Beverly Hills, 2021
When the case went before a lower court last year, federal Judge Gary Klausner ruled that the FBI’s inventory of the seized safe deposit boxes was legal, despite acknowledging that attorneys for the plaintiffs “have certainly shown that the government had a dual motive in inventorying the contents of each deposit box.”
Forfeiture is a huge problem at every level of law enforcement.
From a follow up article in the same source. I haven’t found any mention that the property has been returned
They don’t get returned. As a municipal solicitor I had a case where a woman accused of stealing from her employer brought in a truckload of silver, glassware, jewelry and the like to our police station, admitting she had stolen it. But after the employer had reclaimed her goods, there was a lot of stuff left. So the thief asked for the rest of it back. The cops wouldn’t give it back to her, so she sued. To my absolute amazement I found the law was on the cops’ side, and we won.
Another small piece of the growing mountain of evidence that we were all duped as to the actual nature of the nation we grew up in. Civil asset forfeiture, alone, makes a mockery of the notion of private property. Add in property taxes, inflation tax, pass through corporate taxes (which “the people “ love), death taxes, and it becomes clear that private property is largely illusory.
We’re really only renting everything we have. But especially with land, why the F should we have to pay taxes on land we own?
Well, we’ll see how long that lasts, if the government can’t or won’t fulfill its duty to make us secure in our possessions.
My fave Prog attorney would complain: ”Law is all about protecting PROPERTY! Not about people!”
God I hate that. We naked apes NEED property, okay? We GOTTA own clothing, tools, shelter. I live in the temperate zone and even here I couldn’t last one night in the woods without that stuff. “Property is theft”? Non, M.Proudhon: property is freedom.