zlacker

One example is civil asset forfeiture. Police can and do stop people at random, see if they have “suspicious” valuables or a little too much money, and seize it. It’s virtually impossible to fight the case and it’s literally free money with zero consequence to the police. If you try to deny them their free money, they just arrest you. It’s legally condoned robbery.

I’ve had friends who’ve been pulled over while passing through Illinois and asked to hand over their wallets just so the cops can count their money. They only had a few bucks and were let go, but I’m sure if it was a little too much, the cops would’ve claimed it was drug money and taken it. The cops didn’t mention speeding or any sort of crime, so their reason for pulling them over was pretty clear. They probably target non-local people because nobody is going to come back just for a hundred bucks or so, and if they need to make up a ticket on the spot, few people will bother to fight it.

>>fiblye+(OP)
What’s also bizarre is that it’s probably funding their local department and not some general state account, further skewing incentives.

It’s like the Police has a letter of Marque to do piracy. [0] Except that means they are at war with you, not a foreign country.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque

>>fiblye+(OP)
It actually exceeds non-police theft these days: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-... ( https://outline.com/UX7nfW ).

>>fiblye+(OP)
Even worse is seizing vehicles that are still not paid off.

The police department will determine if it is worth ‘paying off’ the remaining loan amount, so they can seize the car and sell it at auction.

>>fiblye+(OP)
> It’s virtually impossible to fight the case and it’s literally free money with zero consequence to the police.

This is a problem that could be easily greatly improved with legislation (and without requiring the more radical and controversial step of abolishing civil forfeiture entirely) - each state could legislate that civil forfeiture proceeds are to be paid into the general state budget not kept by the local police forces. This would remove much of the incentive for overuse of civil forfeiture.