by Wendy McElroy
Being innocent does not matter. Not being arrested or convicted of a crime is no protection. With amazing ease, the government can take everything you own. And to recover it, you must prove your innocence through an expensive and difficult court proceeding in which a severely lowered standard of evidence favors the government. This is civil asset forfeiture.
Russell and Patricia Caswell of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, know the process well. For the last two years they have battled to keep the motel that Russell?s father built in 1955 and at which Russell has worked since childhood. The couple assumed ownership of Motel Caswell in the 1980s, and viewed the asset, worth approximately $1 million, as their retirement plan.
In the past 20 years, the Caswells have rented out approximately 125,000 rooms. Of the renters, about .05 percent have been arrested for crimes. As ?good? citizens, the Caswells have meticulously reported any suspicious activity on the part of renters to the police, including possible drug use.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Justice is in the process of confiscating the motel without any compensation, through civil forfeiture, because it was used in the commission of a crime. The local police with whom the Caswells actively cooperated for years are the ones who reported them to the federal agency. Why? Because, under a policy known as ?equitable sharing,? the Tewksbury police department stands to gain as much as 80 percent of the value of the seized property.
Civil forfeiture in America is both a simple and complex tale. The simple part is that government agencies are often seizing assets for no reason other than the fact that they can. The complexity is how civil forfeiture operates.
Read More
Latest Tyranny/Police State
- The killing of Awlaki's 16-year-old son
- TSA Begins Random Road Inspections in Tennessee
- Atlanta woman wrongly imprisoned for 53 days because of name mix-up
- Video: Man beaten as East St. Louis police watch
- Gaddafi begged for his life before being summarily executed
- Courts Rule US Government Above the Law
- Cops on the Hook for Pointing Guns at Kids
- DEA Hits More CA Medical Marijuana Dispensaries
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
About Us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill
