Police officers in Missouri stole $2.6 million from drivers they knew had committed no crime.  The cops used a loophole in the Federal government’s law to get away the theft.

As part of a larger series on national asset forfeiture cases organized by the Pulitzer Center, St. Louis Public Radio reported that St. Charles County law enforcement coerced at least 39 unsuspecting motorists into signing over their assets in 2018. This won’t be widely reported on, however, you can bet we Americans live in an oppressive police state.  The laws protect the ruling class from us and allow them to steal from us.

Martial Law Masquerading as Law and Order: The Police State’s Language of Force

According to the report, officers would lie in wait for a car committing a minor traffic violation. Upon seeing the minor violation, officers would then pull the car over, question the motorist, and then direct them to a private towing lot owned by Superior Towing. While in the lot, officers would ask more questions and search the vehicle, all in the hopes of finding large amounts of cash or connections to drugs.

If a trained police dog smelled marijuana on the cash, officers then gave the motorists two options: they could go to jail, or sign their possessions away to the department and leave with a traffic ticket. –Reason

This is corruption and immorality of the highest degree. In all 39 stops, not a single charge was filed, yet the private property was still stolen. Like taxation, this is legalized theft. It doesn’t matter if it’s called “civil asset forfeiture” or not, theft by any other name is still theft. The ruling class can take whatever they want from anyone else. 

Terrorized, Traumatized and Killed: The Police State’s Deadly Toll on America’s Children

According to a report by Reason, Missouri state law requires a criminal conviction or a guilty plea before forfeiture, and the assets are supposed to go towards schools, not law enforcement. However, according to the Pulitzer Center’s report, the federal Equitable Sharing program allowed the corruption of the police officers.  Once the stolen money was seized, it was supposed to go to the schools. But the Department of Justice provides a guide to the program, which allows for the “potential to share federal forfeiture proceeds with cooperating state and local law enforcement agencies.” By turning over their convictionless assets to the federal government, St. Charles law enforcement can split the funds 80-20.

A legislative effort to close this loophole and force law enforcement to comply with state law was defeated this year after the local police lobby quietly campaigned against it, calling it “anti-police.”  Nothing about this is “anti-police.”  This is straight-up anti-human rights.

H/T [Reason]

For more information on the police state, read constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s book Battlefield America: The War On The American People.  Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail or even death.

Battlefield America: The War on the American People is Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero-tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!―the police state has arrived.

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