Submitted by Wendals87 t3_ypkcsg in todayilearned
Reply to comment by yourwifes3rdboyfrend in TIL: That in 2019, some criminals were caught and 36 BTC was confiscated. The authorities valued the worth at €127,000 at the time and was sold 2 years later for €1.5 million. The criminals were returned €1.3 million due to the fact that the amount was expressed in Swedish Krona, not BTC by Wendals87
What's to stop someone from reporting the police stole their car? If they don't charge you with a crime then how is it not being stolen?
Civil forfeiture
I've definitely heard of cops Stealing people's money under that guise, but not their cars. Generally if they take your car they are charging you for something.
They will take cars, houses, xboxs, literally anything that they say is the product of an illicit activity. They can do this under suspicion. There are numerous cases of the DAs saying there's insufficient evidence, so the owner is never charged with anything, but it's then incumbent on them (the "owner") to proove the negative (that it wasn't purchased with illegally attained funds) to get things back.
Also because you arent charged, you arent legally entitled to a lawyer from the state, so you gotta pay for that one yourself if you want to sue THEM to get YOUR stuff back.
-Edit: Specifically the cars bit is where they'd pull over Black or Hispanic guys in fancy SUVs or sportscars coming up from Miami and if there's cash in the car, just take everything under suspicion of drug money.
They can use it on cars and houses
buy Sudafed from two different stores in the same week, and you can lose your house.
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The police will choose not to investigate, and the da will choose not to prosecute.
Stealing people's cash in civil forfeiture is a shell game for them, they hand the cash quickly off to the feds so you can't get it back easily. For your car they have it in the impound lot, if you don't get charged they have to give it back. You will still probably have to get a lawyer and pay impound fees.
In civil asset forfeiture the police don't charge you with a crime, they just suspect you. They charge your property with a crime and take it away. The property is considered guilty until proven innocent, so you have to hire a lawyer and prove your property wasn't being used for crime. Otherwise they just get to keep it.
Seconded
Yeah that's the conundrum, you can't really report the police to the police, you have to go to the local media, of you get lucky enough it gets picked up by a major outlet and you get a leg to stand on leverage wise, like this.
But not every story makes it national, so a lot of people are just forced to eat it, and even when you do make it national the tactic has been to bounce you from court to court refusing to make a ruling. Hell tyson timbs had to take his lawsuit to the Supreme Court and just got his truck back, a $45000 land rover that he bought with the inheritance he got when his dad died, But yeah a few months later he fell off the wagon, HARD! And at his lowest moment, for 225 dollars worth of drugs they threw him in jail gave him probabtion and house arrest, a 1200 dollar fine, but they also stole his brand new truck, the one he refused to sell at his worst because it was all he had left of his dad, and he like had a receipt, with banking transfers, ya know the kind you would get on a purchase like that because you don't want beef with the irs, and they just turned around and said nope, trucks guilty. That started in 2012
To address your second point, the police are effectively allowed to steal from people if they seem like "criminals". The police act like civil asset forfeiture is only ever used against cartel assassins and crack dealers so it's hard to limit their authority.
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