Civil Forfeiture

The subject of civil asset forfeiture in the United States was covered briefly in a previous article, but this tyrannical practice requires a more substantial treatment.

1) There are too many such cases to enumerate here, but on August 11, 2014, a young white man named Dillon Taylor was shot in the back by a police officer after ignoring a warning to stop. He was wearing headphones at the time. The district attorney ruled the murder justified. Last year, a Salt Lake City judge dismissed a lawsuit by the victim’s family.

Hello Mr President,
You have claimed consistently and still do claim that America is the greatest country in the world. Patriotism is a noble thing, but it should not blind us to the inadequacies and shortcomings of our nation, whatever that nation is.
1) How would you like to live in a nation in which there is no rule of law, where innocent citizens can be murdered by the police with total impunity?
2) In which a police officer can kill an innocent man, shooting him in the back, and be rewarded for it?

At the beginning of this year, Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to close an exploitable loophole in asset forfeiture laws. State and local law enforcement agencies often sought federal “adoption” of seizures in order to route around statutes that dumped assets into general funds or otherwise limited them from directly profiting from these seizures. By partnering with federal agencies, local law enforcement often saw bigger payouts than with strictly local forfeitures.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped a 4-year-long effort to shut down Harborside Health Center in Oakland, California, the largest marijuana dispensary in the US.
Employee Derek Flores, right, waits for a patient at a display case at the Harborside Health Center in Oakland, Calif. The center will be one of the models for Maine’s first medical marijuana dispensaries. Credit: John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Didn’t take long for the Florida Sheriff’s Association to celebrate the resumption of payments from the Federal “equitable sharing” program, for the first time since late December 2015 after a surprise announcement by the Department of Justice today, as you can see below in their tweet with the official announcement.
The infamous seziure program mainly involves taking small amounts of money from citizens, who then aren’t charged with a crime.