Policing for Profit: Jeff Sessions & Co.’s Thinly Veiled Plot to Rob Us Blind

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner.”— H.L. Mencken

Let’s not mince words.

Jeff Sessions, the nation’s top law enforcement official, would not recognize the Constitution if he ran right smack into it.

Whether the head of the Trump Administration’s Justice Department enjoys being the architect of a police state or is just painfully, criminally clueless, Sessions has done a great job thus far of sidestepping the Constitution at every turn.

Most recently, under the guise of “fighting crime,” Sessions gave police the green light to rob, pilfer, steal, thieve, swipe, purloin, filch and liberate American taxpayers of even more of their hard-earned valuables (especially if it happens to be significant amounts of cash) using any means, fair or foul.

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In this case, the foul method favored by Sessions & Co. is civil asset forfeiture, which allows police and prosecutors to “seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime.”

Under a federal equitable sharing program, police turn asset forfeiture cases over to federal agents who process seizures and then return 80% of the proceeds to the police. (In Michigan, police actually get to keep up to 100% of forfeited property.)

This incentive-driven excuse for stealing from the citizenry is more accurately referred to as “policing for profit” or “theft by cop.”

Despite the fact that 80 percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner, challenging these “takings” in court can cost the owner more than the value of the confiscated property itself. As a result, most property owners either give up the fight or chalk the confiscation up to government corruption, leaving the police and other government officials to reap the benefits.

And boy, do they reap the benefits.

Police agencies have used their ill-gotten gains “to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear,” reports The Washington Post. “They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.”

Incredibly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that, according to The Washington Post, “in 2014, law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did.”

In 2015, the federal government seized nearly $2.6 billion worth of airplanes, houses, cash, jewelry, cars and other items under the guise of civil asset forfeiture.

According to USA Today, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that allowing departments to keep forfeiture proceeds may tempt them to use the funds unwisely. For example, consider a 2015 scandal in Romulus, Michigan, where police officers used funds forfeited from illicit drug and prostitution stings to pay for …  illicit drugs and prostitutes.”

Memo to the rest of my fellow indentured servants who are living through this dark era of government corruption, incompetence and general ineptitude: this is not how justice in America is supposed to work.

We are now ruled by a government so consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population that they are completely unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

Our freedoms aren’t just being trampled, however. They’re being eviscerated.

At every turn, “We the People” are getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties. All you have to be is in possession of something the government wants. And if you happen to have something the government wants badly enough, trust me, their agents will go to any lengths to get it.

If the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.

Here’s how the whole ugly business works in a nutshell.

First, government agents (usually the police) use a broad array of tactics to profile, identify, target and arrange to encounter (in a traffic stop, on a train, in an airport, in public, or on private property) those  individuals who might be traveling with a significant amount of cash or possess property of value. Second, these government agents—empowered by the courts and the legislatures—seize private property (cash, jewelry, cars, homes and other valuables) they “suspect” may be connected to criminal activity.

Then—and here’s the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, without any charges being levied against the property owner, or any real due process afforded the unlucky victim, the property is seized by the government, which often divvies it up with the local police who helped with the initial seizure.

In a Kafkaesque turn of the screw, the burden of proof falls on the unfortunate citizenry who must mount a long, complicated, expensive legal campaign to prove their innocence in order to persuade the government that it should return the funds they stole. Not surprisingly, very few funds ever get returned.

It’s a new, twisted form of guilt by association, only it’s not the citizenry being accused of wrongdoing, just their money.

Unsurprisingly, these asset forfeiture scams have become so profitable for the government that they have expanded their reach beyond the nation’s highways.

Any American unwise enough to travel with cash is now fair game for government pickpockets who are out to rob you of your cold, hard cash.

This is not freedom.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if the government can just take from you what they want, when they want, and then use it however they want, you can’t claim to be anything more than a serf in a land they think of as theirs.

It’s up to “We the People” to demand reform.

These injustices will continue as long as we remain silent.

In other words, make them hear you.

And if they won’t listen, then I suggest it’s time for what Martin Luther King Jr. called for when government doesn’t listen: “militant nonviolent resistance.”

WC: 1038

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MN Steel
MN Steel

Don’t even say a peep when they want what you have.

Especially your pajamas.

Michael
Michael

Jefferson said something about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots. Not exactly a “non-violent” prescription as suggested in this article. But he probably didn’t anticipate cops having tanks and smart phones, nor to be hailed as “brave” when they bust into bedrooms of the innocent and kill them dead. So non-violence has to be the bedrock philosophy from here on out on the part of patriots? Like the South African farmers?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Ghost

An especially poignant quote for me, Michael.

This spring I conducted a sort of experiment in a police controlled environment, based on the age old question “What sort of threat could a fifty five year old woman in a denim housedress pose by walking down a residential street to avoid a traffic jam?”

I have only recently begun to accept the results of that experiment.

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

Milatent nonviolent resistance against a fully equipped government storm trooper does not work very well and any thinking person knows this . You are placing yourself in a position to be hosed down beaten tazed arrested cuffed held for 72 hours or charged with proscutoral piling on of charges and by this time much if not all contact an control of your personal life and property is seized or repossessed for nonpayment and you lost your job got the shit kicked out of you in jail and possibly raped .
And all you are truly guilty of is exercising your constitutional rights . Maybe with a sintella of luck that ultimately shines on you , you will encounter a judge that will drop the charges or your public defender will get you to cop a plea and plead guilty to a lesser charge and you get to walk with a years probation and time served .
So there you have it broke fucked and back on the street with a great taste in your mouth for every person involved in the American Justice System . Oh and a great big hard on for that fucking cop that cuffed you for refusing to obey his or her unconstitutional orders . And this is how average people lose all respect for law enforcement . Let’s not leave out the Nuremberg excuse : I was just doing my job !

Ghost

I am somewhat stunned at the difference in police procedure and what masquerades as “probable cause.”

WIP
WIP

Just doing my job for freeeeeeeeeedom!!!

Suzanna
Suzanna

unbridled theft = freedom, but not for you and me

Klif
Klif

We have some idiots in our area that post signs “We Back The Blue”…… LOL, frigging morons,,, lost my business… for life——!!!!

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

This was the first blow in changing my opinion of Sessions from positive to negative. The second was his comments on Cannabis: “Good people don’t smoke pot”, and this winner: “Pot is a gateway drug”, but what cinched it was this jewel: “Pot has no medicinal value”.
Get rid of him Mr. Trump, but don’t exacerbate the situation by nominating Cruz or Guiliani. How ’bout considering a Man who holds the record for putting the most banksters in prison (during the S&L scandal), Bill Black.

Tom
Tom

Oh no, he invoked the M.L. Coon method of non-compliance. Sad….

BUCKHED
BUCKHED

Sorry Charlie…the 2nd Amendment is there for a reason. To kill the SOB’s who impose tyranny .

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