techdirt: How The Courts Have Made It Easier For Cops To Steal From Citizens

techdirt: How The Courts Have Made It Easier For Cops To Steal From Citizens by Tim Cushing (“It’s always been easy for cops to take stuff from people. Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to bypass most of the Constitution so long as they imply things about the supposedly illegal source of the property they’ve taken from citizens. The Fourth Amendment is almost worthless in these cases. Since there are no criminal proceedings, there’s no avenue to challenge the search because prosecutors (who also often directly benefit from forfeiture) aren’t going to introduce the seized property as evidence.”)