One of the more nefarious violations of human rights enacted during the "War on Drugs" was the legislation enabling the police to steal anything they want from people. All they have to do is assert that they think that it was obtained, directly or indirectly, with the proceeds or profits from an illegal activity. Supporters of this draconian provision will run to assert that the victims of these thefts can go to court to get their property back, but that is laughable. In the first place, lawyers cost money, tons of money, so a great many of the victims of these thefts don't have any hope of contesting them. (There's also the problem of getting time off of work to sue the cops for return of what they stole from you.) Then there's the minor detail of proving that none of the funds you spent buying it (or none of the funds the purchaser spent if it was a gift) were the proceeds of an illegal activity. Obviously this applies to any cash they decide to steal because "you people have no legal way of coming into possession of $200 in cash", or whatever they hit you up for.

Two related news items have come to my attention recently.

When asked, the NYPD claims that it has no idea how much it has stolen and has no way to obtain that information. That's quite possibly a lie, but it is their story and they're standing on it. The article that brought this to my attention was in boing-boing, though there are others.
https://boingboing.net/2016/09/16/nypd-we-cant-tell-you-how-m.html which cited
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/nypd-revealing-the-truth-about-the-mill...

NYPD: Revealing the Truth About the Millions We Seize Would 'Lead to Systems Crashes' (Headline)
"Attempts to perform the types of searches envisioned in the bill will lead to system crashes and significant delays during the intake and release process," said Assistant Deputy Commissioner Robert Messner, while testifying in front of the council's Public Safety Committee. "The only way the department could possibly comply with the bill would be a manual count of over half a million invoices each year."

When asked by councilmember Dan Garodnick whether the NYPD had come to the hearing with any sort of accounting for how much money it has seized from New Yorkers this past year, the NYPD higher-ups testifying simply answered "no."

The NYPD's testimony was also disingenuous: As part of a FOIL request filed by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD had already compiled and released figures that show the staggering amounts that it has seized.

Meanwhile, CA attacked the problem by requiring that there actually be a conviction of the victims (who often aren't even charged) before the cops could steal their stuff. The cops then utilized a loophole of having the feds steal the stuff and then pass it through to them. New legislation putting a partial end to this practice was enacted and was just signed by Jerry Brown.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2016/09/california-governor-brown-signs-b... A somewhat lengthy press release. A more pithy blog article with a great embedded video:
https://boingboing.net/2016/09/30/california-now-requires-convic.html citing Nick Sibilla of The Institute for Justice who they quote as saying:

Since 1994, California state law has required a criminal conviction before real estate, vehicles, boats and cash under $25,000 could be forfeited to the government. But those requirements are completely missing under federal law. So California police could instead partner with a federal agency, take the property under federal law, and reap up to 80 percent of the proceeds.

To fix this, the new law requires a criminal conviction before agencies can receive forfeiture payments from the federal government on forfeited real estate, vehicles, boats and cash valued at under $40,000.

I guess the dollar value is to protect the poor but force everybody else to spend up to 39 grand to hire a lawyer to get their stuff back, but it is better than noting.

There's a great John Oliver clip at the boingboing link, including some really damning official testimony and examples of the abuse this outrageous process encourages. It is definitely worth watching.

Hokay - thread is open, go for it