Big props to Jeremy Saulnier who wrote and directed Rebel Ridge. Recommend.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
Forget Hollywood drama. Henry and Minh Chen are business owners in real life. They own a jewelry store. They made a legitimate purchase via cash. They mailed the cash to the seller via FedEx, because they could insure the package.
The money never arrived at the seller.
Because police in Indiana trained dogs to sniff for money instead of drugs. They then have the dogs sniff all the packages that go through the FedEx depot, and just... steal any cash that the dogs find
Indiana police use state law to steal money without cause
This isn’t crime fighting. It’s an actual crime — a blatant, naked theft carried out by officers, Libertarian Party Chair Evan McMahon writes.
The Indianapolis Star (www.indystar.com)
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
I'm glad that Henry and Minh Chen's money was stolen by the cops, because it exposed the brazenness of the theft, and exposed that there was no pretense of this being "cartel money." The cops are just stealing from people, mostly poor, mostly Black.
You might be thinking, "How could a system so cruel be put in place? How can the US government just steal billions from Black people, who are already the poorest demographic in the US? Who started this civil asset forfeiture scheme?"
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P J Evansreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke
It's been going on for years, probably many decades, and the cops shouldn't be given a pass on any of their own crimes (and civil forfeiture is theft: no charges, no recourse). -
mekka okereke :verified:replied to P J Evans last edited by
Civil asset forfeiture in particular has been going on since Biden started it. Let me be super clear:
There was no such thing as civil asset forfeiture before Biden invented it. Then he invented it, and passed legislation making this theft by cop possible. Now we have it, and it's terrible.But yes, it's been going on for decades. Because Biden is old as dirt. And he's been passing legislation like this, that's genocidally harmful for Black people for most of his political career.
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Maverickreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @PJ_Evans JFC, stop the lies, this has absolutely nothing to do with Biden. I first heard about it in the 1980’s, when Regan greatly expanded it’s use as part of the “war on drugs”, but that doesn’t really matter because a 5 second internet search would show you that it goes back HUNDREDS OF YEARS.
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@mekkaokereke @PJ_Evans From Wikipedia: “Civil forfeiture in the United States has a history dating back several hundred years, with roots in British maritime law. In the mid-1600s, when what would become the United States was a British colony, the British Navigation Acts were enacted. These laws required ships importing or exporting goods from British ports to fly the British flag; ships that failed to do this could be seized regardless of whether the ship's owner was guilty of any wrongdoing.”
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Maverick last edited by
️ I'm about to block you, because you're the worst kind of wrong: loud and wrong.
I'm talking specifically about police in the US pulling Black people over and having the legal right to take their money without a criminal charge. Not other forms of asset forfeiture that existed before that, even in the United States, as part of RICO.
You're either intentionally trolling, or you really are going off half-cocked in my mentions about a topic you know nothing about.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
Oh, he blocked me? Fine by me! Same end result.
PSA for everyone else: Don't pop off sideways and wrong in my mentions, then get mad when facts are listed.
If you ask a question, I'll answer it politely and with patience.
And if you don't know something, ask. Don't start from a position of confident ignorance, and expect people to politely walk you back from your foolishness. That doesn't work for me.
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
The foolishness in his now deleted posts, because I will invariably get asked "What did he say?"
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Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️⚧️replied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@[email protected] maybe xe deleted xer posts but it's cached on the server I'm on so :blobcatshrug2:
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freediverxreplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke @maverick604 @PJ_Evans
Has anyone ever tried to overturn this law on constitutional grounds? -
Andreas Kreplied to Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️⚧️ last edited by
@Orca @mekkaokereke It's not deleted here either
But @mekkaokereke
if you accuse Biden specifically of passing a law, would you kindly point us to some reference material that backs your position? So, one can understand the context?Ok found some some links from you further down in the thread. Thx.
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@Orca @mekkaokereke
Please note, some Fedi gods have commented some weeks ago in my timeline, that ActivityPub is much better in propagating Edits in than Deletes.So if you put your feet in your mouth (e.g. as I asked for details and discovered them a couple of minutes later), editing the toot is much better than deleting it to fix the discussion thread.
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@freediverx @mekkaokereke @PJ_Evans
since i worked in a cash biz (gambling) i know many people this has happened to
you can't overturn on constitutional grounds because property doesn't have civil rights
nor do you get the money back by proving you're not guilty of a crime (it's not about you)
nor do you want to change the law to incent cops to convict people of crimes to get their cash
it's straight up legalized theft by cops
i could say WAY more but not in 500 characters
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Petrareplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
I'm a white Brit, & trying to get my head around this.
I assume this happens significantly more to black people than white people?
I also assume Black people are disprortionately stopped, like over here?
I assume there is no resource to get the funds returned, and that as black people are often kept poorer by the system, they're then pushed further into poverty?But that this is preferable to what could happen when a black person is stopped by police makes me sick to my core
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mekka okereke :verified:replied to Petra last edited by
All of your assumptions are correct.
The scale of the theft is mind-boggling. $68 billion between 2000 and 2019.
Most of the thefts involve the loss of the substantial part of a non-criminal's life savings. $20K stolen from someone that warns minimum wage, is devastating.
Stealing whole houses from grandmothers:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2017/05/30/grandmother-who-lost-her-home-because-her-son-sold-marijuana-wins-at-pennsylvania-supreme-court/ -
Michael Kohnereplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke OK, I had a thought earlier today in relation to something else: Something is slowly pushing folks to use cash less and some kind of electronic transaction more (evidence: My son was in London for two weeks in the spring and was UNABLE to spend the cash he took - businesses just don't want to fool with it). Is there some part of CAF that is being used to try to help this along? Doing anything with cash is now twice as dangerous: Criminals might rob you, or the cops might rob you.
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@mhkohne @mekkaokereke in London it's simple: in the UK card fees are lower than cash handling fees for many merchants, plus you don't need to run card payments to the bank
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@mhkohne @mekkaokereke Card fees are very visible. In the US they’re high (2% interchange is not uncommon, then add proessing fees)
But cash is not free
The merchant has to return it to the bank at the end of the day, so they can sort it, filter out fakes, and place the money into the merchant’s account to pay suppliers. They also have to purchase rolls of coins and packs of notes in the denominations they need in order to make change - because generally there’s a mismatch between the notes you receive from customers and those you need to hand back to them.
Someone also needs to build ATMs. They need to maintain them. They need to send armoured trucks around regularly to restock them, so they continue to function. An awful lot of infrastructure is required to make cash work, and the baseline costs of running it are higher than running the card networks.
In recent years, we’ve had fintech acquirers like Zettle and SumUp appear on the market. They’ve been successful in acquiring market share in part because they’ve driven down both the costs of terminals themselves, but also the transaction fees that retailers pay.
And in EEA (and formerly-EEA) countries, where interchange is regulated to 0.2% for most debit cards and 0.3% for most credit cards, this means that the cost of accepting card payments has gone down a lot. In some countries (NL, SE, and UK all stand out here), it’s cheaper than cash.
So merchants there are beginning to prefer it, or even not accept payments in cash. It doesn’t help that you can’t steal money from a card terminal in the same way as you would from a cash drawer.
And this is important to understand, because access to cash and its’ utility is undeniably a net benefit for civilization.
But to protect it we must figure out how to fund it.
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goldenmeaniereplied to mekka okereke :verified: last edited by
@mekkaokereke This was a really solid recommendation. I might have otherwise given it a pass based on the title. Thank you!