The Dirty Boulevard

Tim Cavanaugh | February 21, 2003

Assets forfeiture craziness in LA.... According to this story, a new ordinance here lets police seize and sell the cars of people who are trolling for prostitutes�whether or not they're actually charged and convicted of soliciting one.

Comments

Warren|2.21.03 @ 1:16AM|#

Sure, why not? It's official now, we live in a police state where the people enjoy all the rights the government can't be bothered to violate. At least were safe from spooky foreigners and hookers, right?

Madog|2.21.03 @ 2:17AM|#

"Nice car. You wouldn't be looking for prostitutes in it now? Why don't you come down to the station with me...."

|2.21.03 @ 3:46AM|#

Hopefully this won't stand up in court. Innocent til proven guilty my big white ass. All I can say is this is so NOT the land of the free. It's gotten to the point where I am seriously considering moving my family to Australia.

|2.21.03 @ 5:10AM|#

My yearly taxes would go up by about $15,000 a year (in US dollars) if I lived in Australia, judging from their online tax tables -- and I don't make an outrageous salary by any estimation, by LA standards. Assuming I work another 30 years and including lost investment gains, that's one or two million dollars down the tubes. That's a nice house in LA and a lifetime of Mercedes, easily.

The LAPD has a long way to go before they're a bigger threat to my property than the Australian government would be. At least in the United States I have some chance of getting the car back if greedy cops steal it. I don't think I'd have much luck getting that extra $15k a year back from the Australian government. :)

JD Weiner|2.21.03 @ 5:38AM|#

Scott: Better talk to some Aussies first. A lot of them don't think their country is very free either. I'm reminded, sadly, of the old cartoon: a hijacker breaks into an airplane cockpit with a gun and demands, "Take me to a free country!" The pilot replies, "Hey, mate, this is an airplane, not a bloody spaceship."

|2.21.03 @ 7:31AM|#

What if I just happen to be driving through a neighborhood where prostitutes happen to abound? Guilty until proven innocent?

|2.21.03 @ 10:56AM|#

Edward, Scott et al.:

Yes, this probably will stand up in court, and it doesn't matter whether the "john" is found guilty. Asset forfeiture is rooted in an obscure, metaphysical common law doctrine in which the *property* is deemed guilty. Even if the "criminal" is acquitted, the state usually may still retain the property in civil proceedings with a lower burden of proof.

When I did law school over a decade ago, I was flummoxed at encountering cases in the books like "United States v. 1988 Silver Buick Riviera," or "State of Michigan v. $57,852.88." See, the state sues the property, and of course, property doesn't have any rights.

Only a few years ago the Supreme Court upheld asset forfeiture in a case in which a wife who jointly owned a car with her husband sued the State of Michigan to get it back, and lost. That her spouse had sex with a woman for money in the vehicle was all that mattered.

Congressman Henry Hyde has writen a small, very fine little book exposing the horror of this monster: "Forfeiting our Property Rights." Therein, he rightly identifies the War on (people who use) Drugs as the catalyst for the state's renewed interest in this ancient doctrine -- beloved of yesteryear's monarchs -- that had almost fallen into total disuse. Hyde calls for an open look at drug policy, with all reforms on the table.

Drug laws have eroded our 4th Amendment protections as well as property rights, and have engnedered a prison industrial complex that has detroyed tens of thousands of lives. Asset forfeiture is but one facet of this horror.

|2.21.03 @ 12:56PM|#

In recent years the state troopers of Louisiana have turned vague forfeiture laws into cash cows for their departments. Designed to stop drug traffickers, these laws allow individual departments to seize and keep cash whenever they found someone travelling with a large sum of unexplained cash. Looks like LA saw the 60 Minutes special and decided to get in on the act. The real key here is who gets to keep the money from the sale of the autos?

|2.22.03 @ 5:16AM|#

This practice first got a foothold a few years ago in Oakland, California, where Mayor Jerry Brown (former "Governor Moonbeam" Brown) instituted it as a revenue enhancement effort.

It doesn't seem to have worked very well. Last November, Oakland voters passed a measure to put 200 more police officers on the streets to help combat the soaring murder rate, but failed to pass the accompanying measure that would have raised property taxes to fund the hiring of the new officers. Thus, Jerry received a mandate from the voters to hire more cops, but now he can't pay them. Guess we have to seize more cars from potential criminals to take care of this.

The concept of "Pre-crime" wasn't original to Minority Report, I guess.

|2.24.03 @ 10:14AM|#

People hate the police enough already, do they want us to hate them even more?

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