Morality of Gov't & Police Seizure Auctions?

[stonebuddha]

What is the morality of purchasing a used car from one of those police auctions. I believe that the government’s property seizure laws are draconian. So would purchasing a car there be considered morally the same as dealing in stolen property?

[Scott_Connery]

I think that in today's society with our corrupt seizure laws it is indeed equivalent to buying stolen goods. It also gives an incentive for the agencies involved to keep confiscating property.

[always_learning]

I don’t really know if all the seizers are unjust or not, but from what I understand, the property the government is selling is stuff that was either stolen by someone and they could not find the owners of or it is just abandoned property, like cars left on the road. If this is the case I see nothing wrong with buying these goods. I would also look into what that money is going to specifically. If it is some government program that I disagree with then I would reconsider my purchase.

[stonebuddha]

I think the majority of these government/police auctions come from seizures & asset forfiture laws mostly related to the inane war on drugs. In many cases, the Leviathan state has deemed that property can be seized at will without having to prove wrongdoing on the part of the owner. This has lead to the ludicrous notion that inanimate objects can be guilty of crimes. Read the horror here:

http://reason.com/bi/bi-forf.shtml

[always_learning]

If that is true I would avoid them.

[progressiveman1]

I believe that the government’s property seizure laws are draconian.

Well since you bring it up, I would like to ask a question.

Should the gov't be able to seize property from citizens? What principle would justify it?

[DavidOdden]

Should the gov't be able to seize property from citizens? What principle would justify it?

Please note the laws that allow such seizures are entirely improper. When a citizen rightly owes money to the government because they have forced the government to spend money to protect the rights of another person (i.e. when a man beats you), the cost should be borne by the beater. If the beater will not voluntarily surrender the amount owed, the government has the right to take it, preferably in cash, but in stuff if necessary. Normal seizure laws regard illegal profits, an anti-concept if there ever were one.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Please note the laws that allow such seizures are entirely improper. When a citizen rightly owes money to the government because they have forced the government to spend money to protect the rights of another person (i.e. when a man beats you), the cost should be borne by the beater. If the beater will not voluntarily surrender the amount owed, the government has the right to take it, preferably in cash, but in stuff if necessary. Normal seizure laws regard illegal profits, an anti-concept if there ever were one.

The laws also (at least in the US) deliberately encourage more such seizures because the police department gets to add the proceeds to its budget. Horror stories of multihundred thousand dollar properties being seized for a trivial drug infraction abound.

[aequalsa]

The laws also (at least in the US) deliberately encourage more such seizures because the police department gets to add the proceeds to its budget. Horror stories of multihundred thousand dollar properties being seized for a trivial drug infraction abound.

Not just drug related either. Delinquent taxes can lead to confiscation as well.

[Old Toad]

The laws also (at least in the US) deliberately encourage more such seizures because the police department gets to add the proceeds to its budget. Horror stories of multihundred thousand dollar properties being seized for a trivial drug infraction abound.

Here's an example of a horror story I am personally familiar with from about 10 years ago.

A woman came to our law offices in desperation. Some of our attorneys knew her family from a “hole-in-the-wall” Mexican-food restaurant they used to frequent some years before, and she had been a waitress there. That was all the connection we had with her. Coming to see us was a real stretch. But we agreed to the courtesy of an appointment. She had no cash for lawyers.

Some of the salient aspects of her story:

The woman was a U.S. citizen and Hispanic, about 40 years old, not attractive, and very overweight. She worked as a waitress and occassionally tried to re-sell farm-fresh vegetables on the side of the road from the back of her pickup truck. The woman lived in a small house that she had inherited from her mother a few years before.

The woman came to see us hanging on the arm of a handsome young “boyfriend,” who was barely accross the border from Mexico and not a U.S. citizen. He was about 25 years old, clean cut, and well-dressed with tight blue jeans and lots of gold jewelry. He spoke no English, had no job, and had recently started living with her.

She was totally infatuated with the man. She seemed extremely glad to have his affections and seemed willing to do anything for him. I’m not sure what he saw in her, except possibly U.S. citizenship. Apparently he was not the first such type in her life.

She relayed that her previous boyfriend of about a year before had turned out to be a drug dealer. She claimed not to ever have been a drug dealer.

About a year before, her previous boyfriend was planning to do a drug deal. Unfortunately, her previous boyfriend did not know that the deal was to be with undercover officers. When arranging the place of the deal, the undercover officers insisted that it take place at this woman’s home, making up some story about it being “safer,” and the man agreed. When the undercover officers came over to the house, she cooked dinner for all of them, her boyfriend did the deal, and for reasons that I am not clear on she counted the money for the drug deal. I don’t remember the story of how that came to be. After the drug deal was complete, the undercover officers arrested both the woman and her previous boyfriend on the spot.

She couldn’t make bail and spent about six months in jail awaiting criminal trial. At the criminal trial, she was convicted of some participation the drug deal (I don’t remember the specifics), but as her role was minimal the judge only gave her time already served. She went home and back to work as a waitress.

A short while later, however, the State instituted a “civil” proceeding nominally against her home seeking to forfeit it to the State for its having been used in the commission of a drug crime. Apparently, the undercover officers had looked up the pair and discovered that the property was owned outright by the woman. That’s why they wanted to make sure the undercover drug deal was made there. The house was worth about $100,000.

As I remember it, newer forfeiture statutes had been passed to eliminate the prior need for the State to prove that property was the “proceeds” of illegal drug dealing. Just making up an example, the “problem” the State was trying to solve was that an officer would pull over a young thug in a brand new $80,000 car with $50,000 dollars in cash stuffed in a duffle bag in the driver’s compartment and 3 pounds of cocaine hidden in the trunk, but have difficulty proving that the car or the cash were “proceeds” of any drug crime under the State's old forfeiture law. So the law was changed to eliminate the need to prove “proceeds” – all that was required is that the property be somehow associated with or used in connection with a drug crime (I forget the statutory language). Thereafter, even property that was clearly not proceeds from any drug crime became subject to forfeiture merely for be being in connection with a drug crime, e.g., a deal conducted in a house inherited from mama.

We were so offended by this forfeiture statute in our State that we decided to undertake defending her home as best we could, with an eye to possibly challenging the statute or at least its application in a case like hers. We met with the State's attorney, who was rather confident under the then-prevailing U.S. Supreme Court law of the day, but we threatened to try to take the case up through State Supreme Court and even to the U.S. Supreme Court. However improbable that may have seemed, the State’s attorney actually believed us. (It's easier to be convincing when you actually mean it.)

On the eve of civil trial, the State offered to settle the case if the woman would agree to sell the house and give to the State one-half the sale proceeds. That seemed better for her than our tilting at windmills, so we helped her sign the settlement the morning of the trial date.

In an amazing twist, that very same day and less than one hour before the woman actually signed the deal with the State, the U.S. Supreme Court changed/restricted the law of forfeitures in a way that would have been more in our client’s favor. (I don’t remember the specifics of the change.) We immediately went back to the trial court making a motion to undo the settlement agreement – a rather disfavored thing to do – arguing that the law had changed beforehand but that we could not possibly have learned of it in time. We fought that issue all the way through appeals to the State Supreme Court, but lost there. In again threatening to continue seeking to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, we reached another settlement, this time the woman agreeing to pay over to the State one-fourth of the proceeds from the sale of the house. The State’s attorney was thoroughly sick of us.

I do not know the current status of U.S. Supreme Court holdings, but apparently such horror stories continue.

Edited December 11, 2007 by Old Toad

[airborne]

When I saw this I immediately thought of my prudent predator problem. I don't see how it would be in your self-interest not to buy stolen goods there under the "official" authority of the government, that is: if the item you want is cheap and hard to get elsewhere.

[progressiveman1]

When a citizen rightly owes money to the government because they have forced the government to spend money to protect the rights of another person (i.e. when a man beats you), the cost should be borne by the beater. If the beater will not voluntarily surrender the amount owed, the government has the right to take it, preferably in cash, but in stuff if necessary.

That makes sense. If necessary, the gov't would only be able to take from the criminal a certain value based on how much costs resulted from his actions.