They do work like that. My house was raided as part of an investigation. It was about two years after the search that the DOJ indicted me for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement..

Interesting! Would you mind elaborating?

there's nothing to elaborate. his story is one of millions of examples where regular people are treated harsher by the law than rich and powerful.

Yes. The FBI and DHS agents arrested and detained me while they searched my house.

I was given an opportunity to be 'interviewed' while being detained. The agents presented a letter from the AUSA basically outlining what they were looking for and explaining how it would be in my best interest to cooperate with the investigation. lol..

There were 9 other people involved, it was pretty big national news at the time.

It was almost two years later that the DOJ indicted me.

Right, but you were presumably not detained for more than a small amount of hours and not placed in pretrial detention?

The Speedy Trial concerns are completely different depending on if you're in government custody or not.

Tell that to the people rotting in Rikers without trial

I think that would be precisely zero people? Unless you're confusing New York state with the federal government?

You were not differentiating. You simply said "in government custody"

The differentiation was already made much earlier in this thread.

And how many A-list law firms can you call on at a moment's notice? How many banks can you order around?

"Privilege" derives from the words for "private law". The privileged operate under different rules from the rest of us.

That doesn't mean they can't ever be taken down, but it does mean that when they are, it looks different than when law enforcement sets its sights on one of us.

Having dealt with “shoot first, ask questions later” asset forfeiture cases, in my own life and some of my friends’, I have to say this is more of an idealistic view post Wars on Drugs and Terror.

To be clear I'm talking about large scale, mostly white collar crimes, not the things everyday folk get caught up in.

That's literally the fucking problem. Two legal systems, one for "elite" where they get a fucking slap on the wrist, and one for the "poors" where you get the living shit beat out of you and end up with a hospital bill and a charge for "resisting" arrest when they twisted your arm so hard that you involuntarily resisted the movement.

When it comes to poor people cops will do shit like throw a baton on the ground, put a suspects hand on it, and then claim they had gone for their weapon, beating them and taking them in for arrest right away.

When it comes to the "elite" they make a nice phone call and ask them when it would be convenient to come in for "questioning" because "we couldn't possibly arrest such an upstanding citizen" which is code for "we don't fuck with this guy because he butters our bread."

relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeOVbeh2yr0

Indeed, being able to tell a cop you'll have your long list of very expensive lawyers contact them has a habit of slowing them down amazingly quickly.

If only law enforcement faced severe penalties for abusing their power, given they should be held to a higher standard of demonstrating good values and restraint in such roles in society.

You just aren’t wealthy powerful and or white enough.

I’m not saying it to be rude to you I’m saying as a disgusted criticism of our failure to apply justice equally.

Exactly how white do you have to be?

One mustn't consider the Saudi<->Instagram "influencer" (or "brand ambassador") pipeline if you want to keep your sanity.

Source: one who turned a blind eye while facilitating and regrets it greatly

"Privileged White" of course

A lot of the time the feds deliberately try and trap you into lying to them, either so they at least get something, or so they can use it as leverage to get you to inform on someone else.