Judge orders Wyoming to return $92k seized by officers

Re:Judge orders Wyoming to return $92k seized by officers by downandout on Monday December 04, 2017 @06:09PM (#15848441)

These stories make my blood boil, as they should all other people. The worst part of it is that people like to think that most police officers are good people just doing their jobs. However, their job is NOT supposed to involve stealing people’s life savings. I can’t see how any cop doing civil forfeitures, except in cases with extreme proof, (known drug dealer, drugs in the car, etc.) has any redeeming qualities as a human being. The officers involved in this and thousands of other cases are worse than the criminals they are paid to pursue - they are nothing more than armed members of a gang that conducts highway robberies.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Judge orders Wyoming to return $92k seized by officers by exelius on Monday December 04, 2017 @06:14PM (#15848466)

I find a lot of it is selection bias -- because the police generally interact with criminals, they come to view the whole population as criminal. Do it long enough, you start to get jaded and ask yourself "why do I follow the law when all these people break it with few consequences?"

Also see the effects of the "thin blue line" eroding institutional morality... it's easy to get to a place where we are -- even white people in America no longer trust the police.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Judge orders Wyoming to return $92k seized by officers by Voyage_wanderer on Monday December 04, 2017 @06:50PM (#15848651)

In other countries it is called corruption. In US the current Atorney General called for expansion of civil forfeiture recently... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/session...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Judge orders Wyoming to return $92k seized by officers by gwright on Monday December 04, 2017 @09:46PM (#15849376)

As much as I agree with you regarding this story and many other stories that bubble up into the media spotlight about police abuse, I think it is a mistake to conclude anything about "most police" simply from your own (or my own) personal exposure to these media stories.

There are over 900,000 law enforcement officials in the US. If even a small percentage of them are exposed as corrupt or abusive, the headlines would be full of these stories, and yet most police officers would be unfairly implicated if you concluded that "most" police were abusing their powers.

We do need to find better ways to prosecute and deter abuse of power by law enforcement officials and prosecutors, but that should be done without undermining or implicating the officers who are doing their job lawfully.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Judge orders Wyoming to return $92k seized by officers by downandout on Monday December 04, 2017 @10:05PM (#15849437)

Well, my comment specifically said that I basically felt that any cop doing civil forfeitures except in extremely limited circumstances is a dirtbag. Apparently these happen (at least) several thousand times per year. I’d argue that anyone who participates in these forfeitures after the fact or must approve them as they come in (DA’s, police captains, etc.), along with anyone that trains, orders, or encourages these officers to do them (again, except in all but the most obvious cases), is also a dirtbag. So for thousands of these to happen each year, a not-insignificant percentage of the 900,000 number you quoted are actively involved or at least complicit in the state-sponsored armed robbery of US citizens. That is unacceptable.

[ Parent | on HN ]