Saturday, July 26, 2014

Good, because this theft under color of law needs to be stopped

Sen. Rand Paul yesterday introduced S. 2644, the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment’s role in seizing property without due process of law. Under current law, law enforcement agencies may take property suspected of involvement in crime without ever charging, let alone convicting, the property owner. In addition, state agencies routinely use federal asset forfeiture laws; ignoring state regulations to confiscate and receive financial proceeds from forfeited property.
The FAIR Act would change federal law and protect the rights of property owners by requiring that the government prove its case with clear and convincing evidence before forfeiting seized property. 
The bill would also require states “to abide by state law when forfeiting seized property.” This is important.  
And so is this:
Which brings us to a final important provision in the bill: It would “would remove the profit incentive for forfeiture by redirecting forfeitures assets from the Attorney General’s Asset Forfeiture Fund to the Treasury’s General Fund.”
This is where a lot of agencies will really scream; they want that money they take with this racket.  Some of them have come to actually depend on it for stuff(say, they want some new cars or radios or computers and either won't ask for an appropriation or can't get it; use asset forfeiture to steal property and sell it for the money).

Which is why this really needs to be done.  Get rid of this crap.  If you can't prove a crime, stop stealing property.


3 comments:

Jerry The Geek said...

"... It would “would remove the profit incentive for forfeiture by redirecting forfeitures assets from the Attorney General’s Asset Forfeiture Fund to the Treasury’s General Fund.”

Which is, of course the primary reason for the process, and reason why Law Enforcement Agencies will be SCREAMING about the "injustice" of it all.

This should go National.

Immediately.

There have been too many instances of property confiscation of innocent private citizens.

Anonymous said...

This would be awesome to see. Now if he can introduce a measure against no-knock drug raids, I may actually start to like the guy again.

Keith said...

He's still implicitly saying that theft under colour of legislation, is correct

if it is called by another name - e.g. "taxation"