Because civil and criminal forfeiture require a judicial decison, and administrative forfeiture can be challenged, at which point it has to stop and a judicial forfeiture proceeding begin
I watched that the other day, and it was a really nice piece, as was the Washington Post article linked by llcoolbj77.
It’s interesting that this stuff is suddenly getting so much publicity because, as Bone suggests, it’s being going on for years. I know that libertarians get pretty short shrift here at the SDMB, but libertarian groups such as the Cato Institute have been complaining about the injustice of things like civil forfeiture and abuses of eminent domain for quite a long time. Back in 2010, the Institute for Justice published a report, “Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture" (pdf), which took a state-by-state look at the abuses of this process.
Some states have passed their own laws against abuses of asset forfeiture, but as the report i linked above shows, many police departments get around these state laws by calling in federal agencies like the DEA or FBI, and then splitting the proceeds of asset forfeiture with them. Paul’s bill would also make this illegal.
I don’t agree with Rand Paul about too many things, but this is one area where he’s actually taking the lead in Congress, and i hope he’s successful. He introduced a bill in July that would change the way that asset forfeiture works, requiring the government to actually prove it’s case before it gets to take your stuff. Also, the revenue from asset forfeiture would go into the state’s general fund, rather than directly to police departments, reducing the direct financial incentive for cops to abuse the system.
This nothing compared to what the IRS can do, since they aren’t even law enforcement officials. Not condoning it, but just noting that this problem is a lot larger than we probably think.
Following the lead of long-established civil libertarians such as the American Civil Liberties Union, who have been doing the scut work of documenting such injustices and bringing lawsuits about them starting over a half-century before anybody even thought of the Cato Institute.
The ACLU: Protecting your civil liberties from the government, without wasting time on self-aggrandizing government-bashing anti-tax “libertarian theater”, since 1920.
Yeah, but where is the fun in that!! 
One of the most interesting things about working at the NRA was watching the strange bedfellows unite, for instance, the libertarians and hard-core law enforcement types. They really rubbed poorly against each other, even in their quest for common gains.
According to a study from ProPublica, young black males are a whopping 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than young white males.
While this is a police bashing thread, I want to point out credit where credit is due. The South Carolina State police released the Officer Groubert/Lavar Jones video THEMSELVES then fired and pressed charges on Groubert pretty damn quick. Which means someone in the upper brass in the SC State police saw that video and decided “we don’t want this guy on our police force”. It wasn’t knee-jerk defend their cop.
This is what we WANT our police forces to do. So credit where credit is due.
Yes, absolutely. It’s unlikely he was an outlier, though. It would be even easier to give credit if there were a better screening system in place before hiring, or to remove bad cops once on the force. The Blue Line is still strong.
Well fucking said!
Sure. I’m a huge fan of the ACLU, and they have a section on their own website devoted to their fight against abuses of civil asset forfeiture. They’ve been heavily involved in lawsuits over the issue in Texas.
My point, in focusing on libertarians, was that even people we disagree with might, on some issues, be people who are on the right side, and who are worth supporting. If i lived in Kentucky, there’s no way i’d vote for Rand Paul, but while he’s in the Senate i hope he manages to get his law reforming asset forfeiture passed. And the Cato Institute produces a lot of well-researched studies that provide good information even for people who don’t consider themselves libertarians.
Perhaps you should ask the mods to change the thread title to “The Plural of Anecdote Is Data” so we are all clear on the basis for statements like -
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, the plural of anecdote is data. Unrefined field data maybe, but it is data. While you are perusing the dictionary, you might also want to look up the definition of “seem” as well.
Any comments on this study? Is this surprising to anyone? Any problems with the data (other than that there’s not a whole lot of it)?
Let me get some other dopers take on something I’ve noticed over the years. From watching a lot of arrest videos on YouTube and in news stories, etc. does it seem to anyone else like cops seem to ALWAYS make black people, man, woman or child, completely lie down on the ground to be taken into custody whereas with whites, it often seems ok to them to have them just get on their knees? I’m not talking EVERY time. Obviously there are cases where they make whites get on the ground too, but it seems twhenever they only allow the subject get on their knees, that subject is usually, if not always, white. Or, at least, non-black.
Anyone else notice that?
White people learned long ago that the occasional but distasteful proverbial dick sucking can get you out of a jam 
I’m neutral about the single omnibus thread idea, but appreciate the discussion (but that has more to do with the functionality of the board’s setup here and being kinda unwieldy).
“even if a full and fair and complete investigation in the Ferguson case were to find that the officer did not violate any police regulation and did not violate the law…”
Weel (think broad Scots accent), these to things are incompatible: it cannot be a full and fair and complete investigation and find out the officer didn’t violate any departmental regulation. There’s no evidence thus far to indicate he didn’t violate the law to at best a criminally negligent degree. Of course, if the accused were not a police officer but some other party who had a right to confront kid about being in the middle of the street – or about taking X smoking materials from the convenience store and giving the intimidating stink eye and step toward the manager who tried to lock the doorknuckleheaded motherfucker that he was)(but remember that the cop evidently didn’t know about that incident as of when he told the kids to get out of the street), – the prosecutor wouldn’t spend weeks and weeks/months on a grand jury investigation and indictment. The not-ham-sandwich equivalent individual would’ve been facing charges within a matter of days.
The process of indicting law enforcement for *anything *(and they almost invariably are declared not guilty of criminal charges, regardless of the overwhelming evidence) is a very scary thing to the institutional organisms whose sole purpose is to survive and thrive. The sad thing is that we are supposed to be grateful that any of them are EVER prosecuted … that they have something less than absolute (judicial and prosecutorial level) immunity.