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Monday, December 28, 2015

Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year

Here's an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog, Armstrong Economics, last week.

Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.

Armstrong claims that "the police are now taking more assets than the criminals," but this isn't exactly right: The FBI also tracks property losses from larceny and theft, in addition to plain ol' burglary. If you add up all the property stolen in 2014, from burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and other means, you arrive at roughly $12.3 billion, according to the FBI. That's more than double the federal asset forfeiture haul.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. A truly shocking figure, that points out the injustice of so-called "civil forfeiture". It's nothing but government-run thievery, to feed the "drug war" machine.

This has got to stop.

Anonymous said...

Great job officers, keep it up! Take everything related to drug sales.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Great job officers, keep it up! Take everything related to drug sales.

December 28, 2015 at 10:42 PM

try reading sometime

Anonymous said...

Remind me, who is the actual enemy.

Anonymous said...

the actual enemy is criminals. The media tries to make you believe otherwise.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
the actual enemy is criminals. The media tries to make you believe otherwise.

December 29, 2015 at 8:49 AM

we expect criminals to act criminally, not cops. therefore cops are worse