with absolutely zero authority to regulate and nothing going more than brute force to norge it with. Period. People focus on "drug dealers" and "for the children", not even thinking about responsible decision making or anything like that. Fear is what allows these laws to get passed. I for one will NEVER willingly give up my assets. Period. Full stop. I don't care what costume you wore to work this morning. "Just following orders" won't be an excuse. And when this policy is broad-brushed to everyone's doorstep it'll stop. I guarantee it. You think it's bad a kid won't serve a cop at mickey d's? Wait till ol' Bill, the mechanic from the local jiffy lube loses everything he owns because his daughter's scumbag boyfriend left a doobie in her car. Parked in his driveway. On his property. That will cease to fly really quick.strogg wrote:With some context, though, I can see where they're coming from. Let's say some DEA officers raid a home with a warrant, then find a stash of coke and $50K in cash with that stash. Whether they get the perps is irrelevant at this point. I would presume the money with the coke is illegal cash that can be seized.
Now in another context (argument against), some cops pull over a stolen vehicle. Inside, they find that the driver is a suspected drug dealer that the DEA is looking for, so they arrest him. Then they find $5K in cash on his body as well, so they seize it and hand it over to the feds.
The problem that I see is that situation 1 may seem cut and dry, but situation 2 doesn't. What if the owner of the vehicle has a legitimate cash business and is on his way somewhere with the cash before it got stolen? Or what if the perp is the wrong guy? And he's just borrowing his "friend's" car? We don't know that. We don't know anything.
Here's another thing, though. Last I checked, the DEA is severely overloaded with casework, so they aren't exactly going after the pot grows and the small time dealers. They're going after the big fish. That's a limited number of people. If this applies to the DEA only as the article is implying, it doesn't seem that bad....
But despite that, It is still wrong to seize those assets until the court has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence was used in a crime of some sort. ALL American residents are protected under the Bill of Rights, regardless of how cut and dry it may look. We can't grant exceptions to just certain situations. Otherwise, we'll just grant them to everything... at that point, the BoR will be moot, and we'll be living under tyranny once again. Why get the snowball started?
At this point, with the laws that are in place, we're all guilty. No legal amount of controlled substance is acceptable, right? Dimethyltryptomine. ........we has it.
Even now, in OK they're using a card reader to seize money in accounts. And we're not just talking strangers with no visible means of income rolling in an escalade.........guys going to the bank cashing their paycheck from sonic are getting this shaft! Multiple times.