Taken-Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with crimes can be stripped of [View all]
their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?
(This is a long but eye-opening read. Even if you have read about civil forfeitures, the scope of the problem as recounted in this article is astounding. It is also frightening and beyond outrageous.
What kind of country have we become? Not one I am particulry proud of on too many occasions.)
On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove with her two young sons and her boyfriend, Ron Henderson, on U.S. 59 toward Linden, Henderson’s home town, near the Texas-Louisiana border. They made the trip every April, at the first signs of spring, to walk the local wildflower trails and spend time with Henderson’s father. This year, they’d decided to buy a used car in Linden, which had plenty for sale, and so they bundled their cash savings in their car’s center console. Just after dusk, they passed a sign that read “Welcome to Tenaha: A little town with BIG Potential!”
They pulled into a mini-mart for snacks. When they returned to the highway ten minutes later, Boatright, a honey-blond “Texas redneck from Lubbock,” by her own reckoning, and Henderson, who is Latino, noticed something strange. The same police car that their eleven-year-old had admired in the mini-mart parking lot was trailing them. Near the city limits, a tall, bull-shouldered officer named Barry Washington pulled them over.
He asked if Henderson knew that he’d been driving in the left lane for more than half a mile without passing.
No, Henderson replied. He said he’d moved into the left lane so that the police car could make its way onto the highway.
Were there any drugs in the car? When Henderson and Boatright said no, the officer asked if he and his partner could search the car.
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Much more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman
smh.....
I have no more hair left to catch on fire. I am not out of outrage. I am just exhausted from having it elicited 24/7.
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