Jeff Sessions Just Revived a Policy Nobody Supports Why is the Justice Department going backwards?

[riversedge]

Last edited Thu Jul 20, 2017, 02:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Good article. Some examples given.




Jeff Sessions Just Revived a Policy Nobody Supports

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/20/jeff-sessions-just-revived-a-policy-nobody-supports-215395


Why is the Justice Department going backwards on civil forfeiture?

By Robert Everett Johnson

July 20, 2017

Every day, law enforcement officials across the United States seize cash from motorists stopped at the side of the road. It’s called “civil forfeiture,” and the stories of abuse are legion: over $17,000 seized from the owner of a barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Virginia; over $13,000 seized from a former church deacon in DeKalb County, Georgia; and over $50,000 seized from a Christian rock band in Muskogee County, Oklahoma.

Civil forfeiture allows government to seize property based on the mere suspicion that it is connected to a crime. For instance, the fact that the cops think someone has too much cash is enough to warrant a seizure. After the property is seized, in a complete reversal of the way the American justice system is supposed to work, owners must prove their own innocence to get it back.

Public outrage over the practice has grown as more tales of abuse have been reported. And fortunately, over the last three years, 24 states have passed reforms to protect property owners and curtail civil forfeiture. Less fortunately, on Wednesday Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new federal policy that threatens to undermine those reforms.

Speaking in a small conference room surrounded by law enforcement officials, Sessions announced the federal government was rolling back a Holder-era policy that had sharply curtailed so-called adoptive seizures. An adoptive seizure occurs when a state police officer seizes property and then transfers it to the federal government, which then forfeits the property under federal law. Importantly, state law enforcement gets to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the forfeiture........................

To understand why that matters, imagine you are a .................................



Nor is Wednesday’s announcement limited to highway seizures of cash. Using civil forfeiture, law enforcement can take all manner of property—including homes and businesses..............................

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. I cant take anymore. But if I do the patriotic thing and fight against the

Russians who invaded my country and installed a pile of shit racist, Sessions, and Trump, I will be guilty of breaking the law and I will go to jail. I am not going to jail.

The coup is complete.

They won.

[NightWatcher]

2. He's an authoritarian remnant from the 1860's

He only screams "state's rights" when it was his state denying rights to women and minorities.

[riversedge]

3. Our only hope is that some state will bring a lawsuit.

[misanthrope]

6. The South has risen again

It took an African-American POTUS to awaken the latent hatred in Americans' hearts but it finally happened.

[MagickMuffin]

4. The Feds stole a lot of homes, cars, property under the pretense

of the War on Drugs. It didn't matter if someone was innocent. They charged them and they lost everything, some even losing their life. Just ask Don Scott, oh wait you can't because they shot him dead in front of his wife, on one of the Feds famous raids of breaking into one's home in the wee hours of the morning. This happened in 1992, Scott owned a $5 million ranch that the Feds WANTED so they accused him of growing marijuana. Even though no plants were ever found!

The WOD's was the first breaking down of our Constitutional rights, but hey no one cared about it. I doubt if most people care to this day.

ETA link: http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-11/local/me-257_1_don-scott

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R