Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat points out gently that there is a certain difference between a proposed law and a passed one... and that one province does not a Canada make...
While this is true, remember the Arabic saying about when a camel's nose appears under the back wall of your tent. If you don't do something about it right away, pretty soon you'll have the whole camel in the tent with you.
I don't really like this idea. Though I understand that seized assets from organized crime have to go somewhere; I imagine they're being sold off to auction. Honestly I'd taken it for granted that assets held by people who were convicted of various crimes were taken and redistributed somehow, but I am a little fuzzy on the details. Should criminals just keep their gains?
Well, I'm all for redistributing the assets of proven criminals tobenefit those they harmed, but I think there's an obligation to prove they came by their assets criminally first. The legal principle of "guilty unless proven innocent", as practiced in anything drug-related in the US already, is a leap back in time to the Middle Ages in terms of legal process. Civil forfeiture allows your property to be seized on the grounds of what amounts to an allegation, which in the US can even be anonymous, and puts the onus upon you to prove you DIDN'T commit any crimes. Do you have any idea how hard it can be to rigorously prove a negative? That's a hell of a nasty camel to let into the tent.
If they were giving the money from proceeds to charities, or sending it off to support the socialized healthcare system, or anything other than giving it to the people who get to declare you forfeit, I could maybe see it not being abused. As it is, It's in the interests of the cops to ensure that they convince judges that people are members of criminal organizations (not prove they've broken any laws, mind you, just that they hang out with people who do) since they get to keep the proceeds.
And then you get the same kind of abuses that happen here. Someone has property the local police chief has his eye on, so a member of the department walks to the pay phone around the corner and calls in an anonymous "tip". Wham bam thank you ma'am, next thing you know there's a fill-in-later warrant and a no-knock raid, and oh dear, the poor property owner accidentally got shot because one of the officers thought the TV remote control he had in his hand was a gun, and with no-one to dispute the charges, guess who the property now belongs to.
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Civil forfeiture allows your property to be seized on the grounds of what amounts to an allegation, which in the US can even be anonymous, and puts the onus upon you to prove you DIDN'T commit any crimes. Do you have any idea how hard it can be to rigorously prove a negative? That's a hell of a nasty camel to let into the tent.
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If they were giving the money from proceeds to charities, or sending it off to support the socialized healthcare system, or anything other than giving it to the people who get to declare you forfeit, I could maybe see it not being abused. As it is, It's in the interests of the cops to ensure that they convince judges that people are members of criminal organizations (not prove they've broken any laws, mind you, just that they hang out with people who do) since they get to keep the proceeds.
-Ogre
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