Seward County, Nebraska has a population of less than 17,700. In 2004, the county commission was short of money and instructed Sheriff Joe Yocum to find new sources of revenue. So he did. His deputies began using any pretext to pull over out of state motorists on Interstate 80, with luxury cars having priority. Now Seward county leads the state in civil asset forfeiture. In the past 10 years, the deputies of this county have averaged more than a million dollars a year in seized cash.
It goes like this: you are pulled over on any pretext, no matter how weak. They ask for permission to search the vehicle. It doesn’t matter if you agree or not. If you refuse, they get a drug dog to alert on your car. Whether they find drugs or not, they take any money they find. They tell the motorist to sign a form abandoning the cash or face a felony arrest. Sign it or not, they are taking the cash and you are never getting it back.
Nebraska lawmakers made this scenario illegal in 2015, but the cops don’t care. They either file the forfeiture in Federal court, or they claim that there was evidence of drug activity. No matter what, if you have money, they are taking it. In my opinion, this makes those deputies no better than any other armed gang, and makes Sheriff Joe Yocum the head of a criminal syndicate. I would cheer if someone capped his ass, or any of his deputies.
Any cop who tells you that civil asset forfeiture is morally or Constitutionally acceptable is a tyrannical asshole, and I will cheer their getting capped as well. Even in the presence of a criminal conviction, taking thousands of dollars from someone is a violation of the Eighth Amendment. Don’t bother quoting any bullshit case on the matter. I can fucking read, and some lawyer in a black dress trying to justify his boss’ theft of the people’s hard earned money is a travesty.
To those who think that the cops or the military will take your side in the civil war that we all see coming: they won’t. They will take the side of whomever is signing their paychecks, and that isn’t you. Tell me again how most cops are good people doing a tough job. So for now, I will rejoice whenever I see that someone has killed a Nebraska criminal cop. Maybe the “defund the police” people are right. At least I can shoot criminals without having the National guard tanks called in to burn down my house with everyone in it.
I think that many people who are drawn to police work do so for good reasons. They are then captured by the lust for power and money. This is why the original Constitution purposely kept the government weak and subservient. People, however, just love having the power to tell others how to live. In order to do that, they gave the government more and more police powers. Those police agencies are now so powerful, that we are in a virtual police state. One where you can’t even be confident in your ability to drive down the highway without being robbed at gunpoint.
22 Comments
D · June 19, 2023 at 7:33 am
> we are in a virtual police state
We are in an actual police state.
They can and will find *any* reason to stop you. We’ve allowed police to stop you simply by saying they “think” you are driving too fast based on their “expert” visual observation skills. You occasionally get to hear their “expert” skills in random police videos on the internet when they mumble “I had to do over 100 MPH to catch up to you” showing their Idiocracy-level understanding of physics while they’re stopped on the side of an interstate where the “speed limit” is 75 miles per hour.
Like you said, they get to pull you over and have a “drug dog” sniff your car. That drug dog is like any other dog–it just wants to make its master happy and will gladly give a false-alert if it means it gets praise or a treat. Then your rights are stripped away…and what? You’re going to put a dog on the stand to try and prove your innocence?
And of course the numerous legal opinions you’ve cited over the years make it clear that cops have no duty to protect the public, and can pretty much get away with straight-up murder because they’re a protected class that’s better than you.
Nebraska or not. Violent criminal or not. I cheer when they get capped now.
It’s always a good thing when one criminal thug kills another criminal thug.
I’m sure there’s some principle of war in that. One of my enemies is killing another one of my enemies? Why should I want them stopped?
Unknownsailor · June 19, 2023 at 11:04 pm
Yes, you can put a drug dog on the stand, by making its handler produce current certifications, and proof of ongoing training. Do YOU know how your state certifies drug dogs in your state? If you don’t, you should find out. I think you would be surprised to find out how many departments don’t maintain them.
neomunitor · June 19, 2023 at 8:17 am
How is civil forfeiture legal? Why hasn’t this made it to the Supreme Court and been overturned?
Toastrider · June 19, 2023 at 10:18 am
Because a number of police departments have become heavily dependent on civil asset forfeiture for operating costs (ironically reducing the tax burden in their municipalities), a serious challenge to CAF is going to piss people off who find out they can’t subsidize their cops with stolen assets any more.
Aheinousanus · June 19, 2023 at 6:55 pm
I seem to recall that it did make it to the supreme court and they said it was OK.
Supreme court has a long history of making bad decisions. Waiting for them to save you is ill advised.
Example -Obamacare is constitutional because the penalty is really a tax (even though the democrats made it a penalty not.a tax).
Example – your municipality can take your property using eminent domain and give it to a private party if it will increase what they get in property taxes.
Zarba · June 19, 2023 at 8:24 am
I used to get really angry when I saw people refuse to stand for the National Anthem.
Now? Not so much.
Big Ruckus D · June 19, 2023 at 10:30 am
Absolutely this. The flag and national anthem are representative of ideals that no longer are practiced, by a nation that no longer exists, except in name. The actual United States of America is long dead, it was gone well before I was born in the 70’s. The longer I’ve stewed on it, I’ve came to realize it was a failure almost immediately, as one can point to the Whiskey Rebellion as the first of many “jump the shark” moments that proved the constitution is, to quote that stupid and evil bastard dubya, “just a goddamned piece of paper”.
Too many more such destructive events have taken place to catalog them all here, but lincoln’s tyranny, all the bullshit that was enacted under the wilson administration in 1913, basically everything that crippled up piece of shit FDR did, the bonus army, everything that criminal cocksucker LBJ did, the multiple ass rapings of the constitution facilitated by dubya, and everything the real cocksucker gay mulatto, and his ventriloquist’s dummy joey shitpants have done, qualifies for inclusion on the list of utterly ruinous acts.
And the constitution itself was the product of a bait and switch job done on the downlow in Philly, where the articles of confederation were improperly dispensed with. Essentially, this was the original “have to pass it to see what’s in it” moment done by sneaky fuckers who thought they were pretty slick. Even moved their meetings to the second floor to keep their deliberations and debate out of earshot of the public, as the story goes. And I guess they were pretty slick, since they got away with it.
So spare me any bullshit talk of patriotism and love of country. I don’t have a country, just an increasingly shitty and dysfunctional economic zone of various ethnic and interest groups who all want to kill each other, lorded over by a bunch of retarded and repulsively ugly cunts who want to be dictators. That’s nothing to get all serious and teary eyed for over, to paraphrase, “just a goddamned song or flag”. The symbolism, and reverence that once existed for those things was imbued largely by tradition, and by social conditioning. That same symbolism and reverence has been destroyed by sleazy shits openly breaking the social contract of abiding by the limits prescribed for them by the constitution. Therefore, they are symbolic artifacts of a country that no longer exists, and are meaningless to me. For those who continue to revere them, that’s your business. But I submit that any who do so, especially at this late hour, while readily observing the government’s complete dispensing with even the flimsiest pretense of following the incorporating documents that constituted the USA – and thereby pissing all over the ideas represented by these symbols – are simply engaged in a massive cope to avoid the pain of acknowledging how bad it truly is. And Lee Greenwood can kiss my ass.
Bo Darville · June 19, 2023 at 8:24 am
They also wait on the CO border and stop cars coming across looking for weed and someone to lock up to pay court fines and probation costs.
It will only get worse as the Kwanstain circles the drain of egalitarian workers utopia FAIL.
A sibling got stopped in Kansas in the westbound and was asked about how much cash was on hand and he recorded everything.
The I-10 bandits could still be around in TX, LA, and other states where it runs.
EN2 SS · June 19, 2023 at 8:53 am
There is a small town, Kendleton, on Hwy. 59 in Texas that totally supported itself with tickets on 59 and it didn’t actually go through the town, but around. Texas finally had to make it illegal for the town cops to patrol 59. But Texas actually enforced that rule, unlike Nebraska. Sad, isn’t it?
Chris Mallory · June 19, 2023 at 8:54 am
On the scale of scum to Human, cops barely rank above chomos and other sex offenders.
I know, I know. “Few bad apples”. That is like saying the Crips, Bloods, or an outlaw biker gang just has a few bad apples. If you wear the gang colors you are part of the gang and painted with the same brush as your “bad apples”.
The cops serve to protect criminals, public and private, from honest men. The days of Adam 12 are long gone and that was just a TV show, fantasy.
Anon · June 19, 2023 at 10:35 am
Nice to see more people disregarding zogbots.
The thin blue line shit is disgusting; they let the apes run amok but self-defense is punished and then there’s shit like the banditry OP mentioned.
Just be careful out there as there isn’t enough pushback, for now.
Aesop · June 19, 2023 at 10:35 am
It won’t happen, but that kind of legalized robbery under color of authority constitutes legal justification to ambush and kill deputies in Sewer County, anywhere, any time, and under any pretext whatsoever, no bag limit, and no rules for how taken. Including coming out of the john, or taking out the trash at home on Saturday.
When they’ve decided consciously and deliberately to break the law, and ignore they’re doing it knowingly, they forfeit all protections of civil society.
An outlaw with a badge is still an outlaw, and ought to be dealt with ruthlessly and with finality.
The game should be made sporting again, starting with putting such vermin back on the list of nuisance predators. Give them 30 days notice to quit. After that, Open Season, carte blanche.
It’s the only way they’ll ever learn the error of their ways.
When they can’t find anyone to take the deputy jobs, and life insurance premiums for the county run 10x higher than annual revenues, perhaps they’ll realize they have a problem.
If not, start on the prosecutors next, and work up to crooked judges and crooked county officials sponsoring this pillaging under color of authority.
Sooner or later, the penny’s going to drop.
Either way, problem solved.
There was a village in Mexico recently that had a problem with the cartels.
The police were already on the take, so no help there.
The citizens armed themselves, illegally, and blew away the cartels and the cops.
The had nothing to lose at that point.
Suddenly, no more problems.
They say you can’t fix stupid.
I say you just need to find a big enough hammer.
EN2 SS · June 19, 2023 at 4:10 pm
I believe you have the steps backwards, start at the top with the county officials, then judges, then prosecutors, then crooked cops. I think the crooked cop problem will be solved by the officials/judges/prosecutors that manage to live long enough. Just be sure that they know that their turn is next if things don’t get straightened out.
Aesop · June 20, 2023 at 5:42 am
Nope.
You always defang and de-claw the wolves first.
(Unless you want a short but interesting life.)
After that, you can deal with the entire pack at your leisure.
Anonymous · June 19, 2023 at 12:04 pm
It’s not just the uniformed officers who are highway robbers. The prosecutor, courts, legislators, and 90% of voters all individually to a person choose to be in the logistical tail that support this. “Support” is measured as who will snitch on you if you raise your hand in defense against these government employees.
I think that many people who are drawn to police work do so for good reasons.
The police schools tell them ‘the citizens are our enemies’, and that’s when the moral people quit in disgust. Occasionally a moral person makes it through the school, and then they are forced out in the first year after they prevent their partner from beating a drunk.
Chris · June 19, 2023 at 12:16 pm
I second that
dave in pa. · June 19, 2023 at 12:52 pm
cops always steal shit. the one call they love to get is a wellness check on old people. they will
RACE each other to get there. old people always have stuff they can pocket and take.
had a problem at my house back in the 1990’s, cops came and wanted to take my Sig Sauer 226
in to “check it” and at the same time one of them was grabbing all of my magazines for it
Sig magazines where 50 bucks a pop back then. I wasn’t there, my brother was. he told them they not taking anything without paperwork. they left.
one showed up at my door 2-3 hours later saying “his desk Sgt” wanted the gun.
the asshole is in plain clothes, flashes his badge/ID, thumb over his name and tells me to bring it out in a paper bag. I tell him to come in, NO, just bring it out. I tell him to fuck off.
smart asshole, if he had stepped inside , I was going to shoot his ass. I was that pissed.
cops suck. growing up in philly was a nightmare with that asshole Rizzo and his stormtroopers
funny thing, one cop will never enter your house by himself, but 2 or more,, keep them outside by any means you can. if you have to talk outside and record it.
cops hate that shit, when you record them.
Anonymous · June 19, 2023 at 1:02 pm
Thought experiment: tell your coworker you shot and killed Officer Friendly after he tried to prosecute you for your unregistered homemade machine gun. Anyone who would report you to the authorities would have been the wartime enemy of the US Founding Fathers. Would that be 90% of voters?
Jim in VA · June 20, 2023 at 4:55 am
Perhaps the next time this happens, it will be a set up. Car 1 gets pulled over, cars 2 and 3 stop too. The deputy is then stood down, disarmed and stripped, hog tied on the side of the road. His car burned out. Sorry, we couldn’t tell you from a highwayman intent on robbing citizens.
Chris Mallory · June 20, 2023 at 8:03 am
Now if you were to write a novel with this scenario in it, first have the heroes buy a used car private sale for cash. Any beater will be fine as long as it runs. Do not actually register the new vehicle, leave the old plates on it. Use that vehicle to get pulled over. That way the beater car’s plates and description are the ones on the dashcam or were radioed in to dispatch. Even better if you buy the car out of state. But this is all just speculation and the outline of a plot point for a novel.
Anonymous · June 20, 2023 at 9:27 am
As we saw in WWII, the Americans storming the beaches tied up the enemy soldiers and then jumped up and down like monkeys and flung their poo at them, leaving the soldiers unharmed to attack again the following day on the playground. The Americans weren’t trying to actually win an actual battle against an actual enemy. Because to a conservative the government is never the enemy. Conservatives get panic attacks when they imagine life without government; William F. Buckley, is that you?
Nemo · June 21, 2023 at 8:02 am
You will be pleased to note that CFP linked to the article in the Nebraska News about this crime. It was near the top of the stack early this AM.
https://www.klkntv.com/using-loophole-seward-county-seizes-millions-from-motorists-without-convicting-them-of-crimes/
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