Iets van uw gading?

[Mark Giebels]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De politie en geprivatiseerde opsporingsdiensten zijn inderdaad big
business in de VS. En vergeet uiteraard de geprivatiseerde gevangenissen
niet. Gecombineerd met aan campagnegeld verslaafde politici zal die war
on drugs voorlopig niet gestopt kunnen worden. Alles wijst op het
tegendeel. Politici zijn eerder trots op stijgende aantallen gevangen
(leverde onze governor Davis een 'endorsement' van de invloedrijke
vakbond van gevangenispersoneel op). Spotjes over hoe gevaarlijk
marijuana wel niet is zijn hier dan ook dagelijks op tv te zien.

Groeten,
Mark
Berkeley, California

<-----Original Message----->
From: Cees Binkhorst

Zou ons Ministerie van Justitie of politie dit _niet_ willen?

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

[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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