Tag: police

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crime and punishment Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Fourth Amendment Dead?

4th Amendment, search, privacy, law

Unconstitutional actions are constitutional.

A federal judge doesn’t say so explicitly, but that’s what his ruling amounts to.

The case, which we discussed previously, involves U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills company that the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided last year. The company has been fined $1.1 million for money laundering because it let dealers anonymously keep cash in its safe deposit boxes.

Judge Gary Klausner concedes that the FBI lied to obtain a warrant, planning to seize the property of all boxholders whether or not there was any evidence of a crime against a given boxholder. And to this day, “specific criminal conduct has not been alleged against customers.” Nevertheless, Klausner ruled that despite the lie, it was constitutional for the FBI to grab the boxes’ contents.

Of course, if the warrant authorizing the FBI to ignore Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures had been honestly solicited, that still would not have transmuted unconstitutional actions into constitutional ones.

“The court does not deny that the government had an improper motive when it applied for its warrant,” observes Rob Johnson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which is representing the boxholders.

“But it says that fact is irrelevant unless the improper investigatory motive was the only reason that the Government opened the safety deposit boxes.… If today’s shocking decision stands, it will set a dangerous precedent that will allow the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to bypass the Fourth Amendment.”

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice doesn’t regard the case as closed. It will appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Against the Regime

NYC, vaccine, little boy, police

Recently, a tyke and his mommy were booted from a Big Apple Applebee’s because the little boy lacked a vaccine passport.

That is, the mother possessed no proof that her son had been vaccinated against the disease of the day.

Now, parents have every right to refrain from getting their kids injected — especially given the low risk that kids will become seriously ill from COVID-​19 and the non-​negligible risk of harm from vaccine side effects.

But such considerations didn’t prevent a gang of police — no students of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor — from ordering the expulsion. (There’s video.)

Residents of New York City’s vaccination regime can at least move to another town. People elsewhere, in larger jurisdictions — Austria, Australia, England — face greater difficulties escaping pandemic tyranny. But, like us, they can protest and they can sue.

In England, a group called Big Brother Watch is challenging the COVID Pass Scheme imposed by the government of Boris Johnson. Their lengthy “pre-​action letter” argues that no evidence exists that the passes will reduce the spread of the virus and that the scheme is “unnecessary and disproportionate.”

Amidst so much “information” under dispute, we know three things.

One, for all the suffering and death it has inflicted on the most vulnerable, the current pandemic is hardly the Black Death. It isn’t even the Spanish flu.

Two, being “vaccinated” against COVID-​19 does not prevent one from becoming infected or from infecting others.

Three, shutting down society also inflicts suffering. Great suffering. As must shutting down whichever segments of society decline Draconian mandates.

Maybe the scourge of tyranny isn’t the best balm for the scourge of COVID-19.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fourth Amendment rights

Marks of Tyranny

chalk, tire, Constitution

It pays to contest petty (as well as major) civil and criminal charges that your local and state governments lay against you. Sometimes you get off.

People have used some pretty “out there” arguments in their own defense. Example? Risk homeostasis in a speeding case. That was a stretch.

But this Michigan case, though it may seem odd, is as American as Apple pie.

Alison Taylor sued the city of Saginaw over her parking violation citations. Her argument? The Fourth Amendment.

You see, the municipality’s parking officer had used chalk to mark her (and others’) tires. If on a second round the officer sees a car with the mark at the right spot, showing that it had not moved in the allowed period — write up a ticket!

Ms. Taylor had accumulated 14.

So she and her lawyer argued that “using the chalk to mark her tires constituted an unreasonable search without a warrant.”

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. This traditional method of enforcing parking rules was recognized as an infringement of the right of the people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

Trivial? The consequences may not be, as my source for this case, Greg Rasa of Autoblog, points out.

Dubious? Imagine a non-​legal way to fight the chalk-​mark method — non-​officers chalking car tires with multiple marks indistinguishable from the officers’. Cities would object, of course, but their best case against such a practice would be the car owners’ case: defacement of private property. 

Yes, if the saboteurs’ marks are defacement, so are the city’s.

Justifying the appellate court’s ruling.

Chalk one up for constitutionally guaranteed rights?

This is Common Sense. It’s Friday! I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment international affairs Regulating Protest

Crackdowns For Lockdowns

Covid, protests, lockdowns, police

Politicians and bureaucrats like some protests, fear others. 

You can tell a lot about a protest movement and its actual agenda by how a government reacts. You can tell a lot about a government by how it instructs police to respond to different protests.

So we should probably take a careful look at anti-​lockdown protests around the world, especially in Europe.

And how police are handling them.

Very violently.

Nils Melzer, Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow and the current United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, has “requested more information on an incident in which a female anti-​lockdown protester in Berlin was grabbed by the throat and brutally thrown to the ground by riot police,” reports Paul Joseph Watson of Summit News. 

The response to Melzer’s request was “overwhelming, with over a hundred reports of violence flooding in,” Watson summarizes, citing a report in Berliner Zeitung.

While examples of police brutality are viewable on Twitter, YouTube, and other social media, reportage in America seems muted, perhaps thanks to our lockstep pro-​lockdown corporate media.

“Something fundamental is going wrong,” Melzer says. “In all regions of the world, the authorities are apparently increasingly viewing their own people as an enemy.”

There is no mystery. Lockdowns, mask mandates, and mandatory vaccinations amount to quite a holistic assault on personal liberty.

While protests that demand more power for the state, or that would increase the security of the ruling faction, get treated with kid gloves, protests directed against state power, or against a sitting regime — and especially against such a power grab — get cracked down upon.

It’s stands to reason, but not justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights

The Maine Alternative to State Robbery

civil asset forfeiture, police, corruption, drug war

Around the country, one of the worst predations against people who save money or own property is civil asset forfeiture.

This is the grabbing of the cash and other belongings of innocent people on the basis of a mere suspicion (or feigned suspicion) of wrongdoing. By government.

No evidence is required by law: no arrest; no conviction. Just the willingness of some police officer, sheriff, or other member of law enforcement to grab what doesn’t belong to him. 

There’s only one cure: state by state, these asset forfeiture laws must be abolished.

The Institute for Justice reports that Maine has now repealed its civil forfeiture law, making it the third state to do so. IJ’s own efforts deserve much of the credit.

Another hero of the story is Billy Bob Faulkingham, one of my favorite legislators and the main sponsor of the bill. (He is also behind a right-​to-​farm ballot measure and a good voter-​ID bill.)

The bipartisan “Act to Strengthen Protections Against Asset Forfeiture” — which passed without the governor’s signature — states that “for property to be forfeited under the criminal forfeiture laws, the owner of the property[must] be convicted of a crime in which the property was involved.…”

Is this the end of the injustice?

In Maine, maybe. 

Being on the books doesn’t necessarily mean that a law will be obeyed. But if and when it is violated, victims in the state will now have stronger legal recourse and a much better chance of promptly getting back their stuff.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Not-​So-​Safe Deposit Boxes

Now hold on just a minute. I’m not one of those crazies who thinks the government is nothing better than a den of thieves constantly looking for new ways to steal from us. So don’t accuse me of making such an accusation. Please.

But, gee whiz, it sure makes the government look bad when obscure federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Justice engage in the mass theft of $85 million worth of property belonging to people accused of no wrongdoing.

It must be one of those oft-​repeated wild aberrations.

In March, the federal government conducted a raid of a safe deposit box company called U.S. Privacy Vaults. The government accuses the company of abetting drug dealers.

The government accuses the box renters of … nothing. But DOJ is trying to use civil forfeiture laws to retain most of what it seized during the raid: some $85 million in cash and valuables.

The Institute for Justice is thankfully leading a class-​action lawsuit on behalf of the victims.

“The government has no basis to think any of these people have done anything wrong,” notes IJ attorney Robert Frommer. “It just wants to keep their stuff. That’s unlawful and unconstitutional.”

One victim, Travis May, a Reason Foundation trustee, adds: “Civil forfeiture is an abomination. This is a clear demonstration of the perverse motive it creates.”

May says that Congress should outlaw civil forfeiture once and for all. I must agree … otherwise, we encourage the fandooglishly wacky impression that government is out to steal from us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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