Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Asset seizure and civil forfeiture allows The State to confiscate anything associated with a crime without a conviction or even charges brought. Police officers can simply take whatever they deem involved: cash, automobiles, your parent's house; then the PROPERTY must prove itself innocent before it's returned. This is a total violation of the 4^th Amendment, which specifically disallows unwarranted seizure, but it seems completely vulnerable to greedy police departments and government agencies that want the cash for themselves. Of course, terrorism, or the Drug War before that, were used as stalking horses to justify such outrageous behavior, but like all extremities that violate the Constitution, once the camel's nose got under the tent, everyone's Right becomes compromised.

Just property seized by the Department of Justice exceeds $2.4 billion annually, and that doesn't count what is seized by Treasury. The private property is then sold at public auction, and the money retained by the agencies doing the confiscating. You know you've gone too far towards a Police State when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas objects; quote “This system where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses.” We as a people have let one of our Rights atrophy by not challenging this ridiculous new police power, so the blame is ultimately on us, but the fact that no elected officials have risked their career to publicly resist the police tells us a lot about what kind of people run this country.