The parent said civil forfeiture was wrong—he seems to agree with you, but he’s making a different point that keeping your life’s savings in your car is a bad idea for many other reasons besides civil forfeiture.

> There are far better examples of abusive civil forfeiture than this one.

To me that implies that this is less abusive than other cases. I don't agree.

That’s fine, but that’s a different argument than your comment:

> How is it not abusive regardless? Doing something "stupid" is not a crime.

You both transparently agree that it is abusive regardless and that doing something stupid is not a crime.

It is abusive. It is also either indicated of a crime (fishy), or incredibly stupid.

None of these things are mutually exclusive.

Cops don’t (or shouldn’t, I should say) get to steal your stuff because you’re doing something fishy.

If it’s not evidence of the crime they’re charging you with, they need to keep their hands off.

No one is arguing otherwise. Everyone here has explicitly agreed with this in the first sentence of each comment.

> There are far better examples of abusive civil forfeiture than this one.

This implies (to me) that this case is less abusive than others. I don't agree.

I was responding to this comment:

> Cops don’t (or shouldn’t, I should say) get to steal your stuff because you’re doing something fishy.

I don't know if it is ESL or Twitter but people seem to be having trouble parsing grammar these days.

What I said is "There are far better examples of abusive civil forfeiture than this one."

The adjective "abusive" applies to the noun "civil forfeiture." The adjective "better" applies to the noun "examples." This is how standard English syntax works. Adjectives are taken as applying to the nearest noun following them.

The issue isn’t your grammar — you were perfectly clear, and everyone understands what you were saying. We just disagree with it. This is a textbook example of abusive civil forfeiture.

No, OP is clearly saying that this instance of civil forfeiture theft is less outrageous (a “worse example”) than others because the victim was acting suspicious.