going on.
In any case, the class action lawsuit was settled in the plaintiffs' favor so clearly, the police department must have recognized that they would lose (especially when the state declined to defend them).
The one with the 30-year old guy who lived at home who turned his elderly parents home into a drug house? Obvious what was going on there, but unless the kid recently paid his parents house off with 'drug money', it's easy to argue they have no right to take them home. Since they had been there since 1966 I could see it have been paid off quite a while ago.
I know there are other more sympathetic stories, there were plenty further along in the article. My issue was to open with that example is poor journalism.
The sad thing is that people on both sides of the political spectrum complain only about the other side, failing to realize that their own side is equally responsible. I see a lot of people declaring, "This is not the country it used to be," but it's in regards to both PRISM, civil forfeiture, and the Patriot Act; and Obamacare, FHA Loans, and Welfare.
The true problem though is government, both altogether and the increase in the Federal government at the expense of local or State governments. Both the Democratic and Republican parties stand only to lose power by embracing either libertarian or state values. Consequently, a party that weakens itself with its own values, will always fail against a party that strengthens itself. Additionally, when the backlash from Bush's increase in government became too severe on the right, Obama stepped in to increase the size and reach of the government on the left. Until Democrats and Republicans acknowledge this, the political system will continue to use us against each other to enrich themselves and rob us of our liberties.
This is the issue of our generation: the gross overreach of government institutionalized by politicians pitting opposing mass ideologies against each other while empowering themselves. Neither Democrats nor Republicans will ever surrender their party values for fear the other will abuse the opportunity to seize more power.
We need a pro-state or libertarian party. I suspect a pro-state party would generate far greater support, likely because it is part of our historical/constitutional DNA.
EDIT: Sorry for the seemingly tenuous relation to the article. The reason this relates is that all of the justification given by local law enforcement for violating our for Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were Federal precedents and Executive Orders. In other words when the Federal government consistently violates federal (constitutional) laws, local governments are emboldened to do the same. Additionally, the size and power of the federal government itself emboldens it to violate its own (constitutional) accountabilities to the people.
The relation to the article isn't just tenuous, it directly contradicts the story. The civil forfeiture examples mentioned in the story are all examples of state and local governments abusing their powers. And historically, it's been state and local governments that most abused peoples' rights, whether it be their due process rights or their property rights.
The vast, vast majority of Civil Forfeiture law seems to be local governments abusing their power. The story almost always starts with "We were driving across the country when...".
This has been a known problem in a number of small towns scattered across America. We must distinguish between "evil feds" and the "evil locals". In this case, it is clear that state and local laws need to be reformed.
Many states, facing fiscal crises, have expanded the reach of their forfeiture statutes, and made it easier for law enforcement to use the revenue however they see fit. In some Texas counties, nearly forty per cent of police budgets comes from forfeiture. (Only one state, North Carolina, bans the practice, requiring a criminal conviction before a person’s property can be seized.)
This is a state-by-state, county-by-county issue. This can of course be solved by national legislation... but only if we have the political will to pass a national law on the issue. Blaming the issue on 'them feds' is ignorant at best, and harmful to the cause at worst.
There will always be some dumb redneck town that will prey on travelers. America is too large, too vast. And that is where the Federal Government needs to step in and issue a smack-down.
So basically what you're saying is that it was the federal government's fault for giving states the ability to carry out civil forfeitures, therefore we need to transfer more power from the federal government to states.
No, "basically" I'm saying the first and am silent on the transferring of power since in this particular case I disagree with the power regardless of which level of government is involved in exercising it.
I would argue history disagrees with you that "state and local governments [...] most abused peoples' rights." See the American Revolution / British Empire, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, etc... etc...
Also, sorry, my pro-state musings in my edit were not meant to characterize my anti-government criticism regarding the abuse of government power as pro-state. In retrospect, it was misguided for me to include that there.
The history of other countries usefully expands the set of experience we can collectively call upon when trying to understand how institutions of power behave and interact.
You said "state and local governments [...] most abused peoples' rights." Even though you meant in America, the more important question is in places like America.
People can move away from abusive/totalitarian local governments.
And of course, that they are made up of people who are subject to human nature. Thus it is relevant if one can draw correlations regarding outcomes from shared traits.
I'm not sure how a "pro-state" party is going to solve the problems detailed in the article. It seemed that much of the abuse stemmed from state & local entities.
We need a government that protects individual liberties at at all levels: from federal down to local.
I like some of your platform, but your post seems to be completely unrelated to the article. If anything this specific article details story of very widespread scale corruption among state and municipal government.
Yes. Stories like this are a root cause for why people often welcome federal law enforcement -- the centers of federal enforcement may be vulnerable to other forms of coercion, but they are outside the reach of whatever racket is currently corrupting local law enforcement.
I'm inclined to disagree. The problem the article illustrates has little to do with government, state, federal or local, so much as it has to do with incentive structures.
I think that in this day and age, we need a new method for developing laws. Big software companies will pay bounties for bugs/security holes; why isn't there something like that for flaws/bad incentive structures/tax exploits in government?
> why isn't there something like that for flaws/bad incentive structures/tax exploits in government?
The problem with this would be that you would get many people trying to change laws that they don't like, and even groups of people "fighting" over trying to make a loosen/tighten restrictions in a law. For example, just imagine the tug-of-war between pro-gay marriage and anti-gay marriage groups over the statutes governing marriage.
You would probably have to pursue a Wikipedia-like solution and 'lock' sections of law to this kind of input, which at least on its face, would start to make this approach more useless (because you would only be plugging holes in laws that few people cared about).
In a way, this is mostly in line with what I'm talking about in that the question we're posing together is whether the government must necessarily be smaller, or is merely buckling under the weight of an outmoded model and infrastructure that a technological solution can resolve via greater transparency and accountability.
Perhaps a more ambitious goal would be a marriage of both. Fewer laws through greater empowerment, visibility and accountability enabled only through technology. In order to get there though, I think we have many issues we will need to solve before making matters worse, like who holds root access to the the government servers?
"The sad thing is that people on both sides of the political spectrum complain only about the other side,"
False, many people are willing to criticize both sides. If you look for zealots you will surely find them on both sides the same way it's always been.
"Consequently, a party that weakens itself with its own values, will always fail against a party that strengthens itself. "
This is not a problem. This is good because extreme, ideology driven agendas are generally suboptimal.
"Additionally, when the backlash from Bush's increase in government became too severe on the right, Obama stepped in to increase the size and reach of the government on the left."
To lump a legitimate social insurance program like the Heritage Foundation's Romneycare (which many "conservatives" have taken to calling Obamacare) in with the excesses of civil forfeiture, PRISM, and the TSA is illegitimate.
See, for refutation, Andrew Sullivan's "Since When Was Free-Loading A Conservative Value?"
This has been an ugly and shameful aspect of the "War on Drugs" since day one. I like that people are surprised that if you create an incentive structure, it encourages a specific behavior. Well, no kidding -- if law enforcement funding is dependent on civil forfeiture, civil forfeiture goes up.
You can get the good of the forfeiture (expeditious seizure) without the perverse actions by decoupling the proceeds. More training isn't going to work on its own.
Exactly. Wherever perverse incentives exist, exploitation will inevitably follow. Just imagine how much better this country could be on all levels if we eagerly stamped out these types of perverse incentives. It wouldn't even take a huge overhaul of the government: simply don't allow people to benefit from their own position of power. Such a simple concept, yet we keep moving in the exact opposite direction.
Casually, it seems like this trend can be traced to our need for "efficiency", and the proliferation of business concepts into government and public institutions. Incentivize behavior that you want and you'll get more of it, etc. Makes sense in business contexts, but in public services it is detrimental.
Owners who wish to contest often find that the cost of hiring a lawyer far exceeds the value of their seized goods. Washington, D.C., charges up to twenty-five hundred dollars simply for the right to challenge a police seizure in court, which can take months or even years to resolve.
Trolling seems to have become the 21st century's biggest problem facing the "rule of law". I suppose once law became expensive relative to the median income, it was inevitable, but it really seems to have become the dominant emergent behavior of today's unsavories nearly overnight.
Oh god, is this really happening? The US devolve more and more into a totalitarian regime, from an European viewpoint.
Makes me worried for the poor (literally) people in the US. We in Germany have at least the "Prozesskostenbeihilfe" and mandatory attorneys as soon as you're arrested.
Compared to this, US system looks like 3rd world and it's sick to see this happening.
People never live in today, but in the afterimages from different times in the past. Your friend from college has changed; that little town you visited near Prague years ago is quite different now.
The America most people see in their mind is the one of decades ago; it's not the America of today. The America of today is quite poor, with around 40% making below the minimum wage of 1968. While there's still a lot of wealth there, it's heavily concentrated into the hands of a few, as is typical in second-world and third-world countries. And it's difficult to reconcile that image with the one in our minds.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary. Other than TV technology improving? I mean, aside from some consumer goods, what hasn't gone up in price out of proportion with wages?
That wasn't what he said, though, was it? If you assume he meant inflation adjusted dollars, what he said was objectively correct. You can draw your own conclusions.
I have no problem with this being done with legitimate drug dealers. A real bust, where the cops are shown standing behind a table with a half of a million in cash stacked on the table, a small arsenal of firearms, and couple kilos of drugs on the table. They auction off the house and luxury cars and the expensive electronics etc inside.
But taking someones car because they were driving it while buying $10 of pot? Absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure with a lawyer you can get your car back and charges dropped but if you don't have the money for that, it's simply not fair to take someone's vehicle for recreational drug use.
There's no arguing that it's against the law but you don't get your vehicle taken away for speeding or driving away in it while shoplifting or writing a bad check.
You're missing one of the main problems: this creates a perverse profit incentive which, as the article points out, inevitably permeated down from major racketeers to ordinary citizens. If anything, the confiscated property should be turned over for neutral causes such as financing education or healthcare etc. Not that I agree with that either, but it removes the existing incentives for corrupt authorities.
If you do a bust with half a million dollars and a stash of drugs and guns, it should be quite easy to show the cash is criminal. You don't need a lesser standard.
I dread seeing a cop on the highway when driving from Houston to Dallas and back, and I'm a law-abiding college graduate. The drug war is not being kind to the relationship between civilians and law enforcement here.
Yup, even if you're totally innocent you can be held in jail for 3 days if a cop decides they don't like you. Once you get before a judge, the pretext charges are dropped and you're free to go. This happened to a friend.
At that point you can counter-sue and you would eventually win, but not without a potentially expensive legal battle. Organizations like the ACLU can only work so many case, so they're pretty ruthless about prioritizing the ones likely to make a media impact.
The worst thing is you can't avoid the police in Texas if you need to drive for work/life. There are mandatory immigration checkpoints miles away from the border. Everyone is stopped and questioned.
It's not just Texas. I was illegally detained and had my car searched despite refusing on the interstate in KS. But it seems to get progressively worse the closer you get to the border with Mexico.
>Yup, even if you're totally innocent you can be held in jail for 3 days if a cop decides they don't like you.
Yup. Happened to an acquaintance who was in town for a charity event. He was arrested in Fort Worth, and when we tried to post bond for him, the jailers "couldn't find" him. Went on for 3 days. The ironic part was that the guy was a prosecutor (from Mass.)
Having grown up in the "jocks vs. nerds" deep south myself, I worry deeply about interactions with police. If there are ever two sides to a story and they have to pick one, they're certainly not going to pick yours.
It amazes me how tolerant we are of law enforcement misrepresenting the truth. Making cops wear tamper proof cameras will fix it, but don't expect that to be an easy political battle.
As a couter example, I grew up in small town Texas near the TX-LA border and never heard of stories this draconian during my time there. On the contrary, I heard numerous stories of cops basically dumping out small amounts of marijuana from teenagers pipes after traffic stops and telling them to go home an to make better decisions. And no, this was not in relation to well-to-do rich, white, kids.
Obviously my anecdote doesn't prove anything, but it's healthly to keep in mind that broad brush labeling of the whole region as having draconian law enforcement can do a disservice to those that don't fit that label.
I wonder what the average citizen can do about this? I feel awful for these folks, and wish more people could become educated about their civil rights when faced with the legal system.
EDIT: Sounds like the ACLU (+1) already followed through with the embarrassment that was Tenaha, Texas. But it makes you throw up a little to hear the Wash. D.C. attorney general try to justify the importance of ill-gotten funds to prop up corrupt police :(
I donated to the ACLU once, and after a couple months, I was convinced that at least half of what I donated was spent on routine mailings and phone calls to my home. I support their work, and I understand that outreach is crucial, but I can't be the only one who was put off by that.
Ideally, I could donate and NEVER receive any communication from them. Same goes for the blood bank I donate to at my university. I'll give blood whenever there is a drive on campus (very often), but I don't need to be called every two weeks and read a script for 10 minutes.
Oh, hell, yeah. I stopped donating to the ACLU for similar reasons. I've since moved twice, once across several states, and I still get phone calls and mailings.
Ugh. Malaise like this that is the real evil we must be wary of, not individual acts like the one detailed in this story.
The cops were abusing their power and it went on until someone stuck up for themselves, rather than "learning to deal with it". You see how that works? They sued them and won. The ACLU, who brought the case, is made up of average citizens. They put their pants on one leg at a time like you and I, as does their donor base.
Any average citizen can call and write representatives; they can spread their thoughts via word of mouth, social media, and traditional media; they can vote with their dollar by supporting groups like the ACLU, the EFF, the NRA, and others that are professionally taking up the fight for their particular flavor of civil liberty. It's never been easier to do stuff like this, thanks to the miracle of modern communications technology. I could pursue all avenues noted above this afternoon and be done with it if I just had the will (the way is literally at our fingertips).
Throwing up hands and saying, "deal with it" sure is easy; it's what bullies and opportunists count on to continue taking more and creating less.
The freedoms we have didn't happen on accident. They are not being eroded by irresistible laws of nature. They are under attack by people. They always have been and they always will be. That is the future, the present and the past. It's a long, hard fight. We've opted out of the food chain, it's not tooth and nail anymore in 1st world countries, but there's a constant battle of wits and wills. There are no silver bullets, it's a group effort on our side and "theirs".
You should join in and pick a side (there are many to choose from). Fight back. It's not easy, but the rewards are as high as the costs. You'll never look back on your life and think, "Gee, I wish I'd spent more time not getting involved in things I cared about." And you'll never have to let someone look you in the eye and say you're a wimp, you didn't try, and you _don't_ count.
> [Freedoms] are not being eroded by irresistible laws of nature.
Yes they are.
Without infusions of external energy—in this case citizens who work to keep their rights—entropy increases, complex structures rot and crumble, and order fades into disorder. If checks and balances aren't actively maintained, they slowly disappear.
It takes lots of effort to maintain a legal framework that, from the cops' perspective, mostly makes it harder to close cases where the suspect is "obviously" guilty. So first they start ignoring little bits of it to speed things up. Then they ignore bigger things, and entropy increases further. The fewer legal barriers there are to a conviction, the less ordered we can call the system. After more of this erosion, we reach the most disordered state of all: This guy has a gun, so you do what he says or else.
ΔS >= 0, in our social systems just as much as in the universe, because they can't escape the limits of the system they're embedded in.
>> [Freedoms] are not being eroded by irresistible laws of nature.
>Yes they are.
No, They are not. Trying to apply a physical law to a philosophical construct is folly. Freedom has no mass, it's an idea.
I'm familiar with entropy. You could just as easily say that the power structures in this story seeking to steal from the weak are being eroded as well. They, too, must be maintained. Entropy is a force that both sides of society must contend with, and has little to do with my argument as gravity.
Don't get me wrong, I see the appeal of the application. To think that horrible things done by humanity are no ones fault. To think that it's forgivable to acquiesce and accept evil as inevitable. I've surely succumb to it myself throughout my life.
However, evil and maliciousness can be fought by the same agents that perpetrate it. Small acts by many individuals add up to greatness (NASA) or horror (War).
Evil will never be eradicated, it's part of human nature. It can be held in check by those who seek to do good, and throwing up hands and saying, "It has nothing to do with me. Forces of nature." is not some virtuous way out. It's not some noble intellectual loophole that you understand shit happens and are above the squalor. It's an insidious brand of laziness that I see far too much of from in a crowd as empowered as those on Hackernews.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Possibly[1] Edmund Burke
No one said anything about condoning evil. And the quote you end with is exactly what I'm saying.
> Trying to apply a physical law to a philosophical construct is folly.
That's not what I'm doing. A government is not a philosophical construct—it's a system of rules enforced by living, concrete people, by physical means, against other living, concrete people. For the same reason that your house gets messy or your car might fall apart if you don't take it to the shop, civil liberties that take a lot of law-enforcement effort to respect and seem to help the bad guys won't survive if cops ignore them with impunity.
Brave words but those make you a non-average citizen. For every one like you - who is willing to stand up - there are another 1000 who will tell you to have apathy and frown upon your actions.
Most definitely. The refrain I was railing against was a reply of, "Nothing" to the question, "What CAN an average citizen do?".
The answer is not "nothing". The answer is "Anything _except_ nothing". What they WILL do is a matter for the historians to debate after the dust clears.
There are many reasons to bow down to those that would do yourself or others harm. I live a comfortable life. I'm not in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails (hello NSA), but to say it is because there is nothing that CAN be done is a fantasy. It would help me feel better about seeing evil in the world, recognizing it, and then giving it a pass out of laziness or because it directly benefits me. It's an attitude that makes us part of the problem. It's not an excuse that pardons me from the fight.
Anything you CAN do has no real effect on the matter and is just tiny noise - therefore you will have to learn to deal with it untill everyone who CAN do something WILL do it. Then the noise will overthrow the signal.
At DefCon 2013 on Friday the ACLU described a disturbing trend of local law enforcement emulating the feds in their overstepping the boundaries of our civil liberties. The ACLU and EFF are doing great work - particularly the ACLU and I strongly recommend you become a member or give them an anonymous donation if you'd like to help fight stories like this.
+1 to the Kickstarter, or any product reco. I suppose even having an audio recorder that streams from your phone to a server would be trivial, and very valuable.
This should be pretty easy to set up with a cheap android phone, and some server software. Having it mounted in the vehicle means no need to worry about battery power; the only hard part is how to deal with spotty/poor/low bandwidth reception.
Unfortunately sat phones are still expensive for this sort of thing, although I suppose it might be feasible to do low-frame rate black and white shots.
In this case a large amount of money was taken into custody by the Nebraska State Police. It was found guilty of being the proceeds of illegal drug sales and confiscated by the state under asset forfeiture. The human being who had previously been in possession of this currency was neither convicted of nor charged with any drug crime. The US Supreme Court upheld the conviction of the defendant currency.
It seems every day we hear about things in the US getting worse for the average citizen. Is it a case that it was always like this and we're only just finding out or are these more recent happenings ?
In the 1950's and 1960's, if you weren't white they wouldn't even pretend to give you a fair trial. The 4th amendment has been a fiction for probably two decades now in New York for non-whites. It's always been at least this bad, and in fact it's probably better now than it was in the 1950's and 1960's.
The difference now is:
1) Stories about this sort of thing are becoming well-known thanks to the internet;
Well educated people with money tend not to have to deal with most of it. And can usually afford to make it go away when they do. Cops also tend not to bother them as much.
I have a personal interest in "poor people's" issues, my wife works with a poor "population" and I live in an area with concerns about social justice so I'm a little more aware of it.
The poor are different from you and me and it's not just because they have less money.
Things are getting worse. This is not the country I expected to grow up into. People here grumble a lot but don't do anything about it. Most people are only passingly aware of things like government spying, police excesses, etc. Except when it happens to them. All I can hope is that it gets bad enough that enough people collectively say "Enough" and things get better again. It's a long road.
I can see why you might feel that way but, in the long-term big picture, no, they're really not. There was a time when law enforcement wasn't required to recognize your right to be silent, for example, and most of the civil rights advances of the sixties still hold. Civil forfeiture is dangerous and relatively new, but there was plenty of dangerous stuff back in the day.
Now, the fact that things could be a lot worse is depressing in a whole different way...
I think the main difference here is that you're aware of the problem: if you were a minority race or religion, this is an old story which has actually gotten better in some ways because now the news spreads rather than being quietly confined to where you live.
Unfortunately, that is still an apt observation, and I imagine that most government agencies are well aware of this. People in general just don't protest when intangible, abstract things are stolen from them. Most people who are up in arms about the privacy and other rights violations of the past decade are highly educated, mild mannered, and small in numbers.
If there was a decade long shortage of clean water, if unemployment was > 30%, or if the FCC outlawed reality television [1], then people might lose it and demand change. But the intangible theft of one's rights in a (presently) nonviolent way just doesn't register on the radar for most people.
[1] Unless it was "to protect the children" of course.
1. Internet makes small town news national news in a heartbeat if outrageous enough.
2. Currently it is a perfect storm for law enforcement - there is a decade of visible overreach, NSA, TSA, general tiredness of war on drugs and the lost wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on "using war for almost any government effort, republicans hate everything government related because Obama is in office, democrats are disillusioned with him on civil rights and there is global demand for that kind of stories and the journalists supply.
“What stands out to me is the nature of how pervasive and dependent police really are on civil-asset forfeiture—it’s their bread and butter—and, therefore, how difficult it is to engage in systemic reform,” Vanita Gupta, of the A.C.L.U., says.
What is this, some medieval state? Are the local lords so unable to fund themselves through taxes that they extort passing travellers?
That is exactly what I was thinking. This whole thing just looks like what used to happen in medieval times, with military forces living on the money of commoners, local communities extorting money from travellers, laws and law enforcement practices being different from one county to another... I don't understand how a modern country could come back to this situation.
I'm surprised that nobody (not even the article) has mentioned the militarization of police as a symbiotic factor. Surely the desire for SWAT units (and all the fancy toys that go along with them) fuels this practice -- and in return, the practice fuels the growth of police militarization.
FWIW, the OP does allude to the militarization of the police when describing the violence used in their cash-grabs:
> In the midst of festivities one evening in late May, 2008, forty-odd officers in black commando gear stormed the gallery and its rear patio, ordering the guests to the ground. Some in attendance thought that they were the victims of an armed robbery. One young woman who had fallen only to her knees told me that a masked figure screamed at her, “Bitch, you think you’re too pretty to get in the mud?” A boot from behind kicked her to the ground"
While the militarization of police is a huge issue, it's one that is orthogonal to the one the OP tackles. A system in which police can confiscate property -- with very low risk of being called out for it -- and share a cut of the seized goods (with the prosecutors) will quickly lead to a very bad situation. It doesn't matter if the money goes to buying more commando gear or towards a prosecutor's vacation home.
I hope that some business model survives to ensure the production of long-form journalism like this. I fear the longer-term effects on society if journalism like this disappears in lieu of purely user-generated content or blog posts that earn $50 for the author.
This article just made me angry. Very, very angry. I'm inspired that there are lawyers who have the patience and determination to counter the cynicism and corruption of some police and government departments in the country.
This is slightly off topic, but I find the writing style in the article odd, though this kind of writing is common in supposedly good newspapers and magazines with long winded stories:
"Outraged by their experience in Tenaha, Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson helped to launch a class-action lawsuit challenging the abuse of a legal doctrine known as civil-asset forfeiture. “Have you looked it up?” Boatright asked me when I met her this spring at Houston’s H&H Saloon, where she runs Steak Night every Monday. She was standing at a mattress-size grill outside. “It’ll blow your mind.”"
What does the grill have to do with this? Why does every story have to have adjective laden filler how the people's hair looks like and where the interviewer meets them?
Discussing the grill serves to provide a context for their meeting and to establish character, in this case, by describing what she does. I imagine most American readers can relate to someone who knows their way around a grill; especially a "mattress" sized one.
It's called Litery Journalism.
As I recall, Gay Talese and Joan Didion, among others, helped to popularize it.
"The basic principle behind asset forfeiture is appealing."
No, no it's not. It's flawed and messed up intrinsically. The fact that even a story covering this would say something to the effect of it's OK just abused... sigh.
Later in the article, it gets even worse. And old couple had their house taken, because their son had sold a small quantity of marijuana from their porch.
IIRC it is the legislative branch of the government that is responsible for raising funds. So when I see this defense "It’s definitely a valuable asset to law enforcement, for purchasing equipment and getting things you normally wouldn’t be able to get to fight crime" I get concerned. There is a very good reason that those with the monopoly on the legitimate use of force are not intended to self-finance.
I hate to tell you this, but as a non-American I've always had the idea that rural cops and sheriffs are likely to be corrupt in this manner, especially 'good old boys.' I don't mean that as a slur on rural people and think there's urban corruption too but it takes different forms there because of population density v. isolation.
Is this also an offshoot of a no tax policy in Texas?
In both Texas and DC, I think it's very much a side effect of politicians' unwillingness to raise taxes. There's a vicious circle of ever-increasing pension obligations, stagnant revenue, and voter apathy that allows this and other sorts of corruption to flourish. Most people are not that interested in politics, but they get annoyed when their taxes change (hell, I'm liberal and I get annoyed about my taxes). It's one of the few issues that can mobilize a majority of voters. In this political calculus, corruption has a lower cost because although the effects are more severe, they're not as widely distributed.
My impression is this happens in Russia a lot. They can't afford to pay the police, so the police find a way to prey on the weak. It's a sign that underfunding is getting extreme.
"...and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses..."
The article mentions Barry Washington, but I suspect that may be a mistake[1], and that they may be referring to Barry Cooper who after years of making lots of dodgy drug arrests and training other LE officers the same; infamously changed sides and now sells DVDs to the public that teach how to avoid "getting busted"
[1] edit: I'm the one who is mistaken, see frogpelt below. Leaving it up because I think it adds more to the conversation regarding the practice of police work as it relates to drugs and property seizure.
From the article you linked:
"Cooper says one mentor was Barry Washington, who is named in a class-action lawsuit that’s been filed against the city of Tenaha, Texas."
I feel sorry for the honest and good american people that have to suffer from this power abuse, which seems to be a very real and common threat. It must be horrible to live in constant fear from your own government. :(
Governments. The reason it's so hard to weed out this sort of thing is that the business of government is so fragmented in the US due to both geographic and historical factors. I have separate and distinct relationships with the city I live in, the county that city is in, the state, and the federal government, plus quasi-governmental organizations like some utilities providers, intergovernment groups and so on.
I wonder that when (it is a when, not a if) several someones consider a cop a intruder and kill it, people will start to wake up that things are getting too far.
America is a Business and not a country. Profit motive will always rule; good for managing a business in most cases, bad for managing a society in all cases.
The latter three articles are economics pieces, which tend to spark good, scientifically-minded debates on HN.
The first article is political, and I would hope that pg would think better than to post if he was given the same decision over again. It probably felt "less dangerous" to post it two years ago; back then, HN didn't have nearly so many people interested in discussing the political side of an issue--you know, the people you see in this thread :)
What about Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds (4 days ago)? It's very much a political article, even if it include a technical side. We all know what would be discussed.
I keep seeing a small contention on HN say things like this, but there aren't hundreds of political posts — just a few here and there. The ones that do get posted are usually investigative, well-researched, interesting and important articles like this one.
To me, the biggest value of sites like HN is always the comments. Here we have some of the brightest, smartest, most driven people around the world gathered together. I think it's interesting to see what others think about things like this. I don't want a political discussion every day, but reading comments on important subjects like civil forfeiture from really, really smart people is interesting and informative.
It's likely that many on HN today will have a big impact in shaping our lives in many ways over the next decade and beyond — not just from a technology standpoint.
I for one, don't mind the occasional off-topic post that provokes interesting and thoughtful discussion.
(And BTW — this is my 2nd account, which I created in order to use my real name — my original account is 4 years old)
Say what you will, but at least most US citizens have cheap access to quality medical services. You can also buy as many guns as you like or sell them to known criminals, how sweet is that?
Cheap access? Are you insane? Health insurance is incredibly expensive. Even with it, medical costs are through the roof. My ex girlfriend was pregnant with our kid 7-8 years ago and she miscarried. After the hospital procedures and one night stay, the bill was over $32k dollars. Great, we lost our kid and are now more in debt than what we both spent on college. Not a fun time in life.
Yeah, as I parent I empathize. It must have been a trying experience both emotionally and financially. But I has being sarcastic in my comment earlier...
It's of course a felony to sell a gun to a known criminal. Sure, we do that a lot easier in the US because the people are actually allowed to own guns, but I don't think that was the point you were making.
No, of course. But some of the busiest (sell the most) gun shops in the US are known to sell a copious amount of guns that are implicated in many criminal activities. Law enforcement knows this because they could trace the gun back (that's with what they can trace).
Now law enforcement knows this, the gun dealer also knows this and the gun manufacturer also keeps tabs on it's biggest dealers.
The incentive here is to make money, and nothing else. It's funny that while guns are sold and used in actual crimes the Police in that town are too busy 'cashing' in on poor unsuspected (allegedly non-criminal) citizens.
You can only sell firearms face to face to an individual who resides in the same state as you and with whom you have no reason to believe is a criminal. The reality is most people are VERY careful when conducting such transactions as you are exchanging firearms with someone! I know the media would have you believe everyone is very laissez-faire about the whole thing but that is not the reality as I have experienced it.
"In late 2012, the ACLU announced a settlement in the case, under which police must now observe rigorous rules during traffic stops in Tenaha and Shelby County: traffic stops will be videotaped, and the officer must give reason for the stop and for suspicion of criminal activity. Drivers are to be advised that they can refuse a search, and dogs will no longer be used in conducting traffic stops. Property determined to have been taken improperly must be returned within 30 business days. Also, asset forfeiture revenue from traffic stops must be donated to non-profit organizations, or used to pay for the officer training required by the settlement."
For once, the good guys won, although (like usual) no one was charged criminally in connection with it.