Policing For Profit: Total Lawlessness

From the Institute for Justice, is a case of the State taking away a family-owned business just because they want under the thin veneer of a motel owner having rented a few rooms to criminals in the past. This is despite total cooperation with law enforcement. Gee, criminals run to a motel? Who ever heard of that before?

Imagine you own a million-dollar piece of property free and clear, but then the federal government and local law enforcement agents announce that they are going to take it from you, not compensate you one dime, and then use the money they get from selling your land to pad their budgets—all this even though you have never so much as been accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one.

That is the nightmare Russ Caswell and his family is now facing in Tewksbury, Mass., where they stand to lose the family-operated motel they have owned for two generations.

Seeking to circumvent state law and cash in on the profits, the Tewksbury Police Department is working with the U.S. Department of Justice to take and sell the Caswells property because a tiny fraction of people who have stayed at the Motel Caswell during the past 20 years have been arrested for crimes.  Keep in mind, the Caswells themselves have worked closely with law enforcement officials to prevent and report crime on their property.  And the arrests the government complains of represent less than .05 percent of the 125,000 rooms the Caswells have rented over that period of time.
Despite all this, the Caswells stand to lose literally everything they have worked for because of this effort by federal and local law enforcement officials not to pursue justice, but rather to police for profit.
How widespread is the problem of civil forfeiture abuse nationwide?  In 1986, the year after the U.S. Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Fund was created—the fund that holds the forfeiture proceeds from properties forfeited under federal law and available to be paid out to law enforcement agencies—took in just $93.7 million.  Today it holds more than $1.6 billion.
The Institute for Justice, a national public interest law firm that fights civil forfeiture abuse nationwide, is now representing the Caswells in defense of their property and their constitutional rights.

This is the kind of stuff that destroyed the middle class in China during the Cultural Revolution. Join this with the fact that the bought off judges across the land are saying that they can snoop on you, let police dogs sniff on your property without a warrant, take your blood for behaving suspiciously, and grab your crotch. I don't think they had that last one during the Cultural Revolution as official policy, that's how messed up Americans have become.

 In Tennessee, if a city cop finds a large amount of cash in your car, the only thing that goes through his mind is cha-ching, because if he can find a pretext, he's got a chance of keeping all of it for himself. They'll claim it's drug money, but lots of people carry cash to buy large items like cars out of the classifieds. Notice how they say its for drugs, but don't patrol the east-bound lane of I-40 where the drugs supposedly are being smuggled, but the cash-rich west-bound lane.