I was thinking of some of the responding officers who were not rolling around in/on a an armored vehicle, and probably had the gear in the trunk of their ride.
I peeped a lot of them trying to stay warm with coats drawn over their ammo pouches, or no warming layers at all.
I thought the response to the Boston Bomber situation was way over the top to. You guys would laugh if I told you what I was issued when I started in LE. Vests....what are vests. The radio was in the car not on my belt.....used to carry a thing called a revolver and your extra bullets were carried in a spill pouch because that is what usually happened when you tried to use them. Most important thing I carried was my notebook and flashlight and my brains.Originally Posted by jcustis
Brain, what's that? I think I had one when I entered the academy years ago. No, wait that was balls.
Taken: Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes - Is that all we’re losing?, by Sarah Stillman. The New Yorker, August 12, 2013.
A long, but important – if not infuriating – article on civil asset forfeiture. Asset forfeiture has gone from being an important law enforcement tool to an important revenue stream for law enforcement.Whether this should be the law—whether, in the absence of a judicial finding of guilt, the state should be able to take possession of your property—has been debated since before American independence. In the Colonial period, the English Crown issued “writs of assistance” that permitted customs officials to enter homes or vessels and seize whatever they deemed contraband. As the legal scholars Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen have noted, these writs were “among the key grievances that triggered the American Revolution.” The new nation’s Bill of Rights would expressly forbid “unreasonable searches and seizures” and promise that no one would be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process.” Nonetheless, Congress soon authorized the use of civil-forfeiture actions against pirates and smugglers. It was easier to prosecute a vessel and seize its cargo than to try to prosecute its owner, who might be an ocean away. In the ensuing decades, the practice fell into disuse and, aside from a few brief revivals, remained mostly dormant for the next two centuries.
Forfeiture in its modern form began with federal statutes enacted in the nineteen-seventies and aimed not at waitresses and janitors but at organized-crime bosses and drug lords. Law-enforcement officers were empowered to seize money and goods tied to the production of illegal drugs. Later amendments allowed the seizure of anything thought to have been purchased with tainted funds, whether or not it was connected to the commission of a crime. Even then, forfeiture remained an infrequent resort until 1984, when Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act. It established a special fund that turned over proceeds from forfeitures to the law-enforcement agencies responsible for them. Local police who provided federal assistance were rewarded with a large percentage of the proceeds, through a program called Equitable Sharing. Soon states were crafting their own forfeiture laws.
Revenue gains were staggering. At the Justice Department, proceeds from forfeiture soared from twenty-seven million dollars in 1985 to five hundred and fifty-six million in 1993. (Last year, the department took in nearly $4.2 billion in forfeitures, a record.) The strategy helped reconcile President Reagan’s call for government action in fighting crime with his call to reduce public spending. In 1989, Attorney General Richard Thornburgh boasted, “It’s now possible for a drug dealer to serve time in a forfeiture-financed prison after being arrested by agents driving a forfeiture-provided automobile while working in a forfeiture-funded sting operation.”
“[S]omething in his tone now reminded her of his explanations of asymmetric warfare, a topic in which he had a keen and abiding interest. She remembered him telling her how terrorism was almost exclusively about branding, but only slightly less so about the psychology of lotteries…” - Zero History, William Gibson
There are many extreme cases in the article - outright abuse, but in my experience civil forfeiture works - especially with airport interdiction where you get people transporting thousands of dollars for no apparent reason. Not to sound like an a-hole, but it's all about the money & stuff and when you take it away it hurts the bad guys. Criminally indicting assets does gum up the works, but it's the price of doing business. I believe in the Constitiution and our rights and hope that I have not violated someone's rights while enforcing federal drug laws - I would be disappointed in myself.
I think the point here is more one of it being possibly a proper technique when used correctly, but also being aware that it is open to abuse and there need to be ways to deal with that abuse. Airport interdiction isn't the same as pulling someone over for being in the left lane for over ten seconds and then taking everything they own. The PBS NewsHour had an interview with the article's author last night and it was interesting, although not in the same detail as the article.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
Is the point proper technique or civil forfeiture is bad? I'm not defending the egregious seizures written about in the article. I can't imagine a cop telling a couple you can keep your kids if you abandoned your money. IMO very extreme cases and I would venture that not all quoted in the article were telling the truth. Airport interdiction (not customs searches, but consensual encounters, walk & talks) pulling someone over are not much different. Instead of using a vehicle one utilizes their person, asks for consent to search their property, but pc is required for the seizure. The ten seconds in the left lane is a little ticky tack.
While MS-13 has been operating in neighboring Suffolk County for the past decade, its increasing infiltration of Nassau is alarming authorities — and terrifying residents more used to worrying about the traffic on the Long Island Expressway than gang warfare.MS-13’s motto is “murder, rape, control.’’
Authorities consider it the world’s most dangerous street gang at the moment, and its heavily tattooed, machete-wielding members easily live up to the hype.
The gang was born in Los Angeles in the 1980s in the wake of deadly civil wars wracking the three countries forming the so-called “Northern Triangle’’ at the top of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.Refugees from those countries fled to the United States, landing mostly in poor LA neighborhoods, leaving them vulnerable to Mexican street gangs already in power. The refugees banded together to fight back, taking cues from the Mexican gangs while forming their own version of a ruthless organization.
The new gang of street terrorists dubbed themselves Mara Salvatrucha 13, or MS-13 for short. The name is believed to be a combination of the Spanish word mara, or “gang,’’ Salva for Salvador and trucha, street slang for staying vigilant. The number 13 supposedly refers to M’s place in the alphabet — an homage to Mexico, the home country of the gangs that gave it its start.https://nypost.com/2017/12/12/scourg...y-north-shore/About three decades after first hitting the US, the gang has now infiltrated more than 40 states with 10,000-plus known members, according to FBI estimates. Their numbers in New York are murky, but one thing is certain: Long Island has become one of the gang’s major East Coast strongholds after Washington, DC, and its surrounding areas, authorities say.
The gang follows work opportunities, officials say: Where there are wealthy areas in need of cheap immigrant workers, you will find MS-13.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-13-2017 at 10:10 PM. Reason: 66,439v
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ine/939668001/A self-propelled semi-submersible vessel carrying more than 3,800 pounds of cocaine was stopped by the U.S. coast guard. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the incident happened on November 12th (off the coast of Texas).
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hezbollah...001923525.htmlThe Islamist militant group Hezbollah exploded into a major cocaine trafficker for the United States over the past decade — and it happened under former President Barack Obama's watch to help score a nuclear deal with Iran, a report revealed Monday.
Project Cassandra, a campaign launched by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008, found that the Iran-backed military and political organization collected $1 billion a year from money laundering, criminal activities, and drug and weapons trade, according to Politico. Over the following eight years, the agency found that Hezbollah was involved in cocaine shipments from Latin America to West Africa, as well as through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States.
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
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