The Biggest GANG of All

Is most unfortunately one that has the government's stamp of approval. The Police.

From the Mobile Register

Ride dirty -- and lose your wheels
Thursday, January 25, 2007
ROBERT McCLENDON
Staff Reporter

If Prichard police catch you ridin' dirty -- carrying illegal guns or drugs in a car -- they will take your wheels, and you might just see the officer who busted you patrolling the streets in your former ride.

Prichard police are seizing criminals' cars along with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash and other property in a new effort to take the war on drugs and violence to the perpetrators. Billboards emblazoned with a simple message announce the program across the city: "Drugs + Guns + Cars = Ours, Don't get caught Ridin' Dirty in Prichard."

The Ridin' Dirty initiative, which began in April of 2006, is more than just a new slogan slapped on old police habits, said Chief Lawrence Battiste.

(yeah right....it's plain fucking thievery)

A slogan on a billboard sends a message to criminals, but driving around in one of their cars, as Assistant Chief Jimmie Gardner does, sends a message of another kind.

His canary yellow 2006 Dodge Charger, complete with 5.7-liter eight-cylinder HEMI engine, was seized in an August 2006 drug arrest when, police said, they stopped the driver, Christopher Seals. A K-9 unit sniffed out marijuana hidden in his car, investigators said. Police also found $3,000 in cash in the car and more money and drugs at the man's apartment, investigators said.

Seals is awaiting trial on felony drug charges, court records show.

Battiste said Seals bought the car, which retails for about $36,000, with an $11,000 down payment, taking out a loan for the rest.

"We took his car and used his drug money to pay off the bank," said Lt. Marvin Whitfield, coordinator of the teams that do many of the raids associated with the program.
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Property seizure and asset forfiture are INCENTIVES for police corruption!!!

Say some young black man has a nice car that he came by through honest, hard work. What is to keep the cops from pulling him over, planting evidence and taking his car and any cash that he has? NOTHING!! And they do it every day.

Just riding down the road with more than what is perceived to be a 'normal' amount of cash is reason enough for that cash to be seized by the police. They somehow got to decide what a 'normal' amount of cash is, although they haven't shared this new guideline with the public, and if your amount of cash exceeds what they think is 'normal' for you then they take it. You generally don't get it back.

In California Donald Scott, a 61 year-old millionaire was shot dead in front of his wife in a raid where the county DA later discovered that police had lied to obtain the warrant to search for marijuana and that the raid was motivated by a desire to forfeit the multi-million dollar ranch. There are many other cases such as this.

I am sick of living in a police state in what is suppossed to be a free country. Laws such as asset forfiture breed hatred and contempt for law in general and more directly for the officers charged with carrying out those laws.

This government enforced policy of harm maximazation with regard to the drug war has got to change.