Iets van uw gading?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Zou ons Ministerie van Justitie of politie dit _niet_ willen?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/readings/hidden.html

[knip]
The stories were sad survivors' tales, each recounting a moment of unexpected financial ruin followed by years of mostly fruitless attempts to
undo it. A pilot told of how the government destroyed his air charter business: The Drug Enforcement Administration seized his airplane when a
drug dealer chartered it; $85,000 in legal fees later, the pilot filed for bankruptcy and became a truck driver. A landscaper testified that while on
a purchasing trip, he had been stripped of $9,000 by an airport drug interdiction unit, then sent home without a receipt, on grounds that only drug
dealers carry so much cash. Legislators also heard the tale of Mary Miller (a pseudonym), a 75-year-old grandmother dispossessed of her home
for the sins of her fugitive, drug-dealing son.

When accounts like these appear in the newspapers, they seem to be aberrations--mishaps by some unskilled police officers or the handiwork of
a few rogue cops. Few people believe that police routinely await the chance to harass and impoverish elderly women like Mrs. Miller. Yet the
twenty police who confronted her were not keystone cops; they included not only local police officers but also agents from the sheriffs office,
the U.S. Marshals Service, the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. These officers were probably much less concerned with harassing Mrs. Miller than with her
property. By their presence at the seizure, the local agencies and the Justice Department each acquired a claim to a share of the house. Miller
was on the wrong side of a police funding raid, and since 1984 many thousands of other Americans have been as well.

Cees: Een _echte_ strooptocht dus.

Nineteen eighty-four was the year that Congress rewrote the civil forfeiture law to funnel drug money and "drug related" assets into the police
agencies that seize them. This amendment offered law enforcement a new source of income, limited only by the energy police and prosecutors
were willing to put into seizing assets. The number of forfeitures mushroomed: Between 1985 and 1991 the Justice Department collected more
than $1.5 billion in illegal assets; in the next five years, it almost doubled this intake. By 1987 the Drug Enforcement Administration was more
than earning its keep, with over $500 million worth of seizures exceeding its budget.

[knip]

Groet,

Cees Binkhorst - cees at binkhorst.xs4all.nl

Een paar recente uitspraken:
'Als de VN relevant willen zijn, moeten ze precies doen wat ik zeg.'
'Ik weet dat ik tegen de wensen van de Security Council en de tekst
van het VN-verdrag in ga, maar ik doe het wel om een VN-resolutie
uit te voeren.'
Een oude uitspraak van Thomas Paine uit 1795 "Every man must
finally  see the necessity of  protecting the rights of others as the
most effectual security for his own"

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