It bugs me reading some of the the comments here blaming the person that did nothing illegal by carrying cash. It doesn't matter if you (or I) feel it is inadvisable to carry cash, it isn't illegal. Smoking pot (illegal in most places) before flying is obviously not the brightest idea given the enhanced level of security at an airport. So I am ok with the "smell" prompting some extra questions (even an agreed to search) but not the seizure of personal property when nothing can tie that property to a crime.
Also, don't forget, here in the US many people cannot qualify for a simple checking/savings account at a bank, meaning they use check cashing services to cash their paychecks and only have cash. There is absolutely nothing is illegal about them only having cash. If anything IMO it is immoral that these people are iced out of the banking environment because of past credit mistakes etc. Immigrants and minorities are almost always the worst affected, how is that right?
Civil asset forfeiture is horrid and needs to be done away with permanently and nationally. If you want to take someones property prove it was involved in a crime and directly contributed to or tied to the criminal act. If the property is properly seized through the courts, the proceeds should first benefit anyone directly afflicted by the criminal act, then secondarily pay for the court and legal fees to reduce taxpayer obligations.
The main reasons are probably regulation and effort/difficulty to serve.
Assuming you are a US citizen, I highly invite you to come over to Switzerland and try and open a (savings) account if you wish to experience it in person. I'm currently living here, and talking to my US colleagues, I've found that it is near impossible for them to open an account, even though they would bring money to the banks here.
Reasoning? Issues of the US with the Swiss banking system has made these customers more of a pain than a benefit. I'm sure a similar argument can be made for people who (perhaps accidentally) have a bad credit score
This is not a Swiss specific thing. The US is one of the few countries that taxes citizens (and permanent residents) while the they don't live in the US. Consequently citizens have to self report their foreign income and foreign taxes. There are various tax treaties, but the US person will essentially have to pay the difference between the foreign taxes and the US taxes on that money (that at no point went anywhere near the US, nor any services it provides).
> The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a United States federal law requiring United States persons (including those living outside the U.S.) to have yearly reported themselves and their non-U.S.financial accounts to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), and requires all non-US (Foreign) Financial Institutions (FFI's) to search their records for suspected US persons for reporting their assets and identities to the US Treasury.
Note the last part. The burden imposed by FATCA on those institutions is so high, that they are refusing to have any US related people as customers. Heck the FATCA law is so wide reaching and onerous that a friend in Sri Lanka was bitching about having to implement it at their company, even though they don't employ a single US related person.
The net result is US citizens living abroad are giving up citizenship rather than deal with all this crap. It is noticeable how under represented Americans expats are, and there will be increasingly fewer. (As a counter-example, you will find Brits everywhere.) This will harm the country and its integration into the rest of the world (economically, politically etc).
To make the situation even weirder, "giving up citizenship" to avoid these complications is difficult and expensive for US expats.
Renunciation of US citizenship was free until July 2010, the same year that FACTA went into effect. At that time US embassies started charging a $450 fee to renounce citizenship. In September 2014, this fee was raised to $2,350.
So an American family of four, living abroad, who wants to renounce their US citizenship needs to come up with $9400 to do so.
I have seen other countries do that -- force citizens to pay a hefty fee to renounce their citizenship. It is like they see this as a last chance to extract any money from them, so they make it their worth.
You know, people in US laugh at opressive regimes who they don't allow people to leave the country to travel. Yet US is doing the same in a way with respect to citizenship.
There are a few checks banks make that can make it so they won't open any type of account for you.
1. Credit check, poor credit makes you a risk and they don't like it, but this can sometimes be overcome more easily then the others.
2. If you had a prior account and it was closed forcibly or your SS# still shows up in the checking system as risky. There are a few national clearing houses that track your checks to see if you are a good/bad risk for accepting checks for retailers. Those same systems banks use to determine if they will give you an account.
3. If you have been convicted of a crime of dishonesty in the past, e.g. shoplifting, charged for a bad check, fraud etc.
4. If you do not have a permanent address or your address isn't a permanent residence, e.g. you live in motels day to day.
It isn't that these reasons aren't valid for banks to have concerns about you, but to totally ice you out or charge outrageous fees just because doesn't seem right to me. There are other options, like a savings account with no checks and cash withdrawal only etc.
I am not from USA so curious, with ATMs, debit cards what is the use of check. In my 10 years of banking had to get money out of check only once, when I had lost my card.
I pay rent every month with a check, and this still seems common. Only one of my previous four landlords has accepted another form of payment (a large rental company who accepted credit/debit cards).
Although it is weird. Many bigger businesses won't take personal checks, while smaller businesses often are not setup to process cards and will only take checks.
I was denied a bank account when I was in the middle of moving out of my parents house and needed them to essentially cosign/co-own the account.
The stated reason was an inability to document my income and a lack of credit information.
Similarly, I've been denied credit cards and bank accounts since this "co-ownership" has mixed my financial information in LexisNexis [and similar services] with that of my parents and I don't always know the questions they ask to verify my identity and/or claim that I'm not me.
For instance, I shutdown my Chase account because one part of Chase insisted I wasn't me [to the point of denying me access to services I had paid for] while the other part of Chase held my money. I'm not going to trust Chase to hold 5 figures of my cash if they are simultaneously going to insist over the phone I'm not me because I can't answer questions sourced from services like LexisNexis. That'd be insane.
> Similar proportions of previously banked (33.2 percent) and never-banked (32.8 percent) households report that they don’t have a bank account because they don’t have enough money for one; this was the most common reason given by both groups. The second most common reason was not needing or wanting an account, although a larger percentage of never-banked households (26.0 percent) cited this reason than did previously banked households (15.6 percent). This finding implies that households that have had a bank account in the past may place more value on a banking relationship than those that have not.
> For nearly 10 percent (9.5 percent) of previously banked households, the main reason they do not currently have an account is that the bank closed their account. Another 5.5 percent of previously banked households cannot open an account because of identification (ID), credit, or banking history problems. This suggests that about 15 percent of previously banked households may not choose to be unbanked but face institutional barriers related to opening or maintaining an account.
> High bank account fees or minimum balance requirements were the main obstacles to account ownership for slightly more than 5 percent of unbanked households. However, recently unbanked households were more likely than others to cite fees as an obstacle: more than one in ten (11.1 percent) households that had a bank account in the last year were currently unbanked because of high fees and balance requirements, compared to 6.0 percent of previously banked households that had an account over a year ago. ...
A bank refused me because I didn't have a valid driver's license - I had a valid state ID from the DMV, which was the exact same in every way except it had 'non-driver' printed on it. I asked to speak to the manager, but he couldn't explain it either, just said something about "It's a policy". You have to drive a car to have an account at that bank.
In addition to the usual issues that come up with identity documents, some banks want documentation of an address of residence (e.g. a utility bill in the customer's name), which a lot of people don't have for various reasons.
Many banks require a credit check to open a bank account without meeting a minimum balance... no way of getting credit in the first place if you're that poor.
Now I'm not sure if Norway has similar laws, but I haven't heard of any.
However, watching John Oliver talk about how ridiculous the civil forfeiture laws are in the US just makes me want to laugh so much.
I know of all the great things happening in the US, and I'm not calling you a bad country. But it's so hard not to categorise you together with North Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates with how trigger happy your police are, how easy it is for them to steal from the population. How terribly you treat your sick and poor, and how fascinated you seem to be with groping people at the airport.
To group the US in with the likes of N. Korea and China is dishonest and inaccurate. If the US were run by either of those governments, you would not have Jon Oliver, Washington Post, etc. exposing and criticizing the very issues you mention.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you appear to believe that because I stated we have the freedom to have an open and critical dialogue around these issues - something one is unlikely to have in N. Korea, etc. - that I am implying we do not have these problems. That is not what I had stated.
Well, you said that "to group the US in with the likes of N. Korea and China is dishonest and inaccurate." So although you didn't expressly state that you didn't think the US has a police state problem, you did seem to think that grouping with other states with this same problem was deceptive. The only odd part was that you used as your justification an assessment that, in a completely separate (albeit obviously related) set of criteria, these states don't belong in the same group.
Thank you. This was the most constructive reply I've received.
I do acknowledge the issues raised by OP; my quote: "...exposing and criticizing the very issues you mention."
I read the original comment as a generalization that the US is grouped in with those other countries due to these issues. My reply was simply to refute that primarily on the fact that we have the ability to discuss and solve these issues that those other countries do not have. It is an important distinction in my opinion.
Maybe I misread the intent - it appears from some of the fiery responses I've received that may be true. :(
There is obviously a disconnect between what you think you wrote and how it reads to others. Perhaps instead of getting defensive you should acknowledge that the confusion is valid and apologize for being unclear.
People are responding to your exact comment, not guessing what you might be thinking.
I honestly don't feel/think I am being defensive here. I've even asked for correction if I am wrong. I'm not asking people to "guess" what I might be thinking, hence the discussion.
You accused the OP of being "dishonest and inaccurate" because he neglected to mention the differences in freedoms of speech. The parallels he draws are independent of that concern.
Yeah, the US is a big joke, and it sucks to have to suffer through the police state and looter healthcare system. Civil asset forfeiture is an insane rejection of our right to property. The problem is that "rights" are really more like "ideas which we must nod to and then can ignore fully" here.
Whether it makes it or not, I can accept speech/press protection + Internet as worthwhile results of the experiment that is the U.S.. Long as they stay around and get more uptake that is.
> But it's so hard not to categorise you together with North Korea, China and the United Arab Emirates with how trigger happy...
United Arab Emirates... trigger happy? You have no idea what you're talking about. The police there are extremely pleasant to deal with. You actually feel safe talking to them.
I don't know about Norway, but the other anglo countries have similar laws. It seems to be less of a problem over there because, as far as I can tell, the people are of a better moral stock. How law is carried into effect is a reflection of the virtue--or lack thereof--of the people.
Before taking that opinion it might be useful for you to go through the exercise of engineering solutions for the various problems that lead to some of the things you point out.
It sounds like you are in Norway, it might just be impossible for you to think of these solutions because of the lack of context. Not putting you down, it would be just as impossible for me to have a valid opinion about anything going on in Norway because I am completely ignorant of your laws and environment.
I am not disputing these problems are in a range from less-than-ideal to horrible. However, the term often used in product design "form follows function" might be applicable here.
For example, our police force's "form" is a result of the "function" they have to serve, which includes a country with 300 million guns, higher crime rate than a lot of countries and, currently, a situation where segments of the population are advocating killing cops. And, in fact, cops have been killed just sitting in their cars doing absolutely nothing more than existing.
Again, not proposing this is the police force I want. Yet one has to understand things in context before forming an opinion. I know lots of cops. I train at a local Aikido dojo that is run by a retired FBI agent. Probably 80% of the students are in law enforcement (police, CHP, correctional, anti-terrorist units, FBI and undisclosed). A number of them are friends. We go have lunch and dinner together and talk about these things. They are very concerned that every time they put on their uniform they become targets for maniacs. They'd love to be able to walk around without their guns when in uniform but, today, in the USA, that would be suicidal. And today, in the USA, for a cop to approach contact with a civilian not prepared for the potential of a gun being pointed at them would be just as dangerous.
That, BTW, is one of the problems we have today in this country. Nobody talks to anyone in an effort to understand what's going on yet everyone has an opinion. Sit down with a cop for a two or three hour heart-to-heart conversation and your view of their reality will be very different. Don't think of them as an image on TV. Think of them as your brother, sister, father or mother.
The sick and the poor? That's an entirely different problem. Again, go through the mental exercise of developing a solution --a realistic one-- before forming opinions. You can't just say "do it like Norway" or "do it like France", because we are not Norway or France. We have our own laws, problems, culture and dynamics. And so, the solutions have to be had in the context of an entire society.
In my opinion the USA is going through some of the phases Latin America has gone through in terms of what's happening with government and the poor. In order to understand what I mean you have to understand Latin American history going back to 1492 and probably a bit before that. I am not going to go into the details, there's an excellent set of videos that paint a strong evidence-based image of the problem. If you don't speak Spanish you can turn on subtitles and google translate (not a great translation but it might do). Here they are:
There are a couple of lines in these videos that hit the "poor" problem in the US right on the head. Please remember the context here is Latin American history, not US. I am simply proposing there are important parallels (not a match, parallels):
"Populism: It's the shortcut through which politicians play with people's passions, dreams and ideals to promise them the impossible, taking advantage of the people making decisions outside the bounds of logic and reason as they focus in their misery. It plays with necessities of the population to impose a dictatorship."
"Populism has such love for the poor that it multiplies them."
The latter one is particularly powerful. When politicians play the people for their own benefit nothing good can come from that. I feel very strongly that the Latin American historical experience is a time machine for aspects of the US experience. They are probably fifty years ahead of us in populism and it's effects.
A populist uses the population for votes during elections yet needs them to stay poor and miserable after winning the election or they lose their "base". They do this by promising to fix their problems and, ultimately, not doing anything for them. The poor staying poor is good for the populist. They appease them with gifts that might feel good but do not, ultimately, solve the real problems. YouTube is full of videos going back to 2008 with people in absolutely rapture about the Obama era solving all their problems. Obama promised the parting of the oceans and beyond and, of course, just like any good populist, delivered almost nothing. The poor are still poor, the uneducated are still uneducated and we have worst problems than we had seven years ago.
And so I ask, before forming an opinion about anything --not just the US, anything in your life-- take the time to really understand it from the inside and develop solutions on paper. Opinions without solid context and deep solution analysis aren't very valuable.
BTW, we are all guilty of this. Most of use react to things rather than taking the more difficult road of investing time and mental effort to dig deep into something before shaping an opinion. People will, for example, down vote this post without investing the four hours, or more, that it would take to research and truly understand. Nobody is going to go to the local police station and engage a cop in a conversation to understand what being a cop feels like. And nobody is going to devote a couple of hours to watch those videos and another two or more hours to research what they learned and develop context. That's just the way things are. Again, we are --me included-- all guilty of this, which is part of the problem.
>a situation where segments of the population are advocating killing cops. And, in fact, cops have been killed just sitting in their cars doing absolutely nothing more than existing.
[...]
>They are very concerned that every time they put on their uniform they become targets for maniacs. They'd love to be able to walk around without their guns when in uniform but, today, in the USA, that would be suicidal. And today, in the USA, for a cop to approach contact with a civilian not prepared for the potential of a gun being pointed at them would be just as dangerous.
That comes with the territory of participating in a violent criminal gang. Perhaps if, collectively, they behaved more like police instead, it wouldn't be as risky for them. Unfortunately, the cops have been giving people lots of good reasons to be defensive and/or seek vengeance, and their actions have eroded trust and respect even in those who aren't their usual victims.
It may be a small percentage of cops that are bad while the rest just support them, but because their coworkers don't bother to stop them, and they are unaccountable and immune to any form of punishment for violating the law, and they take advantage of that to victimize the citizens, they (and their fellow gang members) are naturally going to be at risk of their victims fighting back. When their victims can't get justice through the justice system, it is going to be messy frontier justice.
> form follows function
And effect follows cause. We should address the cause.
Stop letting police commit armed robbery under the fancypants name "civil asset forfeiture" and start holding them accountable for behaving properly and respectably. Teach them that throwing flashbangs at babies, shooting at protesters, stealing from people, and randomly arresting people for not being white are not proper respectable behavior. Teach them about the constitution and the laws of our land. It'll be a long and difficult change, but de-escalating (something police are supposed to do) sure beats the alternative of escalating further.
Hundreds of years ago, we had problems with corruption in law enforcement. That's why we have explicit laws against this: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated [...] nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation"
While the police are acting as a violent criminal gang, they will be perceived and treated as such. When they stop doing that, or at least justice occurs, then the problems will be greatly reduced and the police themselves will be much safer.
I am not going to dispute your points. I'll just say that painting all cops with the same brush is as fair as painting all Muslims as terrorists. Which is to say it isn't fair at all.
Their jobs are unimaginable to most of us, particularly when they work difficult areas. One of the cops from my Aikido dojo is in a gang task force. One day he entered this room (I can't give too much detail) and had a full clip emptied in his direction just as he closed the door. To this day he has no clue why not one bullet hit him.
Not one of us outside law enforcement or military service is equipped to understand what it would mean to wake up every day and go to work doing THAT job. It's far too easy to be angry at videos on youtube from behind a keyboard.
Again, I am not pushing back on anything you said. Your opinion could be exactly on point. I don't know and I won't take sides other than to say, perhaps take the time to go talk to a cop or two human-to-human in order to understand their plight. Buy them a cup of coffee and tell them there are a few things you'd like to understand. You know, they are sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, they are people, just like you and I. And yes, there are assholes in there just like in any other population.
I am not defending the assholes, but, yes, the vast majority of good cops out there deserve our thanks and respect for doing a job most of us might not want to do. Let's walk in their shoes a bit and avoid lumping them in with the assholes you see on youtube.
I agree. One of my family members is now retired law enforcement and the stories that he has to tell are incredible (and sometimes hysterical). And of course the job affected his wife and kids - sometimes he would get called away on the weekend and they wondered whether he'd come back.
But my point is that, while most cops have good intentions, instead of punishing and removing the few assholes so that people can feel safer with cops around, we're rewarding them, giving them heavier weapons, institutionalizing their assholery, and possibly turning good cops bad by encouraging them to do unethical/immoral/illegal things. That makes people feel threatened by cops, and that makes it more dangerous for the cops. Citizens and police should not be an adversarial us-vs-them relationship.
Edit: Sorry, still on my first cup of coffee. Here it goes: the purpose of news is to objectively inform you of facts. The purpose of these comedy shows is to make you laugh, often by distorting or exaggerating the facts. By getting your news from comedy shows, you are receiving a distorted view of reality, which you seem to admit in your post. However, I see this as a greater problem with some youth.
"the purpose of news is to objectively inform you of facts"
Which news source does that? Fox News? the NYT? Al Jazeera? the WSJ? Democracy Now? the Washington Post? RT? The Guardian? Der Spiegel? No matter which one you pick, others will point out failures.
No news source can give you all the news. As commenters have long noted, the selection of facts to present is itself subject to bias.
For example, during a contract negotiation between a company and a union, does the news source report the facts as management sees it? Or as the union sees it? If it presents both sides, but one side is likely lying, does the news source report the lie, or let the reader decide, or interview a third party to have that third party point out the lie?
"Last Week Tonight" is a commentary news show that also happens to be funny. Its content is entirely factual and has way more in common with "60 Minutes" than with "Saturday Night Live". I'd argue that the purpose of the show is in fact to make you cry. Sometimes laughing makes that easier.
"Last Week Tonight" is satire. It says so on its web site. Satire involves the use of humor to exaggerate or ridicule. It is not serious news and if that is your source of news, you are foolish.
The irony here is comedians speak the truth while politicians lie. If John Oliver, George Carlin (my favorite), et al were serious in their monologues hardly anyone would listen to them.
Civil asset forfeiture is horrible and we should get rid of it.
On a different note, my takeaway from this story: pick your battles.
Sure, you can go into an airport with $11k in cash. Maybe you're a Sikh and you want to carry a kirpan [0] into the airport, or you're a high school kid working on a science project and you have a bunch of C-cell batteries taped together with wires hanging out the ends of them (experience talking).
You're probably increasing your odds of getting stopped. Sometimes it's worth it, maybe for strong religious beliefs, or you feel strongly about the exercise of your democratic rights. But fighting the collective weight of "normal", shared perception, culture, etc. is costly. You'll be delayed, people will ask lots of annoying questions, in general you'll expend a lot of energy on stuff that is in some sense, entirely avoidable.
I felt this way recently when trying to get a loan for a house from Wells Fargo. Quit my W2 a few months ago for a large contract. I couldn't convince the bank my income was solid even though the payment was about 1/8th of my taxable income and I had almost the entire mortgage balance in semi-liquid retirement accounts. Sometimes the message the world sends is, "conform".
That's great if you are privileged enough to pass as normal. Not acting Jewish was fine in 1937 Germany too, until that wasn't good enough and they started checking who your grandparents were.
Guess it all depends on how you measure your life. Literature is filled with ample anecdotes of members of the WW2 French resistance, prisoners, and other persecuted minorities holding their tongue until the time was right. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the battle to win the war, though it may seem less "heroic" in the moment.
Civil asset forfeiture is fine if you're convicted, and the law says it's ok for a given crime. The current situation is ridiculous, and I'm surprised nobody brought a case all the way to The Supreme Court (I mean a case when a person was not charged and/or not found guilty).
>I'm surprised nobody brought a case all the way to The Supreme Court
State's Attorneys will typically drop Civil Asset Forfeiture cases before they get to the Supreme Court for that reason. It's better to give up a few cases here and there than to fight them and risk taking down the whole system, I guess.
If something is taken when you're convicted, it's usually criminal asset forfeiture. One argument in favor of civil asset forfeiture is that it is the only way to take assets from the estate of a criminal who died before being convicted.
The Supreme Court only takes cases it wants, usually because different circuit courts (the level below the Supreme Court) are at odds with one another. The Supreme Court also sometimes takes cases which they are certain will have circuit splits, ones of particular importance (Bush v. Gore), and those which are causing a body of law to be developed which the SC justices believe to be incorrect. Because of these facts, you cannot force a case on to the Supreme Court docket; they are probably waiting for the right case to take.
Small nitpick, the word "civil" is important here. If you're convicted of a crime, there is nothing "civil" about it, you're tried opposing a public official (district attorney -- not a private party) and convicted of a criminal offense. I don't think anyone here is arguing that asset forfeiture isn't appropriate for convicted criminals.
> I'm surprised nobody brought a case all the way to The Supreme Court (I mean a case when a person was not charged and/or not found guilty).
Well Congress could just pass a law and get it down with quicker. No need to wait for any convenient case to go to Supreme Court. But Congress, and guessing local state legistators, are not putting this on the top of their agenda.
Police usually seize things from minorities, those who perceived do not have the power or resources to fight back. You don't see cops pulling Trump or Gates on their way to a fundraiser and confiscating their cash. They probably don't hang out in multi-million dollar home neighbourhoods doing it. Because in that case, shit will hit the fan very fast. But nobody cares if a black kid with $11k gets his money taken. Look at him, he smoked pot, most people 50 and older see a druggy criminal type alread, mix in some deep seated racism, and you are close to "good, he deserved it" mentality.
I've had similar experiences when taking electronics along on business travel. When it's me and a boring hotel room for the week, why not? Lots of fun, and I enjoy low level programming.
Conform is the word of the day for travel. Wish it wasn't. I've since learned to avoid batteries. Most of the other stuff won't be at issue. There is no significant mass, and that means no significant threat. (mostly)
To many clever people it will probably seem that in the case of this young gentleman, and in cases of many similar people all across the nation, the battle picks them.
Your advice basically boils down to: "If I could go to a bank with a saner management, surely you can go to a country with a saner government." That may be the case, but some people would prefer the government to do the going.
Minnesota recently fixed this so that a criminal conviction is necessary before forfeiture, and when I texted my state representative about it, he said my state senator already has a bill for it in committee in Pennsylvania.
Because the government and businesses have slowly but surely been eroding the role of cash in our lives.
Most people use checks or credit cards for big purchases. Most people are paid by check, and the exceptions are usually near minimum wage.
Nobody does big transactions in cash anymore -- even if you want to pay tens or hundreds of thousands in cash for a car, a house, or college tuition, if you show up with a briefcase full of cash, then your counterparty will tell you to put it in a bank and come back with a check because they're not set up to handle cash on their end.
Government policies are designed to encourage inflation, yet the government stopped printing $500 and larger bills in 1945 and has never continued them.
Most of the people who were old enough to remember the Great Depression and hoarded cash throughout their lives because of their experiences are old enough to be dead or in an old folks' home, and their hoards of cash have already been deposited in the banking system by their families. Living through the Depression hasn't been a "mainstream" experience for many decades, and the actions of those who did have been dismissed as "silly, irrational things that old people do."
Basically it's become so abnormal to have large amounts of cash that a lot of people agree with the government -- "if you're using a lot of cash, that's so abnormal, you must be involved in something illegal." It's so abnormal it activates our tribal instincts which cause us to de-humanize -- "That's not something that I would do, or anyone I know would do" -- it's much easier to accept the demonization of people who use cash.
Of course, this is just how the government and big business wants things to work -- all those bank deposits and credit cards are much easier to track. Think about all the junk mail you get based on your credit rating -- the marketing departments in those companies love the amount of information you're giving away about your finances.
That's true. Whereas people using checks or plastic are more likely to get robbed by banks themselves, crooks remotely for larger amounts, or have assets frozen/seized by government. Storing cash in hidden, well-protected locations while keeping smaller amounts on hand protects against the most risks.
Far as cash-only business risk, there's protections for that, too, that are pretty effective. The range from drop boxes to time-lock safes to our 2nd amendment security solution. One gets to choose his or her risk level with minimal, external influence with cash.
And then there's the darned civil forfeiture laws...
I agree with your conclusion - but your premise of conspiracy is wrong.
Using virtual Money is obviously much better than paper money. The difference is should it be centralized or de-centralized and anonymous ?
The paradoxical economic problem with decentralized money is that the govt has no control over it. Which means during bad time its going to be very difficult for the govt to enact changes. We learnt it the hard way During the great depression when money was pegged to gold and the govt was unable to use inflation to restart the economy.
Its a deep economical problem for which there is no known theoretical solution. Is it possible to have a decentralized monetary system that can also be controlled by a representive govt ?
> The paradoxical economic problem with decentralized money is that the govt has no control over it.
This is a not a paradox nor even a contradiction; indeed to advocates of many decentralized currency solutions, this is the killer feature.
> Which means during bad time its going to be very difficult for the govt to enact changes. We learnt it the hard way During the great depression when money was pegged to gold and the govt was unable to use inflation to restart the economy.
Of course you realize that this narrative does not enjoy consensus.
It this began with a ticket agent (who generally gets a cut) and a "drug-sniffing" dog.
Police dogs are magical beasts -- you just point the dog at the thing you want searched and wait for it to "signal" that it's found something.
I really wish that the Supreme Court had had the chance to review the accuracy of drug dogs in their case this year (Rodriguez v. US).
How many times can a dog signal a false positive before you recognize that the drug dog is trying to please its handler? The police have no incentive to count.
That's still a false positive. Dogs are ostensibly trained to distinguish between a lingering odor (or "residue") and actual material. So the dog, we're told, indicated because of "residue," falsely giving a positive indication for material.
That would be pretty challenging, particularly as weed in transit is often double-vacuum packed and stored in boxes containing coffee beans to (try) and elude drug sniffing dogs. I can't even conceive how you could train a dog to distinguish between lingering/residue in that scenario.
I think he meant users that have a joint in their pocket or something. Not experienced criminal operations that know about the dogs and are trying to evade them.
So just to be clear: He said he used drugs, a gate agent smelled drugs, the cops smelled drugs, and you just want to argue that if a dog also smelled drugs that that dog is unreliable even though the arrested party says the dog was correct..?
I just don't understand what point you're even trying to make. Just seems like you want to talk/criticise drug-dog evidence even though it has no relation to this case at all.
If the guy arrested and whose money was taken says he used drugs right before arriving at the airport I, for one, believe him. He has more to lose by saying that than he does by lying about it.
Just because the dog alerted and the person later admitted that they had used drugs doesn't make the fact that the dog was used as justification for a search and confiscation tolerable. If they had used astrological 'cause' in the same circumstance, would you be ok with that?
"We ran his name and found out he was a Pisces. That gave us grounds to search. He had money. That gave us grounds to seize it."
> So just to be clear: He said he used drugs, a gate agent smelled drugs, the cops smelled drugs, and you just want to argue that if a dog also smelled drugs that that dog is unreliable even though the arrested party says the dog was correct..?
There's nothing strange about this. On one the features of a drug sniffing dog is that it is supposed to be able to distinguish between a lingering odor, a passing odor, the presence of residue, and the presence of actual material - in a way that a human can't.
The article you have referred talks about numerous cases where dogs actually detect remaining odors and then alleges that dogs could be trained to ignore weak odors.
I'm not following. He said that 1) such training is possible, and that 2) at least in some cases, it is ignored or that dogs who have this capability are rejected.
So indeed, the feature appears, at least according to his source, to be available. And it also appears to be regarded as (or mistaken for) a bug by the users.
I'll keep this email brief because either you'll know about the issue already, or you'll want to do your own research (or ask your staff to do so). Most people won't take the time to email you, but this is probably the #1 most important issue for law abiding citizens at this time.
Civil forfeiture, which permits cash or property of US citizens to be seized by police without being convicted of a crime, is completely opposed to all the principles of democratic government. If someone is convicted of a crime and the cash or property relates to the crime, sure, take it. But I am reading more and more stories in the news about merely unlucky fellow citizens having their cash stolen from them by the police (I use the word stolen because the seizure is unjust in this case) merely because "carrying a lot of cash is suspicious".
You might be interested to read the Peelian Principles of policing a democracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles) which were created for the Metropolitan Police Force in London in 1829. The same principles would be effective today for maintaining public support for the police.
When the people we as citizens entrust to keep order create the impression that they are not trustworthy and are a potential danger to us, this is a serious problem. When citizens see a police car or see a police officer walk by, they should feel safe, not fearful. That is less and less the case.
Write your state representatives. Work to get the law changed in your state. Refer to the laws passed in other states in your letters, etc. It'll be much, much easier than trying to get things done at the federal level.
Attorney General Eric Holder changed this somewhat in January. It's an improvement but not as much as some people thought according to this Forbes article.
It is a double problem. A rule that allows the police to seize your cash for the most flimsy of reasons only works if people are not aware of the fact that this could happen. Therefore, the next step is to outlaw discussions of the type that we are having now. Next, hosting a site that allows this kind of discussions must also be banned. Merely describing what exactly is banned, discloses the wrong kind of information, and must therefore also be banned. It is not enough to impose obnoxious rules. It will also be needed to control all information about them. The solution is to make rules a secret. That is how you get things like the FISA courts, the secret courts granting the NSA the right to do whatever they like, while anybody involved becomes subject to a gag order. Shut up, or else!
It's worth noting that civil forfeiture doesn't just apply to cash. It can be (and has been) used against bank accounts or pretty much any property you can own. For example, here's a case where the government tried to seize $115,000 from a couple's bank accounts (without charging them with a crime): http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/05/08/after-seizing-couples-ba...
For those who didn't RTFA, he carried his life savings with him in cash. We've seen several stories like this: person has $xx,xxx in cash on them like that's just a normal thing to do. Bad thing happens. Person is incredulous. No one thinks they have any culpability for opting to carry $10k+ in cash over vastly safer and free alternatives.
That doesn't excuse the seizure, but I don't see how it's worth our time to get mad about people experiencing bad outcomes when they take stupid risks.
There are many other examples that make a better case against civil asset forfeiture.
"Dr. Berlin took $15,000 from the cash received in wedding gifts, leased an examination room in another doctor's office and worked nights and weekends over the next decade to build a thriving private practice all his own." - http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/28/us/clinton-s-health-plan-s...
"“Once you’re in Cuba – as an American – everything has to be paid in cash. American credit and debit cards do not work — hotels, meals, taxis AND the cost of the footage all had to be paid for in cash. We took $15,000 in cash. To make things more difficult, we could not pay in $U.S. for the footage. We had to transfer our dollars to Cuban pesos." - http://www.documentarytelevision.com/sweet-spots/fidel-castr...
"During the criminal trial, Chatfield testified that Brown had met with her several times and lured her to his house, hinting that it might be for sale. Chatfield said she brought $15,000 in cash as a possible down payment on June 15, 2012." - http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/midwest/2014/08/12/253190....
"The woman’s $3000 Louis Vuitton handbag was stolen with $15,000 inside while she was waiting for a green light on the corner of Chesterville Rd and Bernard St at 2.15pm on Monday. ... the woman reported the money as “business takings”." - http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/inner-south/louis-vuitton...
These are just cases where one person had the money in public. I left out places where an organization raise $15K in charity, or someone won $15K in cash from a raffle ticket, or people found $15K in someone's home after they died, or in one case in Australia where the husband put $15K in the oven and the wife, not knowing that, turned on the oven to preheat it.
And of course you don't hear about all the normal cases where nothing notable happened.
Honestly, the only one of these that doesn't seem weird is the Cuba trip (and carrying large amounts of cash across international borders has its own laws). Most of the rest are either "possibly criminal activity" or "likely not a giant pile of cash".
"Weird" is an odd word. Should we penalize the weird? Should we be encouraging more conformity? Or is it merely that only the unusual makes the news?
The doctor received $15K in cash from wedding gifts. How is that weird? Is it because your baseline doesn't include people with rich relatives?
The "Baltimore Woman [who] Posted a Stranger’s $15,000 Cash Bail" was because of a judge's order:
> But in addition to criminal charges a judge had imposed a strict “cash only” bail condition on Wilkes. The so-called “cash only” restriction bars suspects from using a bond or personal property to make bail.
Had it not been an anonymous person, and one of the family members brought in the $15K, it wouldn't have made the news.
At the very least, it establishes that a judge thinks that walking around with $15K in cash is not beyond the pale.
You're right - I'm not sure what "cash bail" means. In New Hampshire it means:
> CASH BAIL - a person who is required to post cash bail must put up money, either cash or money order/bank check, to be released. If the funds are not posted with the court, the person may not leave and will be jailed. - http://www.courts.state.nh.us/district/criminal/
> CASH BAIL: Cash for the total amount of bail in the form of cashier’s check or money order delivered to the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center. If the defendant shows up for all his scheduled court appearances, the bail is returned at the conclusion of the case. If the defendant fails to appear, the bond is forfeited to the court.
I now think it's more likely to have been cashier’s check or money order than actual physical cash.
I think you're making the mistake of thinking that, where there's a conflict between two parties, discovering that one party was negligent always reduces the other party's culpability, as if fault was a conserved quantity to be distributed around. But the law (and morality) aren't like this. In this case, the fact that this guy was foolish does nothing to reduce the wrongness of the police actions here, which is what everyone gets so outraged about.
You're correct that it is not wise to carry that much cash. However, we are allowed to do it. We are allowed to carry cash on us. I personally wouldn't do it unless I didn't have any other options, but for someone to have their money taken from them without evidence that it was derived from criminal activity is really messed up. And this isn't the first time that civil forfeiture has been used to deprive law abiding citizens of their property.
If it weren't the state, it could just as easily have been an ordinary mugger, or an airline employee theft, or simple airline incompetence.
>And certainly they aren't free from surveillance.
If you want a financial system free from surveillance then you need to get the public on board with ending taxation (and consequently all public services). Good luck.
And, as we saw, moving cash on an airplane is the most heavily surveilled and scrutinized way to do it.
Suggesting Bitcoin in its current state of evolution as a free and "vastly safer" alternative to carrying cash is CRAZY.
Whereas having the cash on you carries the risk of being mugged (I understood the story that he had the cash directly with him when the police arrived, it wasn't in the checked luggage, therefore the airline risks you mention do not apply), using Bitcoin carries much higher risks of:
- exchange going bust,
- exchange being hacked,
- exchange rate going down violently,
- Bitcoin wallet being stolen from his computer via malware,
- exchange's banking accounts being seized.
To a layperson unskilled with Bitcoin, walking with 11,000 USD in pockets through airport, using taxi/Uber and arriving in front of your door in a non-ghetto neighbourhood compares to Bitcoin as putting that cash into transparent bag, hanging it on your neck and walking through deserted city at night yelling "look, I have cash".
And even when you are skilled or take (a lot of) your time to read about everything starting with comparing various exchanges, securing your computer, using paper wallets, etc., you are dependant on very volatile exchange rate.
I generally support Bitcoin for various purposes (e.g. e-commerce) based on various reasons. But no, it certainly is not "vastly safer" for storing or even merely transferring your life savings, especially for a non-skilled person.
To elaborate more - each and every method of moving money has its own inherent risks. For example, when my father bought a car several times decades apart, he would take the cash both from home and bank, carry it in a jacket in an envelope to a dealer, put it on the table, immediately receive keys and papers for registration and drive away.
Fast forward in time and somebody had a very "clever" idea to outlaw paying more than 5,000 EUR in cash. Now, I have to wire transfer the funds in advance, wait for the transfer to clear and then come in to get the car. I certainly don't risk being mugged on my way to the dealer (in broad daylight, without advertising everyone, e.g. on social networks, that today I am buying a car and waving the wad of cash in a selfie). But if the limited liability company with 6,000 EUR liability deposit bankrupts, I will have neither the money (wire transfer have nothing like cashback on credit cards) nor the car until a lengthy legal process hoping that they have enough funds and property to pay out all creditors... You don't risk mugging but have to do way larger due diligence, check finance health of the company, ask around for customer feedback on the company, etc.
If it weren't the state, it could just as easily have been an ordinary mugger, or an airline employee theft, or simple airline incompetence.
We, as a society condemn muggers and thieves. We, as a society hold airlines responsible for safely transporting baggage without losing it or its contents. We lock muggers and thieves in cages to discourage such behavior and isolate those who perpetrate it from everyone else. We require airlines to pay compensation (up to $3000 in the US) to people whose property they lose.
We should similarly condemn the state behaving in a way that produces the same result as a mugger.
> No one thinks they have any culpability for opting to carry $10k+ in cash over vastly safer and free alternatives.
Why would you have 'culpability' for carrying your own money? Why would you have culpability for not always doing the normal thing - it's also not normal to be an religious minority, a homosexual, or a member of the Green Party; do they also deserve the blame for whatever arbitrary measures that the government chooses to take against them?
I think that you're saying that it's wise to treat your government as hostile, and to hide anything that you do that is out of the ordinary. Fine. But the idea that that makes it a bad case against civil asset forfeiture is like saying that the best cases for religious/racial discrimination should be to defend white Protestants.
There aren't a lot of safe ways to keep cash - bank accounts can be seized for all number of reasons with zero recourse, so a bank account isn't a particularly good place either.
I don't know why someone would take the chance caring that much money on them. Couldn’t he have gotten a check and cashed it once he got home or a bank account?
While the capability of the police to forfeit property is absolutely and completely unfair and, in an (supposedly) equal society, deeply questionable——as opposed to taking the property temporarily unless proven guilty——the unescapably stupid thing to do is to a) transfer money in cash and b) smoking weed while doing that.
All kinds of unlucky things could happen with a) such as losing the baggage/wallet/jacket with the money in it or being robbed. But because of b) and in a state where I believe cannabis is illegal, the mere unluckiness can be imagined to be amplified tenfold and one of the results is a catastrophe such as his.
>the unescapably stupid thing to do is to a) transfer money in cash and b) smoking weed while doing that.
So stupidity is now a crime? Because he wasn't charged with for a or b.
>losing the baggage/wallet/jacket with the money in it or being robbed
Police took his money because they believed they can get away with it(pothead like him would be to afraid to do anything about it), so just because it is legal, it doesn't suddenly make it not a robbery.
I suggested that it's stupid to carry large amounts of cash while smoking weed, because that can easily get you into a bigger trouble combined than merely carrying lots of cash or only smoking weed.
Factor in the unfair and unpredictable behaviour from the police and while you've done nothing wrong, you have a lot of explaining to do to the officers who really aren't that interested in hearing your explanation in the first place.
Victim blaming is an ideal that often forgets to factor in realities.
Theoretically, you should be able to walk into a Hell's Angels biker bar at 11pm on a Saturday evening and shout aloud "Only assholes ride a Harley!", then walk out. Theoretically you don't pose a credible threat to anyone and you merely state your opinion. In an ideally perfect world you should have nothing to worry about. But it just might be the most stupid thing you can do in ten seconds.
There's a difference between saying the consequences are completely the victim's fault versus thinking that the victim should have a license to do stupid things and yet get away with it against some, if not all, odds.
What happened to the guy who got his money confiscated is completely unfair but there was a wide range of choices he could've realistically made to avoid the unfairness from taking place. That's not victim blaming.
Suppose there’s political and societal pressure to do X, and a person (for their own reasons, which may be ethical or political) instead does an alternative thing Y, all also perfectly legal and ethical. Then suppose that this person gets in unreasonable amounts of trouble by the political and societal pressure. To then say, in effect, “But they could have done X instead, why do they have to be so difficult?” is blaming the victim.
I'm not saying the police are right, the whole seizure thing is ridiculous, but this story is so shady. You have 11 grand in cash and want to move it from A to B. The obvious and safe way is to deposit it in a bank and get a cashier's check or do an ACH transfer. Who in their right mind would carry it with them or even worse, put it in a checked bag that airlines notoriously lose? The point of the story is valid, but the example is ridiculous. Sounds like someone wanted an untraceable 11 grand. Shady.
And therein lies the crux of the problem with these things being subject to zero checks or balances and such a low standard of proof.
People’s stories sound shady all the time. In Canada, in my lifetime, there have been four different men whom everyone was certain had murdered people, and it turned out that they were innocent.
In many cases, people are so sure that shady people are guilty, they make up testimony to make sure the bad guy goes to jail. This is why we need incredibly high standards for convicting someone of a crime. And we still get it wrong.
So when someone “seems shady...” I stop far short of assuming that they are shady. And even if they are shady, I stop far short of thinking that the police, with the incredibly asymmetric power relationship, should be at liberty to enrich themselves based on someone seeming to be shady.
There is nothing illegal about doing it so it shouldn't be anyones business. Who in their right mind? A farmer or two going to buy some equipment, me paying my first year of college, and plenty of folks buying cars. ACH transfer and cashier checks cost money, and hell, even Walmart won't cash a cashier check.
Your attitude towards other people's business offends me about as much as the actual seizure. Its attitudes like this that make the US more dangerous since "Shady" is the same reason SWAT teams are used to throw flash bangs in houses and server warrants. That attitude escalates the danger to us all.
What's wrong with "untraceable"? How is it anyones business what anyone does with their money unless they are actually committing a criminal activity or defrauding someone? If those were happening and charges were brought and a guilty conviction happens, then fine seize the money, but not until.
You paid your university fees in cash? Is this normal?
As a Brit, all these stories about people carrying around huge chunks of cash seem completely outlandish to me. But then, we have free bank-to-bank transfers here.
At the time, yeah - I paid in cash. Financial aid wouldn't free up my money unless I paid my Business Office balance. Business Office claimed I owed $200 from the summer and wouldn't clear my balance until I paid that and the tuition ($734 if I remember correctly). So I walked $934 to the business office (Business Office had the odd policy that they didn't take checks with numbers under 2000 and I didn't write a lot of checks). Took receipt over to the finance office which got my damn financial aid freed up. The Business Office "discovered my payment" which lead to me getting cash and heading back to the bank.
Friend bought a $15,000 truck in cash. We were a bit vigilant about that one. Rural US still has a lot of cash and handshakes.
We do not have free bank to bank transfers and are ornery enough to not want to pay the damn fee.
Why is it foolish? I'm not real fond of being called a fool. I've had more problem with credit card fraud (and the lost money in fees because of it even if the original money was restored) then I ever had carrying cash. I don't honestly get this "you could be mugged" thinking. If mugging happens often enough that its a risk factor in carrying cash, then you need to think about where you are living.
Weighing that against the risk of being mugged and having all the money suddenly disappear? I understand the 1000. That's an acceptable risk. I've paid for college like that before.
But 15k for a used truck, all cash? No thanks. I don't suppose your friend also totes a shotgun around with him just in case someone decides they want that 15k too?
The vehicle we were in did have a shotgun rack, but someone mugging him was a pretty low possibility. It was a restored truck (very nice old Ford). It would have to be some stranger from out of area. Calling some dumbass's uncle for starting trouble is still a pretty effective crime solving technique in large parts of the US.
[edit] where the heck do you live that muggings are commonplace?
It wasn't about privacy, it was just buying a truck. I never said it was about privacy. Hell, the DMV knew about the truck about 40 minutes after he bought it. The seller reported it as income[1]. This had nothing to do with privacy or fraud, and his bank wouldn't let him write checks for over $5,000 and he sure wasn't going to pay some fee for a certified check that the guy selling the truck wasn't going to take anyway.
We didn't see it as a risk. It was just a bit odd to have 150 $100 bills. Puts a little weight into the cost of what you're going to buy. Good thing he bought it too as his old truck (which I drove back, that's why he brought me not as some security) needed about $3,000 in repairs. He sold it to a farmer who did the repairs himself. My friend kept the truck for about 2 decades.
1) I remember his receipt pad. It was styled like something I imagine came out of a Dickens story. He basically bought wrecks and stuff in garages and restored some or built mods out of others. Pretty good retirement gig.
I'm kind of surprised that the bank had that much cash on hand. I've known people that saved up enough to pay off their mortgages (less money than you were talking about), when they went to withdraw the cash from their savings to take to the bank that held the mortgage, the first bank was down to giving them 20s.
Deal with a lot of farmers and your bank has reason to keep a bit of cash on hand. 15k really isn't that much to them. They did count it twice (unwrapped the paper around the groups of bills).
The only time I want my bank to have knowledge of who and how much I pay is in the small number of cases where I need a neutral third party to be able to vouch for payment details.
For things like paying employees, paying my taxes, or spending other people's money: I want maximum electronic and paper trail. Bank fees are hardly a concern.
For my own spending, I want no third party records even if banking fees are 0.
> Sounds like someone wanted an untraceable 11 grand. Shady.
It is not "shady" in any way, shape, or form to want all of ones private financial affairs to be completely untraceable.
No one should, ever, under any circumstances, be required to justify or explain possession of cash or items of high value absent clear, tangible evidence of wrongdoing.
Furthermore, eleven thousand dollars is chump change, and not only that, these criminals and thieves with badges are harassing people for carrying as little as $500.
You are assuming in this case that the young man in this case has access to the banking tools that you do, which is a big assumption. Poor and minority populations are less likely to have bank accounts, and more likely to keep their savings in cash[1]. Combine that with the fact that he was more likely to be stopped for being black in the first place and you have a recipe for abuse.
Yep. Go to the local Walmart and see how many people use their check cashing, money orders, bill paying, and debit cards. Heck, I use one of their Bluebird AmeEx cards for a lot of online bills. Its more convenient than my bank to throw a twenty on to pay for Netflix.
My dad is in his seventies and an immigrant from Russia. He would absolutely do this because he never got past his distrust of banks and other major institutions, nor did he lose his tendency to transport valuables in cotton linings sewn into a suitcase or a pair of pants.
Inadvisable? Absolutely. And I'm sure there's plenty of other examples of people moving around large amounts of cash for dubious reasons. So, if they lose the cash or get robbed, some degree of "I told you so" is absolutely in order. But getting robbed by your own government should not be on the list of possible consequences of dubious (but legal) ideas.
Shady? How have we gotten to a place where carrying a modest amount of cash like $11k is "shady"? I suspect you're not familiar with how many unbanked people there are in this country, or what kind of predatory fees for banking services are levied upon folks with non-existent or low credit ratings.
Yeah with only $11,000 he'd probably get hit with all kinds of fees if he tried to open a bank account. And forget about checks, you can't even write a check that big.
I'm not saying the cash was evidence of wrongdoing, but the elaborate excuses this thread is making for this guy's behavior are only highlighting how absurd it was.
I'm seeing minimum opening deposits on checking accounts between $10-$50. I don't imagine a person walking into a bank with $11k+ to open an account is the common use case...
I'm curious about the predatory fees for banking services you mention.
A Wells Fargo checking account can be had for $10/mo, a fee that is waived given 10 or more transactions a month or $500 or more in direct deposit a month or a minimum balance of $1500. Would people with non-existant credit be ineligible for an account like this?
It is possible to be denied a bank account based on overdrafting and abandoning prior accounts. This is not based on credit score with one of the 'big three' agencies, but another agency called Chexsystems that only deals with your conduct towards your bank accounts. Poor people frequently have this problem - an old overdrafted account prevents them from getting another one, even at a different bank.
The gag is that you'd think $11,000 would be enough to fix this problem. Usually people who have it couldn't put a few hundred together to close out the old account.
I'd have no qualms about carrying $11K in cash from A to B, and if I already had the money in cash at A, I seriously doubt I'd bother to go make a deposit, electronically transfer it, and then withdraw it at B. Far more likely that it would go into my backpack.
This is coming from someone who is very well-served by the banking industry; for someone less well-served, I can even more readily understand it.
You make the assumption that he had the financial instruments to make other arraignments. wadetandy pointed out a report that shows a lot of people don't.
My car got stolen about a week ago and I had to get another one in a hurry. The seller didn't want to work with the banks and effectively forced me to get the money in cash, which I did. Should I be liable to lose it on my way to buy the car because I move some money from A to B in its physical form?
You know what man, you're absolutely right. But most people here are going to disagree with you, downvote you, and your brand new account is only going to be visible when I click "showdead" because apparently HN can't handle an opinion without hitting the down button.
I would bet you so much, not a soul on HN would dream of carrying 11k in cash through an airport.
It's ok though, we should make sure people have the right to do that, since 300 years ago before we even had ACH transfers or airplanes the constitution guaranteed us protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
There are cases where I sympathize a lot with the victims of civil asset forfeiture, but this is not one of them.
My 0.02. The fallacy in the shady argument is you're justifying a bigger wrong with the much smaller one. It's like saying "if she didn't want to be raped she shouldn't have worn that short skirt" (i.e. blaming the victim).
It's guys like these, that although inadvertently, when they get snarled in asset forfeiture and choose to fight the system, they slowly induce change. And that matters. This is why states like Minnesota, New Mexico, and North Carolina, with Ohio on tap, are banning the practice before conviction.
(Disclaimer: I don't downvote either. I can't downvote right now anyway, but I think it detracts from the conversation.)
> The fancy legal term may be ‘civil asset forfeiture,’ but for a couple of poker players who saw Iowa police take $100,000 of their money it is just straight up robbery.
> In April of last year, poker players William “Bart” Davis and John Newmerzhycky were driving west through Iowa with out-of-state plates after a poker road trip. In their car was a lot of cash,
> ... but technically, weed is still a schedule 1 drug, so he is a criminal.
So instead of charging him with any crimes, they just took his money? All the fun, without the need for that pesky innocent until proven guilty stuff? Nice.
Also, don't forget, here in the US many people cannot qualify for a simple checking/savings account at a bank, meaning they use check cashing services to cash their paychecks and only have cash. There is absolutely nothing is illegal about them only having cash. If anything IMO it is immoral that these people are iced out of the banking environment because of past credit mistakes etc. Immigrants and minorities are almost always the worst affected, how is that right?
Civil asset forfeiture is horrid and needs to be done away with permanently and nationally. If you want to take someones property prove it was involved in a crime and directly contributed to or tied to the criminal act. If the property is properly seized through the courts, the proceeds should first benefit anyone directly afflicted by the criminal act, then secondarily pay for the court and legal fees to reduce taxpayer obligations.