“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, March 23, 2009

The police can commit highway robbery

I generally take the side of the police on most things but, I disagree with the practice of seizing cash from people in the absence of any crime associated with it.....

Going 62 in a 50-mph zone, a Jeep barreled west on a slippery, snow-covered Airport Expressway on Valentine’s Day and blew past an Allen County sheriff’s squad car.

One traffic stop later, two men inside the Jeep were outside being patted down by officers. They acted nervous, according to a police report. At one point they looked as if they wanted to fight; at another they looked as if they wanted to flee.

In the Jeep’s back seat, police found more than $26,000 in cash wrapped in a stocking cap.

Though officers held the two men for a short time in squad cars, they were eventually released without charges, save for the driver receiving a citation for driving with a suspended license.

And the money? The police kept it.


There's too big of a potential conflict here. The police force benefits greatly from these cash seizures, so they'll expand the definition of "reasonable suspicion" to include just about everything so they can get as much as possible. It's a slippery slope for society to be on when the police force can steal money from people for almost no reason.

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