We hear on this blog and other Panama websites about property seizures and sequesters etc. that cost foreigners a lot of time and money to battle. But thanks to one of my readers, he shared this interesting article about how law enforcement in the U.S. has seized over one billion dollars in 2009 often without filing charges against the citizen who's property they take. According to this report, the state is the real thief. Hat tip Mike.
This should wake you up!
Excerpts from Institute For Justice.
Police and prosecutors’ offices seize private property—often without ever charging the owners with a crime, much less convicting them of one—then keep or sell what they’ve taken and use the profits to fund their budgets. And considering law enforcement officials in most states don’t report the value of what they collect or how that bounty is spent, the issue raises serious questions about both government transparency and accountability.
According to the Institute for Justice—whose fight against eminent domain abuse raised that issue to national prominence—civil asset forfeiture is one of the worst abuses of property rights in our nation today. The Institute for Justice today released a first-of-its-kind national study on civil forfeiture abuse. The report—Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture (http://www.ij.org/PolicingForProfit)—is the most comprehensive national study to examine the use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture and the first study to grade the civil forfeiture laws of all 50 states and the federal government.
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