| Comment | Well, come on, people. How else are they going to pay for the body cameras to show whether cops are obeying the law? *sigh*
Seriously, though -- as with every other anecdotal news story that makes Europeans gasp at how horrible all Americans must be, we should probably look for statistics, not just cherry-pick the worst anecdotes. What percentage of asset seizures really are unjustified, and how is that measured? And of those, what percentage of victims were able to get their money back eventually, e.g. by suing the police department?
And what about the background to some of these stories? Why would anyone drive around with $100K+ in cash, for instance, unless they were planning to hide it and not pay tax on it as income? If you're on the up and up, don't you just deposit your money into a bank account where it's safe, instead of putting it in your car and driving across the country? (And, presumably, speeding, or why did the troopers pull them over?)
Many seizures do seem to be clearly drug-related -- cars, trucks, planes, or ships transporting drugs or cash. Though on the other hand, the few intercepted apparently represent only a tiny fraction of the drug trafficking that continues unimpeded, through ever-changing methods like tunnels and submarines and so on, so it's unclear that the war on drugs is having much effect. Statistically measurable, that is, as opposed to anecdotal on the part of the DEA.
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