Key element in the article:
"The new Philadelphia DA, Larry Krasner, ran for office as a critic of forfeiture. But even his office admits the practice of law enforcement taking and selling homes will never be completely over.
"'We have not suspended all forfeiture, but we have aggressively narrowed the size and scope,' said Krasner spokesperson Ben Waxman. 'You actually have to be convicted and the property has to be connected to the crime or purchased with proceeds connected to the crime. There could be very small exceptions to this rule, but that's generally it.'"
Seizures were abused much more under the previous DA -- including people losing homes without being convicted. Krasner has stopped the no-conviction seizures, and is dialing the whole thing back.
It's not trivial that this article embarrassing the DA comes out less than 12 months after Krasner was sworn in. He's not loved by the Philly Police.
Read a little about the previous DA. Seems like a piece of work. It's surprising to me because I didn't think DA's in other states were quite as corrupt as some of the DA's we've had in Wisconsin are, but apparently Pennsylvania has the corrupt DA problem too.
The title is (intentionally?) sensationalist nonsense since "the Philly DA" is a person not an office, and the analysis is basically entirely about the office under Krasner's predecessors.
Asset seizure is a fucking blight. If a chunk of your budget comes from selling seized property, then you are going to prioritize seizing property. Especially when property can be fucking seized without a conviction.
It's not completely black and white though. In this modern world of ransomware, mail-order drug trade and other lucrative side jobs, invisible crime is easier and more prevalent than ever.
Basically, asset seizure enables the state to go after someone without no known source of income flaunting millions of dollars in sports cars, mansions, etc. Even if the state has no idea _what_ the suspect doing, just that they've got millions of dollars and no explanation on where it came from.
Alas, this theoretically decent idea has been completely fucked up in it's execution. But the core idea of asset seizure, namely that obvious proceeds of a crime can be seized even when the crimes were committed in private.
Historically, I believe it was used against people who magically had gained a fortune overnight, without forcing every bank to go through their vaults and count the cash. Bootleggers, too.
> Basically, asset seizure enables the state to go after someone without no known source of income flaunting millions of dollars in sports cars, mansions, etc. Even if the state has no idea _what_ the suspect doing, just that they've got millions of dollars and no explanation on where it came from.
Why should seizing assets be okay under those circumstances?
> In this modern world of ransomware, mail-order drug trade and other lucrative side jobs, invisible crime is easier and more prevalent than ever.
In this modern world of internet-connected financial institutions and big data, following large amounts of money through the system is easier and more prevalent than ever.
>> Basically, asset seizure enables the state to go after someone without no known source of income flaunting millions of dollars in sports cars, mansions, etc. Even if the state has no idea _what_ the suspect doing, just that they've got millions of dollars and no explanation on where it came from.
> Why should seizing assets be okay under those circumstances?
That one is a value judgement, and there is no right answer. Personally, I think the system should be biased to discourage crime, even if it's very unlikely you'll get caught. I know others place the value of freedom higher than the value of, well, fairness. I prefer a nation where crime doesn't pay, or if it does, you lose the spoils.
If that were true then we should expect the US to have a significantly lower rate of crime than other Western democracies given that:
the United States had by far the highest reported rate of incarceration in the world. Today,
adult incarceration rates of the Western European democracies average around 100 per 100,000, and in the common law countries of Australia and Canada, the rates are only slightly higher. The U.S. rate in 2012 was seven times higher, at 707 per 100,000.[1]
For this to be possible the US must have been incarcerating more people, for longer, than other countries, which by your logic would reduce the rate of crime.
I was under the impression it was widely accepted that increased severity of punishment had only a small effect on rates of crime. The report I've referenced seems to agree.
I believe that is the "doc" I watched a while ago that had some interesting info about TN's asset forfeiture laws.
Even the narrator was saying that the cops are too happy with it. I assume several other states have aggressive asset forfeiture laws as well.
Watching that doc made me hurt just because they show someone going to jail for a few grams of weed, losing their car, the state (I think?) police saying "this will make a fine vehicle for us," and smiling directly to the camera about it saying we don't make the laws (paraphrasing as it's been a while since I saw the doc).
Supreme Court has upheld civil asset forfeiture so far
Of course this is based on the arguments presented
And there are plenty of arguments remaining
All it comes down to is that nobody rich enough, and sympathizable enough, has been subject to this yet. No random police department has seized a bank’s property due to suspected association with an unspecified crime.
Gamblers driving with cash and illiquid homeowners are the ones that experience this.
Anyone associated with government and their families should be banned from buying seized property and any proceeds should be going into a general fund.
Slightly related, I was reading this[0] over the weekend and it left me incensed.
Behind a paywall, so relevant bits
> Uri Rafaeli is an 83-year-old engineer and great-grandfather. He never expected the government to treat him like a drug dealer or gang banger. But last year the Michigan Court of Appeals held that a county government could use civil asset forfeiture—the same legal process used by police to confiscate drug lords’ mansions—to seize a modest rental property Mr. Rafaeli owned because he accidentally underpaid his property taxes by $8.41.
> Mr. Rafaeli bought the house through his business for $60,000 in 2011. Later that year he inadvertently underpaid his property’s taxes by $496. When he learned of his mistake in 2013, Mr. Rafaeli attempted to pay the debt in full but failed to account for the interest that had accumulated since he received the bill. He came up $8.41 short.
> Unaware of his error, Mr. Rafaeli went on to pay his taxes in a timely manner in subsequent years. Nevertheless, in February 2014 Oakland County foreclosed on the property to collect the tiny debt, along with $277 in penalties, additional interest and fees. Six months later the county sold the property at auction for $24,500 and refused to refund Mr. Rafaeli any of the profits.
> ....
> The elderly, sick or economically distressed are most at risk of losing property over tax debts. Henderson Hodgens lost his childhood home and farm in Geneva Township, Mich., in 2014 when a hospitalization left him unexpectedly unable to pay his $5,900 debt. Benjamin Coleman—who suffers from dementia—lost his Washington, D.C., home when he forgot to pay a $134 tax bill. Public outrage over his story prompted District of Columbia officials to change a confiscatory law to protect property rights.
> The Michigan Supreme Court agreed last month to hear Mr. Rafaeli’s case and will decide whether the Court of Appeals erred in its ruling that Oakland County had violated neither the Takings Clause nor the Michigan Constitution’s “just compensation” requirement. Mr. Rafaeli is prepared to take his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if need be, to stop bureaucrats from turning property tax collection into an instrument of government theft.
Important context: A recent batch of city DA's in the U.S. (I know Krasner is one of them but I can't name others off the top of my head) are revolutionizing urban law enforcement. Krasner, for example, is a civil rights attorney who won the DA office on a progressive platform, which IIRC is not dissimilar to the others. It's a revolution, as I said, and of course that means that many vested interests have lost power and many other people will be uncomfortable with the change. There are targets on the DA's backs.
That doesn't mean these DA's shouldn't face scrutiny (they absolutely should), that they can't do things wrong, or that they can't be corrupt. But the context is an important part of this story.
The police-acquired homes are a red herring. They represent a fraction of the properties being rebuilt by developers for new, rich, white renters. Anything that isn't nailed down in Fishtown, NoLibs, and Kensington is being bought up and developed into condos and apartments. The development is even pushing its way south down Broad Street, with multiple new complexes of apartments and shopping coming online.
Even if this seizure bs was not going on, nobody in this area of town will be able to afford to live there in 5 years. And there's no new public housing going up anywhere, because all the contractors are bidding ridiculously inflated prices to build them.
This is going to push everyone in the area into the streets, or jail, and push crime into every other corner of the city it can spread to, because nothing is being done to help the people who have to resort to drugs to survive. Philly is still very much a dangerous, desperate place to live.
They're being built for predominately rich white renters, based on the people moving in to these neighborhoods for the past few years. It's a classic gentrification story. Before you would have had mostly black and latino residents, and now on many blocks it's mostly white residents [and businesses]. The marketing is basically "Can't afford Williamsburg? Move to Fishtown."
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 74.8 ms ] threadSeizures were abused much more under the previous DA -- including people losing homes without being convicted. Krasner has stopped the no-conviction seizures, and is dialing the whole thing back.
It's not trivial that this article embarrassing the DA comes out less than 12 months after Krasner was sworn in. He's not loved by the Philly Police.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/philadelphia-dis...
Read a little about the previous DA. Seems like a piece of work. It's surprising to me because I didn't think DA's in other states were quite as corrupt as some of the DA's we've had in Wisconsin are, but apparently Pennsylvania has the corrupt DA problem too.
They’ll giggle and laugh at their perspective of the Chinese system.
Yet all levels of government in the US can and do arbitrarily take private property with the thinnest due process, if you can even call it that.
Little difference, just whatever you were exposed to the youngest and most impressionable
The office has sold at least one property since Krasner took office ...
My understanding is that the reporter could find only one property sold by the current DA.
Basically, asset seizure enables the state to go after someone without no known source of income flaunting millions of dollars in sports cars, mansions, etc. Even if the state has no idea _what_ the suspect doing, just that they've got millions of dollars and no explanation on where it came from.
Alas, this theoretically decent idea has been completely fucked up in it's execution. But the core idea of asset seizure, namely that obvious proceeds of a crime can be seized even when the crimes were committed in private.
Historically, I believe it was used against people who magically had gained a fortune overnight, without forcing every bank to go through their vaults and count the cash. Bootleggers, too.
Why should seizing assets be okay under those circumstances?
> In this modern world of ransomware, mail-order drug trade and other lucrative side jobs, invisible crime is easier and more prevalent than ever.
In this modern world of internet-connected financial institutions and big data, following large amounts of money through the system is easier and more prevalent than ever.
> Why should seizing assets be okay under those circumstances?
That one is a value judgement, and there is no right answer. Personally, I think the system should be biased to discourage crime, even if it's very unlikely you'll get caught. I know others place the value of freedom higher than the value of, well, fairness. I prefer a nation where crime doesn't pay, or if it does, you lose the spoils.
the United States had by far the highest reported rate of incarceration in the world. Today, adult incarceration rates of the Western European democracies average around 100 per 100,000, and in the common law countries of Australia and Canada, the rates are only slightly higher. The U.S. rate in 2012 was seven times higher, at 707 per 100,000.[1]
For this to be possible the US must have been incarcerating more people, for longer, than other countries, which by your logic would reduce the rate of crime.
I was under the impression it was widely accepted that increased severity of punishment had only a small effect on rates of crime. The report I've referenced seems to agree.
1. Refer page 335 here http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/nrc/NAS_report_on_incarceration...
I found that PDF here https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ethics-in-question/2...
I believe that is the "doc" I watched a while ago that had some interesting info about TN's asset forfeiture laws.
Even the narrator was saying that the cops are too happy with it. I assume several other states have aggressive asset forfeiture laws as well.
Watching that doc made me hurt just because they show someone going to jail for a few grams of weed, losing their car, the state (I think?) police saying "this will make a fine vehicle for us," and smiling directly to the camera about it saying we don't make the laws (paraphrasing as it's been a while since I saw the doc).
/it still makes me angry just thinking about it
Of course this is based on the arguments presented
And there are plenty of arguments remaining
All it comes down to is that nobody rich enough, and sympathizable enough, has been subject to this yet. No random police department has seized a bank’s property due to suspected association with an unspecified crime.
Gamblers driving with cash and illiquid homeowners are the ones that experience this.
Behind a paywall, so relevant bits
> Uri Rafaeli is an 83-year-old engineer and great-grandfather. He never expected the government to treat him like a drug dealer or gang banger. But last year the Michigan Court of Appeals held that a county government could use civil asset forfeiture—the same legal process used by police to confiscate drug lords’ mansions—to seize a modest rental property Mr. Rafaeli owned because he accidentally underpaid his property taxes by $8.41.
> Mr. Rafaeli bought the house through his business for $60,000 in 2011. Later that year he inadvertently underpaid his property’s taxes by $496. When he learned of his mistake in 2013, Mr. Rafaeli attempted to pay the debt in full but failed to account for the interest that had accumulated since he received the bill. He came up $8.41 short.
> Unaware of his error, Mr. Rafaeli went on to pay his taxes in a timely manner in subsequent years. Nevertheless, in February 2014 Oakland County foreclosed on the property to collect the tiny debt, along with $277 in penalties, additional interest and fees. Six months later the county sold the property at auction for $24,500 and refused to refund Mr. Rafaeli any of the profits.
> ....
> The elderly, sick or economically distressed are most at risk of losing property over tax debts. Henderson Hodgens lost his childhood home and farm in Geneva Township, Mich., in 2014 when a hospitalization left him unexpectedly unable to pay his $5,900 debt. Benjamin Coleman—who suffers from dementia—lost his Washington, D.C., home when he forgot to pay a $134 tax bill. Public outrage over his story prompted District of Columbia officials to change a confiscatory law to protect property rights.
> The Michigan Supreme Court agreed last month to hear Mr. Rafaeli’s case and will decide whether the Court of Appeals erred in its ruling that Oakland County had violated neither the Takings Clause nor the Michigan Constitution’s “just compensation” requirement. Mr. Rafaeli is prepared to take his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if need be, to stop bureaucrats from turning property tax collection into an instrument of government theft.
Absolutely fucking appalling stuff.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-8-41-in-unpaid-taxes-the-go...
Though this is really infuriating. Fucking with people just because they can.
That doesn't mean these DA's shouldn't face scrutiny (they absolutely should), that they can't do things wrong, or that they can't be corrupt. But the context is an important part of this story.
Even if this seizure bs was not going on, nobody in this area of town will be able to afford to live there in 5 years. And there's no new public housing going up anywhere, because all the contractors are bidding ridiculously inflated prices to build them.
This is going to push everyone in the area into the streets, or jail, and push crime into every other corner of the city it can spread to, because nothing is being done to help the people who have to resort to drugs to survive. Philly is still very much a dangerous, desperate place to live.