Stop messing with my head.
Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without evidence that a crime occurred.
Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.
Of course as the lengthy article explains, this hardly ends civil asset forfeiture. But it might put a big crimp in the incentives for cops to practice their much-beloved “highway interdiction,” which would be called by its older and more honest name “highway robbery” if you or I did it.
And the very fact that I’m typing a sentence including some version of “Eric Holder did something not completely evil” is seriously affecting my brain.
Cue high-pitched screams from half the police departments in America in 3…2…1…
Oh, I don’t know – wouldn’t break out the champaign just yet. I suspect this sounds great here, but it’s probably more smoke and mirrors. I’m sure they’ll find a way to keep the police happy.
And then there’s this:
“Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said, “There is some grave concern about the possible loss of significant funding while local police and state police are being asked to do more and more each year.”
Really? Hmmmm… I don’t remember asking any of them to do anything. Did you ask them to do something? Who’s doing this asking? I mean, besides leaving us alone. That doesn’t actually cost them anything. A thing NOT stolen is not an expense to the thief.
It’s a trick. He’s restricting (not stopping entirely) the program in which the feds have to split the proceeds with the locals. The feds can go right ahead, grab the goodies, and keep it all to themselves.
I suspect that Holder’s actions are going to be a further version of his “Due process does not necessarily imply judicial process…”
Facets one, two and three of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, tell us all we already knew about the man, his department, and those chubby minions in blue.
It’s nice that after 8 years and the election of a majority of the opposition party, now, they do this.