New Jersey may make it harder for thieving poLICE to keep property they take from you

New Jersey wants to make it more difficult for police and prosecutors to keep cash and property seized from people they suspect used the property in a crime.

Some experts, however, don't think the new legislation will fully solve the problem, amid a system that creates a perverse incentive for police to collect proceeds to fund their departments. Sponsors, meanwhile, say they are open to suggestions and that the bill will improve upon New Jersey's status quo.

The Legislature is considering a bill that says a person would have to be convicted of a crime before prosecutors can take ownership of property they say is tied to that crime, if it’s less than $1,000 in cash or property worth less than $10,000. The bill does not apply to illegally obtained firearms and gambling devices, like a slot machine, certain drugs and untaxed tobacco products, among others.

A Senate committee voted Monday to advance the bill. Members previously passed an Assembly version of the bill, but they will have to approve an amended version, which lowered the property threshold from $25,000 to $10,000 and changed the burden of proof needed to show the property is connected to a crime.

Here's how the system, called civil asset forfeiture, works right now in New Jersey: A person is pulled over on the highway. Police find $500 in cash in the front seat and suspect the driver is trafficking drugs, and that the money is the payment for drugs.

The driver may be criminally charged, and the $500 in cash goes into its own civil process, in which the state charges the cash —not the owner of the money or property — with being involved in a crime. The case would be called something like New Jersey v. $500 in cash.

The criminal and civil cases are separate, and the driver does not have to be convicted of drug trafficking for the state to keep his $500. New Jersey just has to show by a "preponderance of the evidence," or more likely than not, that the money was tied to a crime. And that's a lower legal threshold for winning a case than it would be to win a criminal conviction.

In a majority of cases, people don't show up in court to try to get their things back, because hiring a lawyer costs more than their property and public defenders are not provided in these civil cases.

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2019/12/10/nj-may-make-harder-police-keep-property-they-take-you/2630315001/

FUCK THE POLICE

New Jersey may make it harder for thieving poLICE to keep property they take from you

New Jersey may make it harder for thieving poLICE to keep property they take from you

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order