I covered the out of control practice of government theft known as “civil forfeiture” earlier this year in my post: Why You Should Never, Ever Drive Through Tenaha, Texas. At the time I explained:
In a nutshell, civil forfeiture is the practice of confiscating items from people, ranging from cash, cars, even homes based on no criminal conviction or charges, merely suspicion. This practice first became widespread for use against pirates, as a way to take possession of contraband goods despite the fact that the ships’ owners in many cases were located thousands of miles away and couldn’t easily be prosecuted. As is often the case, what starts out reasonable becomes a gigantic organized crime ring of criminality, particularly in a society where the rule of law no longer exists for the “elite,” yet anything goes when it comes to pillaging the average citizen.
I was appalled to discover recently just how big business civil forfeiture really is, with over $4 billion seized by the feds using this method in 2012 alone. While some of these seizures were no doubt legitimate, clearly many of them were not.
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The real problem here is the government seizes WHATEVER they want and it is up to the citizen to PROVE the innocence of the asset seized. Which is far from easy and it's made deliberately so.... Often, the charges upon which the seizure is based are dismissed (as long as the citizen agrees to the forfeiture). In a famous case (one of thousands) in Florida (where "civil forfeiture" is BIG business and a gold mine for the state) a yacht worth in excess of a million dollars was seized because police found a partially smoked joint in the cook's cabin. That's ALL they found. And, of course, the State of Florida courts upheld the seizure. Keep cheering. The local forfeiture game in Wicomico county came under harsh scrutiny when it was found that the Sheriff was seizing property and somehow, someway, cops ended up buying cars and motorcycles for pennies on the dollar. Shocking, huh??
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