Ars Technica | Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that the Department of Justice would be putting a stop to local and state police participation in a federal asset seizure program called “Equitable Sharing.”
The program has allowed local and state police to seize assets—usually cash and vehicles—without evidence of a crime. If the former owner of the seized property fails to make a case for the return of his or her property, the local and state police were allowed to keep up to 80 percent of the assets, with the remaining portion returning to federal agencies.
"This is a significant advancement to reform a practice that is a clear violation of due process that is often used to disproportionately target communities of color," Laura Murph, the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office director told Ars in a statement.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation also did its own research into how much of the federal asset forfeiture funds were going back into surveillance and wiretapping, finding that California spent $13.6 million on spying.
“Holder’s announcement could have a significant impact on how law enforcement agencies fund electronic surveillance,” Dave Maas, an EFF spokesman, told Ars. “However, it’s important to remember that the next administration’s attorney general could easily reverse this policy decision. Further, many states also have their own asset forfeiture programs, so a whole second layer of funding remains on the state level.”
10 comments:
How does this insanity get past the 14th amendment?
They were fighting a war. Anything goes when it's wartime. The Supreme Court said that.
So something solid from Holder. Don't mean to miss that point.
US Commandos Capture A Libyan "Benghazi Suspect" Off Of The Streets Of Libya To Bring Him To "Justice" In The "Racist" American Judicial System, To Be Tried In A Civilian Court Per The Wishes Of US Attorney General Eric Holder
JUSTICE indeed is contextual.
Sovereignty is a matter of the power to project violence
APPEASEMENT is a matter of compelling the masses to only look at selective matters of justice which are important to them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-captured-benghazi-suspect-in-secret-raid/2014/06/17/7ef8746e-f5cf-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
Brother CNu:
Why is the OPINIONS of "The Mayor" and "The Police" MORE IMPORTANT than the "facts of life" about violence in the lives of the people in each respective boro?
In my view THIS real world experience is the greatest indicator of the alignment of "general sentiments" with "competency to translate one's values into reality"
BRONX TALES:
July 2014 - Surge In Killings In North Bronx Tests Police Tactics
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/nyregion/killings-surge-in-north-bronx-testing-new-police-tactics.html
July 2014 - Bronx Residents, Leaders Struggle To Explain Increase In Gun Violence
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/spike-violence-stumps-bronxites-article-1.1850080
July 2014 - NYC Mean Streets, Over 200 Young Lives In 10 Years
http://nypost.com/2014/07/07/200-city-teens-killed-by-guns-during-10-year-period-study/
July 2014 - Bronx Mom Speaks Out Against Gun Violence
http://newsone.com/3027410/bronx-mom-speaks-out-against-gun-violence/
WOW. With CRIME being such an "intimate personal" or "community-level" problem this group shows crime at a STATE LEVEL of granularity?
Stunning.
Is Montana "More Safe" than Pennsylvania is to South Carolina because it is full of grasslands and mountains?
If Pennsylvania was ranked as "The Most Deadly State For Black People" - playing hopscotch with Missouri for this top shameful honor for several years - indicative of "State Violence" or more granular problems?
If a community who rejects having "the state" take over their "failing schools" being logically consistent when they suffer from "community violence' but then "blame the state" for failing them?
I believe that's the point of CNu's 'niggerization' tag.
This is definitely a curious development though... especially since they've overwhelmingly, successfully used it to seize so much money.
Not curious at all Dale. Someone has done the calculations on sustainability of the criminal-justus-prison-industrial complex and determined they're entirely unsustainable. Those same or related elite mentats have also run the numbers on how many conscripts will be needed in the pending global conflicts. You either continue on the unsustainable path of trying to tax and spend to beef up a thin blue line of unproductive useless eaters who will be numerically overwhelmed by the folks they've been preying on, or, you make life a little more pleasant for the 47% and attempt to instill somewhat more of the warm and fuzzy sentiments toward the homeland.
That former, police-state approach has been deemed undesirable and unsustainable. Better to make an attempt at a Greatest Generation 2.0 to face the rigors of WW-III.
Something solid from the Brookings Institution http://www.brookings.edu/
O'Harrow, Rich, and Balko have had a bigger impact on the Rule of Law in America than the entire post-Ferguson protest movement combined. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/01/16/how-police-spent-billions-seized-from-americans/ Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday effectively ended the Equitable Sharing process in which local and state police seized billions in cash, cars and other property under federal law without evidence that a crime occurred. The Justice Department’s new policy prohibits federal agencies from “adopting” local seizures into the Equitable Sharing program, with a few limited exceptions. In October, The Washington Post published a story that detailed how police agencies spent proceeds taken from Americans under the federal civil forfeiture laws. It was the fourth part in a series focusing on Equitable Sharing, which split funds between Justice and local and state police departments. Those departments received up to 80 percent of the money. The Post story was based on 43,000 forms obtained from Justice through a Freedom of Information Act request.
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