Man Calls 911 for Help, So Police Show Up and Steal His Car

[Origanalist]

(FEE) — The presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle of our legal system that ensures that “the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies.”

However, this principle has been under threat in recent years by police departments across the United States and the widely practiced policy of civil asset forfeiture. When a property is determined, by the police, to be involved in a crime, it is seized and held by the police department.

Often times, the property is held indefinitely only to be auctioned or released at a very high cost. As a recent article in The Detroit News points out:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he doubted civil asset forfeitures were constitutional.

“This system — where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use — has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses,” Thomas wrote. “Whether this Court’s treatment of the broad modern forfeiture practice can be justified by the narrow historical one is certainly worthy of consideration in greater detail.”

The Presumption of Guilt

The practice often imposes severe economic penalties on individuals accused of crimes, which, for many people, limits severely their ability to even defend themselves against the crimes of which they have been accused.

In practice, the newfound presumption of guilt compounds the abuse and lowers faith in the system as a whole, as many innocents accept guilt and pay fines because the alternative is often loss of transportation and possibly employment.
I Called 911 for Help, and the Police Stole My Car

I recently had my own experience with civil asset forfeiture after a call for help put me into the gears of a policing system geared more toward profit than justice. In early December of 2018, I was driving on a winter road in the early morning hours in West Michigan, and I collided with another car that was sideways in my lane after it hit a patch of ice. I called 911 after the accident, and when the police arrived, they informed me they were going to impound my vehicle and charge me with a misdemeanor.

My car wasn’t impounded because of the accident, the way I had driven, or, in fact, anything else I had done. My car was impounded, as I discovered after hours at the Secretary of State (DMV of Michigan), because of a paperwork error that happened with the state that falsely showed me having no insurance.

Thankfully, the charge of an improper plate was dropped, but I was still held liable for all of the impound and towing fees. At the end of the day, it totaled $125.

The police department refused to refund these costs because “it was the State of Michigan’s fault, and not theirs.”

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/as...ure-steal-car/

[Anti Federalist]

after a call for help

Never call cops