TheAgitator.com
Update on the Ricks Forfeiture Case
Friday, March 21st, 2008Bob Ewing of the Institute for Justice has an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today on the outrageous case of Luther and Meredith Ricks, a Lima, Ohio couple who lost $400,000 in life savings to civil asset forfeiture.
(Disclosure: After reading about the Ricks case hereand at reason, a friend of mine persuaded his law firm to represent the Ricks pro-bono.)
That reason link should be:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/124947.html
The Reason link is broken. It should be http://www.reason.com/news/show/124947.html.
It is getting hard to tell who the robbers, really, are!? Thieves in uniform! I hope those people can get THEIR money back!
Does this remind anyone of a government occupation 250 years ago that took what it wanted in the name of the king?
As log as the vast majority of citizens don’t feel threatened by a particular government policy (ie: asset forfeiture), they don’t care about it. Furthermore, once someone is charged with a crime, most people immediately identify the defendant as a criminal, eliminating most compassion they might feel. And why should they worry? Almost everyone has been through 12 years of indoctrination telling them the U.S. is the freest country there ever was.
I know, I know. I’m am one depressing mofo.
My wife and I argued a little while back about allowing police into our home. I told her the policy should be NEVER allow any police into our home.
Even if they came to our house asking questions about a neighbor’s break-in or something. They can talk to us on the front porch. I know when they enter your house they are looking for any reason to bust you for anything whatsoever.
Tom said:
My doormat reads: COME BACK WITH A WARRANT
That’s a lot of cash to have ,sitting around, not being put to work.Don’t they know that this cash devaluated over the years? Not trusting banks is one thing, hidding everything you have in one place is another. These peolple are obviously not dealers. Any dealer making that kind of $ would not be so stupid. This government that we have ,is worse than any ,so called, dealer. Federal thievery has been around for a long time, in different forms. Thanks to the inane warondrugs, things have gotten much worse. Dave K…they don’t need no stinking warrant nowadays.
I live in a very rural area in far northern California. A few years ago, my dogs went batsh*t in the yard and wouldn’t stop. While I was trying to figure out what was wrong, I discovered a fancy bike had been dumped near the road. Just in case there was someone hurt that I couldn’t see, I called the Sheriff’s dept. A very nice young man came out, looked at the bike and the barking dogs and announced that for my own “safety” he should take a gander at my outbuildings - just in case someone was there. I smiled and told him to go ahead and check, but to be sure to write down in his little black book that he found ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. He laughed, searched and said he would write it down when he got back to the office. Sometimes, just letting them know that you know what they are doing can mean all the difference!
So Lori… What difference did you make? Did he not bust you for your weed growing operation?
Actually Pegr, the weed growing ops up here are mostly on National Forest land! It’s the meth makers who use private property. If I said he couldn’t look around for the “injured bicyclist” , he might be more suspicious of my outbuildings (perfectly understandable to me). Allowing him to look and find nothing puts me in the category of Nothing to Hide. If he had just shown up out of the blue (I called him remember) I would not have allowed him to wander around. No reason to be obstructionist.
I can think of 400,000 reasons to be obstructionist.