{"id":59538,"date":"2016-07-12T06:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59538"},"modified":"2016-07-11T22:31:31","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T03:31:31","slug":"opportunity-for-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59538","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity For Improvement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police overreach; it’s not just for black people anymore<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog<\/a>, Armstrong Economics, last week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime\u00a0\u2014 yes, really!\u00a0\u2014 through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture<\/a>. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice<\/a>, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than\u00a0$5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports<\/a> that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The WaPo’s Christopher Ingraham notes that on the one hand, the figure is a little misleading for two reasons: \u00a0the “burglary” figure counts only rigidly-defined burglaries, and ignores a variety of other larcenies and thefts (which, together, add up to double what the cops take), and the cops don’t keep it all.<\/p>\n

But even counting only what they keep from burglaries, they still siphoned 50% more out of the economy than burglars did.<\/p>\n

And that includes an\u00a0awful\u00a0<\/em>lot of people never convicted of any crime.<\/p>\n

Taking property without a conviction is something that needs to stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police overreach; it’s not just for black people anymore: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog, Armstrong Economics, last week. Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[256,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fourth-amendment","category-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59540,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59538\/revisions\/59540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}