Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize

originally posted by: SubTruth
The current system and people abusing it are breaking the constitution.

I thought veterans made an oath to protect this nation's constitution from all? Including domestic.

Where are they on this Veteran's Day?

Oh, that's right....protecting Sadam's oil and Afghanistan's poppies. I forgot.......

The American public is taking it up the ass in ever more creative ways, some of this stuff is just outrageous, glad I'm not an American.

Seriously, this is organized crime right here.. if this goes on much longer I don't know what might happen, will the public just keep taking it forever?

I thought the law was made to deal with assets of major drug operations. When did law add minor crimes to seizures?

originally posted by: roadgravel
I thought the law was made to deal with assets of major drug operations. When did law add minor crimes to seizures?

when the "law" became the worlds largest criminal organisation

This sort of goes back to another thread I started a while back:

Discouraging Law Enforcement from shooting dogs, by taking out an Animal Mortality Insurance policy

Here is the gist:

What happens when a "seized asset" is an "individually insured asset"? Note, I do not mean home owners, renters or car insurance, I mean "modified automobile insurance" and "collectables insurance". Essentially named assets with an appraised value that the insurance company will need to subrogate from the police insurance when a claim is filed by the owner. I know, this is more money out of the pocket of regular people that they don't have, but what choice do we have when no one is fighting for us on nay side? Maybe if the proper insurance policies are taken out on our property perhaps the insurance companies can fight this battle for us.

Imagine an insured collectable/modified car with an appraised value that is "seized" by police, but no charges are filed. What step does the insurance company then take? I doubt they willingly pay the claim without subrogating the police department and its not a "clean seizure" that they can refuse to pay because no charges were filed. I do know, based on new stories, when cops damage expensive cars due to negligence the department pays to get them fixed, pronto. I'll bet its the insurance company exerting that pressure on them.

a reply to: TheLaughingGod

The US of A is famous for its Italian Mafia and the Irish Mob; with so many Irish and Italian LEO's one has to wonder if the criminals took over our police forces years ago. Looking at the problems we are seeing with LEO's today I think we all know the answer.

a reply to: boohoo

i like the idea but the problem i see with it is that the insurance companies will be in cahoots with the "department" as opposed to the individual

a reply to: AlaskanDad

I would like to add except that this is quietly going on within the british police force as well. We know this because auctions of things the police have seized are held in the uk and very little of anything worthwhile is ever left for the public to buy. The proceeds of crime act is not only for the government to recoup money I suspect most of it goes back into the police coffers because their investigations and arrests concentrate mostly on crimes that they can get a cut from. The figures for their arrests and crimes solved are probably as fiddled as any government statistic but if you are a drug criminal you will only get prosecuted if you own something decent they can get their hands on or else you will most likely get let off. I suspect this is yet another reason why cameron loves drug crimes and won't listen to his experts who tell him to stop criminalising drugs and concentrate the police efforts onto other forms of crime
- bankers crime would be a good start!

originally posted by: roadgravel
I thought the law was made to deal with assets of major drug operations. When did law add minor crimes to seizures?

And thats the problem

You shouldnt have allowed it full stop.

Unless a proven crime has been comited and it has gone through a normal court of law asset fortiture should be illegal under any circumstance.

As soon as you allowed a exception for drug dealers you opened the door for future exanpsion.

LEO and goverment always act the same! Give them a inch and they will take a mile!

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed
i like the idea but the problem i see with it is that the insurance companies will be in cahoots with the "department" as opposed to the individual

I'm not so sure, there have been cases where the insurance company decided to pay, against the wishes of the department. I have a feeling there are some laws requiring the insurance company to go through proper due diligence, even if its LEO's involved. Its in my opinion, a kind of breech in integrity that the industry would not be able to publicly withstand long term. So, I would assume they are more likely to pay, but not necessarily make up the difference from the LEO departments.

Here is a link to a story citing such an instance, where the insurance company made the final decision to pay, not the Police Department:

www.kshb.com...

Here is a sample story, where a cop had a fender bender with e $350,000+ car and in the end the city had to pay $44,000 to fix the car:

www.carbuzz.com...

Here is another story about dog shootings by LEO's being deemed “unreasonable seizure” by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California:

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, for example, ruled in favor of the Hells Angels in a case where police officers shot two dogs during a raid. Calling the shootings “unreasonable seizure”, the court chastised the police for failing “to develop a realistic plan for incapacitating the dogs other than shooting them.” The Hells Angels eventually received a total of nearly $1.8 million in a settlement.

www.petsadviser.com...

By getting an insurance company to cite a dollar value on the dog, the outcome seems to be something that would cause more trouble for the department, in addition to the issue of “unreasonable seizure.

link another article regarding unreasonable seizure and animals:

www.animallaw.info...

Here is a case where the officer and his supervisor were ordered to both pay punitive damages for an unlawful shooting of private property:

www.huffingtonpost.com...

And what can we do?
I don't have a politically correct answer. You can try to have your local elected officials help you, only to find out it's a waste of time.
Even more concerning, this is going to escalate, and some how, we need to stop it.

Perhaps if there was a list of victims, we could identify the offending authorities and avoid their domains.

A few years back, one of my friends had his house raided because he was suspected of fraud and identity theft. The police (between 10-15 of them) kicked in the door and took him and his family into custody, and then spent the next 9 and a half hours going through the house. When all was said and done, they had taken 3 truck loads of 'evidence' from his home. They took everything from video games and systems to CDs, to his kid's toys, his computers, guns, his dogs' ear medicine, and even bath towels and clothing.

All in all, the inventory list of items they had seized came to 27 pages. He wasn't allowed to even try to get any of his property back for one year, which is apparently the statute of limitations on how much time they have to try to build a case. He was never found guilty or convicted of a single crime. So a year later, he tries to get his property back, and lo and behold, the 27 inventory pages of 'evidence' had turned into just 19 pages (they claimed they had no record of the other 8 full pages, despite him still having the original, but partly blacked-out copies they had given him shortly after the raid), and it was another 6 months or so of battling with them before he even started seeing any of that, despite the statute of limitations being over a long time ago. He never did get even the full 19 pages worth back. His guns took him almost 3 years to get back, and they 'lost' one of his shotguns...Oh, and the raid occurred shortly after 8 am. The warrant wasn't issued until a little after 11 am the same day.....

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
A few years back, one of my friends had his house raided because he was suspected of fraud and identity theft. The police (between 10-15 of them) kicked in the door and took him and his family into custody, and then spent the next 9 and a half hours going through the house. When all was said and done, they had taken 3 truck loads of 'evidence' from his home. They took everything from video games and systems to CDs, to his kid's toys, his computers, guns, his dogs' ear medicine, and even bath towels and clothing.

All in all, the inventory list of items they had seized came to 27 pages. He wasn't allowed to even try to get any of his property back for one year, which is apparently the statute of limitations on how much time they have to try to build a case. He was never found guilty or convicted of a single crime. So a year later, he tries to get his property back, and lo and behold, the 27 inventory pages of 'evidence' had turned into just 19 pages (they claimed they had no record of the other 8 full pages, despite him still having the original, but partly blacked-out copies they had given him shortly after the raid), and it was another 6 months or so of battling with them before he even started seeing any of that, despite the statute of limitations being over a long time ago. He never did get even the full 19 pages worth back. His guns took him almost 3 years to get back, and they 'lost' one of his shotguns...Oh, and the raid occurred shortly after 8 am. The warrant wasn't issued until a little after 11 am the same day.....

This is exactly my point. What if the really valuable items had been individually insured? The outcome surely would have been better for him with the insurance company involved, making sure the "inventory" was still in the possession of the police a year later.

originally posted by: IslandOfMisfitToys
a reply to: Daedal

We need to ALL write our representatives and plainly state that if they don't start doing something about this, they WILL be voted out for someone who will.

Hell, if I was running for office my entire platform would consist of police reform.

Voted out? I think we are past the voting process. And please remember, "voting" is the game created by those in power. They peddle "voting" as a power of the people - it's not and never have been.