DuckBites

***********
New Federal Civil Forfeiture Laws: Creating an Army of Informants

http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?...order=0&thold=0

By Robert Striker
September 26, 2003
Government can now Forfeit Property "Involved" In Most Felonies and Seize Inheritances:

HR 1658, "The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000" expanded government forfeiture laws to include approximately 200 felonies and violations making more property subject to government forfeiture; even after the statute of limitations has passed for criminal prosecution. Only a "mere preponderance of evidence" is needed for federal agencies and police to seize property, not "clear and convincing evidence."

Inheritances and Innocent Heirs: Heirs need not be "involved" in a felony that makes their inheritance subject to government forfeiture. They need only have reason to know that someone e.g., a relative, employee or other person previously committed a felony involving their inherited property or other assets...



Innocent Property Owners Lost under HR 1658: Nationally, property owners and real estate associations could not stop the U.S. Senate from GUTTING HR 1658’s original "Innocent Owner Protection Provision" that would have made government PROVE by "Clear and Convincing Evidence" that an owner's property is subject to government forfeiture."

The standard of proof needed for government to seize property is ONLY a "Mere Preponderance of Evidence." Rep. Hyde’s HR 1658 "The Civil Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000" DID AWAY with the statute of limitations for government to civilly seize assets. Police now have five years to seize property from the date police allegedly learn that an "asset was involved in crime" that would make it forfeitable:

Police in effect, may have forever to seize citizen and corporate assets using a "low standard of evidence." For example, police agencies can under the USA Patriot Act, retain for years telephone and email communications: Twenty years in the future, a police agency may claim to have allegedly "discovered something" in an electronic communication in order to cause the seizure of a business and/or a citizen’s assets.

Under the USA Patriot Act, police need not inform the owner why they are taking his or her property.

NEW ARMY OF INFORMANTS

Congress's expansion of property forfeiture laws under HR 1658 created an "army of informants."

Informants to get a "25% to 50% "Informant Reward" may simply allege or falsely tell police that an innocent person, inheritance or business was "involved" in a felony in hopes the government will seize assets. This practice lends itself to corruption because it is too easy for informants to kick part or all of their "forfeiture commission" back to the police involved in initiating the seizure of an owner's property.

Under HR 1658, state or federal government's discovery of a 20-year-old crime may make property forfeitable: An alleged misrepresentation by the deceased on a FDIC Insured Loan Application can make an inherited home or its subsequent sales proceeds forfeitable by the federal government.

Did Innocent Property Owners Lose? "The Civil Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000" Passed: And as before, still only a "Mere Preponderance of Evidence" is required for government to civilly forfeit an innocent owner's property—NOT "Clear & Convincing Evidence."

Police now have five years after learning that an asset was "involved in a crime"—to civilly forfeit it. HR 1658 allows whistleblowers, disgruntled and former employees, spouses and others to earn huge informant commissions—by getting police and/or a quasi-government agency to civilly forfeit the assets of a person, business, anyone that an informant alleges had property involved in a felony.

The following HR 1658 "Innocent Owner Provision" does not appear to protect INNOCENT OWNERS from government civil forfeiture: "The owner "Did All That Could Be Reasonably Expected Under The Circumstances To Terminate Such Use of Their Property." Consider who will determine what "Did All" means or what was "Reasonable Under the Circumstances?" Note: The police who share in the assets being seized may also be the same police who will determine what "Did All" means and what was "Reasonable" under the "Circumstances."


***********
JUDGES WHO BREAK THE LAW - JUDGES WHO STEAL

 

 

By Bill Sizemore

October 4, 2003

NewsWithViews.com

Citizens across the country are being mugged and robbed by the activist judges, who sit on their state supreme courts. The extent of the theft being perpetrated is staggering; often undermining even the most fundamental right of American citizens to be self-governing.

Let me say right up front, that it is generally unwise to speak evil of dignitaries. By virtue of the offices they hold, judges ought to be afforded honor and respect. Bear in mind, however, that ours is a nation wherein we are ruled, not by men, but by laws. The judges discussed in this column are lawbreakers. They are men and women who have knowingly abused their official positions to corrupt the law and further their own personal political agendas. That being said, here goes.

With alarming regularity and for purely political reasons, liberal activist judges in state courts around the country are invalidating important, often historic, voter-approved ballot measures. These judges are using their official authority to nullify voter-approved laws, simply because they, the judges themselves, personally don’t agree with the laws the voters have approved.

The point of this column is to show you that in many cases, these judges are acting in clear violation of the law, doing things that under their own state’s laws they are expressly prohibited from doing.

As we look at just a couple of states and only a few of the many examples that could be offered, the extent of the loss the people are suffering at the hands of activist, lawbreaking judges will become obvious.

In 2000, a solid majority of voters in Oregon approved Measure Seven, a historic, landmark property rights measure that required governments to pay “just compensation” to property owners, when the value of their property was reduced by a government imposed land use regulation. Considering the wholesale deterioration of property rights that has occurred under Oregon’s egregious land use laws, this constitutional amendment marked a turning point in Oregon history.

However, after all the petition signatures had been collected and counted; after the proponents and opponents had spent millions of dollars educating the voters about the measure; and after a million plus votes had been cast and counted, the Oregon Supreme Court, with no basis in law, simply threw the measure out.

Why? They invalidated the measure simply because the seven justices of the Oregon Supreme Court personally didn’t like the measure. I have yet to talk to a single person in the legal profession, regardless of his or her view of the measure itself, who doesn’t view the court’s decision to nullify Measure Seven to be a legally groundless, purely political decision.

They can’t do that, you say. There must be some legal basis for their decision. They can’t just make this stuff up, can they? Well, judge for yourself. In a moment, when you read the Oregon Supreme Court’s basis for its decision, you will see that the court is clearly violating the law, knows it, and simply doesn’t care.

Bear in mind, the now infamous Measure Seven decision was not the first time an important, voter-approved measure was hijacked in broad daylight by the gang of black-robed bandits, who sit on the Oregon Supreme Court or the Supreme Court of other states.

In 2002, nearly 10 years after it passed, the Oregon Supreme Court also invalidated a term limits measure that had been approved by an overwhelming 70 percent of Oregon voters. That measure, for better or for worse, was causing a voter mandated, complete turnover in the members comprising the Oregon State Legislature, and in the view of Term Limits supporters, removing the well-entrenched, professional politicians and replacing them with more of a citizen legislature.

As with the property rights measure, after the signatures were collected, the campaigns waged, and the votes cast and counted, the will of nearly a million voters was quietly replaced by the will of seven elitist judges. Amazingly, this judicial heist occurred nearly ten years after the measure had passed. A decade after it passed, the court said it never should have been on the ballot and was therefore invalid!

In Oregon, this scam started back in 1996, when to balance the legal scales that had tilted much too far in favor of the criminals, Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 40, a victims’ rights measure. After the election, the soft-on-crime ACLU types challenged the measure as illegally containing more than one subject.

Proponents thought they had little to worry about. Oregon’s single-subject rule was clearly defined in decades of case law, and the victims’ rights law appeared to be well within its confines.

Little did they know that behind the scenes the Oregon Supreme Court had decided that there was too much self-governing going on in Oregon and that it was time for somebody to rein in the “runaway” initiative process. The justices knew that such a task required at least some basis in law; something to hang their hat on. Finding none, they did what activist judges do. They made one up.

The justices of the Oregon Supreme Court took a provision of the state constitution that doesn’t apply to initiatives, a provision that expressly says it doesn’t apply to initiatives, and applied it to initiatives anyway. The judges then began using this judicially created law to throw out every important voter-approved measure that the judges themselves personally didn’t like.

Understand that the judges were not making an honest mistake, or simply interpreting words differently than other judges had in the past. No, they were and are violating the law, and they know it. They know what the law says. They know what it means. They just don’t care.

As stated earlier, this epidemic of judicial arrogance and usurpation of power is not confined to Oregon or even to the state courts. Judges across the nation have discovered that there are almost no limits to their power, provided that they are willing to ignore the clear meaning of the law and the legislative history of the laws and provided that the legislative bodies and the newspaper editors will not challenge them.

After all, judges are the ones who interpret the law. When challengers try to use the law to confront them, the courts simply say that the laws cited don’t mean what challengers say they mean.

In other words, the laws means what the judges say they mean, not what the legislators, who wrote and passed the laws, meant them to say.

Because I am making some grave accusations in this column, calling supreme court justices thieves and lawbreakers, let’s establish clearly that justices in Oregon are indeed violating the law when they throw out voter-approved measures based on the so called “single amendment rule.” Let’s look at the actual law the Oregon Supreme Court has used to throw out about half-a-dozen voter approved measures over the past five or six years and see what it actually says.

Way back in 1906, by initiative petition the People of the State of Oregon adopted a Constitutional Amendment establishing the procedure by which the state legislature may propose amendments to the Oregon Constitution, and then submit those amendments to the voters of the state for their approval or rejection.

That 1906 amendment, Section 1 of Article XVII of the Oregon Constitution, is worded today precisely as it was when it was first adopted by Oregon voters, nearly one hundred years ago. It is of no small significance that until six years ago, not once, in the more than 90 years that this constitutional provision has existed, did a court use or attempt to use it as a basis for invalidating a voter approved initiative. The provision was only applied to legislatively proposed amendments, not amendments initiated by the people themselves.

When you read the last sentence of this section, you will understand why for 90 years the courts never applied the section to constitutional amendments proposed by the people, and why no honest judge would have even considered doing so.

Here is the last sentence of Article XVII, Section 1, the so called single-amendment provision that the Oregon Supreme Court has used to throw out half-a-dozen voter-approved laws: “This article shall not be construed to impair the right of the people to amend this Constitution by vote upon an initiative petition therefore.”

There it is, plain as day. This provision, which merely describes the procedure by which the legislative assembly may propose constitutional amendments for the people’s approval or rejection at the ballot box, concludes with a clear instruction to the courts that the provision is not to be used to impair the people’s right to amend the constitution.

It would not have been clearer, had he drafters said: This section proscribes how the legislature may propose constitutional amendments. Judges, don’t use it to make it difficult for the people to amend this Constitution by initiative.

Remember, this section was written by those who were actively using the initiative process at the time. They were restricting the state legislature, not themselves.

How does the court deal with those final words of the so-called single amendment rule? It simply ignores them. Like the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the words have no meaning at all to liberal judges.

Truth is, there is no such thing as a “single amendment requirement” for initiatives anywhere in the Oregon Constitution. Neither the state legislature nor the people themselves have passed a measure or bill to create such a requirement. The court just made one up to use as a tool to rein in the out-of-control “ignorant masses."

They fabricated a new rule and then used it to throw out the victims rights measure, saying that the measure contained more than one amendment to the constitution.

Next they threw out a campaign finance reform measure. Then they threw out the decade-old term limits measure, and then two measures that protected private property from government takings.

One minute those laws were there, approved by a majority of voters. The next minute, poof, one by one, they were gone! The hundreds of thousands of signatures collected; the millions of dollars spent educating the voters; and the millions of votes cast, became all for naught. At the whim of seven dishonest judges, the six voter-approved measures just disappeared, as if they had never existed.

In all my years in politics, I have never seen anything approaching this level of corruption. The theft perpetrated by the Oregon Supreme Court is greater than anything ever perpetrated by organized crime. It is racketeering on a grand scale.

The damage is truly immeasurable. Not only has the law been shanghaied; not only have property rights and other basic civil rights stolen from citizens; not only has the will of the people overturned, but hundreds of thousands of voters have come to believe, quite logically, that their votes really don’t matter. Many have stopped voting and signing petitions altogether.

It is hard to argue with the logic of the voters who are tuning out They are partly right. Their votes really did mean nothing. In the final analysis, the only votes that really counted were those of the seven black-robed thieves sitting on the Oregon Supreme Court.

As a side note, it is almost certain that the editorial boards of the 22 daily newspapers across the state know the judges on the Oregon Supreme Court were cheating, when they threw out all of these measures. They know something is amiss, but they keep silent, because as fellow liberals, they personally are glad to see the measures gone, even if the court had to cheat to get rid of them. For them, the end justifies the means.

Long gone are the days when journalists were fair and impartial watchdogs over government. By their silence, they have become complicit in the court's crimes. Here's just one piece of evidence that the editors are not ignorant of the courts malfeasance:

When the challenge to the decade old Term Limits law was first filed with the court, The Oregonian newspaper published an editorial stating that even though the board didn’t like Term Limits, this lawsuit was no way to get rid of it. The editorial asked the obvious question: If a measure that does nothing but limit the terms of elected officials is not one amendment to the Constitution, then what is?

That’s what the editorial board said when the Term Limits case was first filed, before it was decided.

However, after the case ultimately was decided and the Oregon Supreme Court threw out the Term Limits measure, The Oregonian editorial board was completely silent. Not a single word was written criticizing or questioning the decision. Never mind that the court’s reasoning was absurd or that it’s decision was entirely without legal authority. The Oregonian editorial board apparently liked the outcome, and therefore, justified, as liberals so often do, the means.

Sure, the court broke the law. Sure, the court exceeded its authority. But because the editors agreed with the end, they ignored the means. In a very real sense, the horrific collapse of judicial ethics and wholesale theft of the rights of the people has been made possible by a reprehensible collapse of journalistic ethics with the daily newspapers of the state.

How long do you think those Supreme Court justices would have continued down this road, if the newspapers of the state had told the voters of the state that their elected judges were exceeding their authority, nullifying voter-approved laws using fabricated rules? Not long. For one thing, had the editors made the issue a topic of public debate, not one of those judges would have run unopposed in the next election.

Unfortunately, the problem of judicial theft is not confined to Oregon. Florida’s supreme court is as bad or worse. Most conservative measures are never even allowed on the ballot in Florida, because they fail to win the court’s approval for circulation. Like Oregon Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court simply ignores the law that says that the court can’t do what the justices want to do.

If you think the Oregon Supreme Court is drunk with power, the Florida Supreme Court, the same court that in 2000 tried to rewrite Florida election law to make Al Gore president, is perhaps worse. That court would not allow on the Florida ballot any measure that would cut taxes. The justices opined that a measure that cuts taxes automatically makes less money available for government to spend, and that taxes and spending are two entirely different subjects.

By the court's “logic,” all tax cutting measure were automatically deemed to be more than one subject because they also reduced spending. What utter nonsense!

Frustrated tax activists in Florida reacted to the court’s arrogance by placing a measure on the ballot exempting from the state’s single subject rule any measure that limits government’s ability to raise revenue. Voters easily approved the measure, which should have meant that taxpayer advocates then could place measures on the ballot to limit government’s ability to increase revenues. It didn’t. The court simply ignored the new law.

The Florida Supreme Court still today will not allow on the ballot a measure that requires voter approval for new taxes. The court says that such a measure violates the single subject rule, even though such measures are exempted from that rule by the state Constitution. The court simply doesn’t care what the Constitution says.

Remember, the Constitution only means what the court says it means!

Determined activists in Florida refused to give up. They focused on property rights. A second measure was proposed to carve a single-subject exemption for initiatives that protect private property rights. The court rejected that amendment altogether; not even allowing it to be placed on the ballot. Apparently, not only does the Florida Supreme Court use the single subject rule to exclude measures it doesn’t like, but it won’t even allow voters to change the law to limit its power to do so.

Recently, ever courageous and politically incorrect Ward Connerly filed his anti-affirmative action proposal in Florida as a ballot measure, just as he had in other states. Florida activists had forewarned Connerly that the liberal justices of the Florida Supreme Court would not allow the measure to be placed on the ballot, because it was comprised of four basic provisions, even though all four dealt with the same subject.

Connerly decided to break his one measure into four separate measures and run four separate signature drives to avoid Florida’s single subject pitfall. Unbelievably, the Florida Supreme Court, rejected all four measures, saying that each of them contained more than one subject.

With calloused arrogance, the court refused to allow the affirmative action issue on the ballot in Florida, citing of course the single subject rule, even though Connerly had broken his one measure into four separate petitions.

Finally, frustrated initiative activists in Florida took their problem with the single subject rule to the U.S. Supreme Court, rightly claiming violation of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The U.S. Supreme Court predictably refused the case, bowing as it typically does to state law in such matters.

Similar problems have arisen with the courts in Montana, Colorado, Nevada, and other states. Liberal, elitist judges have placed their personal views over the lawfully expressed will of the people, and used their judicial authority to create or destroy lawfully proposed or passed measures. In those states, the only votes that count are those of the judges.

The judiciary today poses the greatest threat to the values, the principles and the freedoms upon which this nation was established. Many judges have exhibited such arrogance and calloused disregard for the clear meaning of the law, that reining them in has become critical and must become the highest priority of freedom loving Americans everywhere. Judges have become a law unto themselves. they have become despots.

For a while, I wondered who was the greater threat to this nation, the liberal activist judges, who violate the law to further their own political views and agenda, or the dishonest editors, who cover for them. I have come to realize that they are not separate at all, but part and parcel of the same disease.

Like the liberal judges, the liberal editors are amoral, elitist, socialists, who see government as the answer to the world’s ills. To them, the rest of us are the unwashed, the ignorant masses. They consider it their responsibility to free us from our obsession with religion, traditional morality, patriotism, capitalism, and the ownership of private property. The means they employ to do so are largely irrelevant to them. Breaking a few laws or fabricating a few new ones is a price they are willing to pay.

The remaining question is: How much longer are we going to let these arrogant, lawbreaking judges steal our most basic right to decide our own destinies at the ballot box? In the final analysis, the ballot box is all that stands between civilized revolt and violent revolt. Our own history illustrates that it is either the vote or the musket. Steal the former, and the latter eventually follows.

© 2003 Bill Sizemore - All Rights Reserved
***********
Mother of factory shooter seeks workers' comp for son's death

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The mother of a man who killed three people and wounded five at a factory before committing suicide filed a workers' compensation claim, saying her son suffered "death by gunfire" at work.

"I don't feel I should have to pay for the actions that he chose to do," said Nina Tichelkamp-Russell, who filed the claim 10 days after the July 1 shooting at the Modine Manufacturing Co.

"I think if there are indicators (of a problem at work) then there are certain people out there who have a responsibility."

The company rejected the claim for death benefits, said Mick Lucareli, a spokesman for Racine, Wis.-based Modine.

The state workers' compensation division will have the final say.

Jonathon Russell, 25, punched his time card before he fatally shot three co-workers and wounded five at the plant. He then drove to a police station, where he fired at two officers before he killed himself.

On the standardized claim form, Tichelkamp-Russell wrote that her son suffered "death by gunfire while on company clock (time)." The form gives no more details of how the death occurred.

The form was obtained by the Columbia Daily Tribune, the newspaper reported this week.

"In summary, our opinion is Mr. Russell died of a self-inflicted wound which took place away from his place of employment," said Lucareli, the Modine spokesman.
***********
Trick-or-treat thrusts
chief into spotlight
By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI
Union Leader Staff

The hostile reception Atkinson promises out-of-state youngsters who tread into this well-heeled town for Halloween treats has thrust its police chief in the spotlight and raises tricky constitutional questions.

Atkinson Police Chief Philip V. Consentino, who has been fielding media calls since he said police would send cars with Massachusetts plates “back over the border” yesterday said his comments were taken out of context.

“We’re not going to . . . have someone at the border watching Massachusetts cars come in. If we have a bunch of cars, we’re going to tell them you really shouldn’t be here. This is for Atkinson kids only,” Consentino said.

“We’re not going to package kids up and put them in the car and take their candy away from them,” he added.

Consentino yesterday found himself defending his comments and the town to local and national media.

“CNN has called me and everything else, and it’s getting to the point that it’s starting to make a sane man get a little upset here,” he said.

“Everything has been taken out of context. We’ve had problems in the past. If we do see people from Massachusetts up here, we just try to lightly tell them they shouldn’t come up here,” Consentino said.

“Nobody has come to us saying we’re snobbish, saying we’re going to thrown them out of town,” he added.

Consentino, who is also a selectman in this border town of nearly 6,200 people just north of Haverhill, Mass., said the town’s trick-or-treat practices have been the same for the last 25 years and are similar to what other communities do with one exception:

“We would really just rather not have outsiders coming in and taking over,” he said of a practice instituted when Haverhill, Mass., residents came up in carloads because that city had suspended trick-or-treating.

On Tuesday, Consentino encouraged Atkinson children to trick-or-treat in their own neighborhoods and discouraged parents from driving youngsters. He said police will be out in full force scouting for out-of-town tricksters.

“Every now and then we spot a car full of trick-or-treaters with Massachusetts license plates and we stop them and tell them to leave,” he said in yesterday’s Union Leader.

Such talk could tread on the constitutionally protected right to travel and possibly due process rights, legal experts said.

The right to travel from state to state is protected under the 14th Amendment’s privileges and immunities clause, they said.

“They do not have to show passports to cross the Massachusetts border into New Hampshire. We are part of the same nation,” said Claire Ebel, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“He (Consentino) is not suggesting the trick-or-treaters are muggers. He simply doesn’t want them in his town. You don’t get to close your town. The Constitution simply does not permit it,” she added.

Jeffrey A. Roy, professor of law at Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, said, “There is a right to travel from state to state . . . It seems to me that it would be unconstitutional under the privileges and immunities clause.”

Barring out-of-state trick-or-treaters may raise other constitutional problems, he said.

“If they are not violating any law, then imposing a penalty on them might also violate their general due process rights under the 14th Amendment,” Roy said.

Meanwhile, police from other cities and towns along the Massachusetts border said they welcome ghouls and goblins no matter where they live.

“We welcome all children as long as they stay safe and behave themselves,” said Plaistow Police Lt. Kathleen Jones. “We have no plans to try to track (non-residents) down.”

Salem Police Chief Paul Donovan reported no problems in that town of about 32,000, which borders Atkinson.

“I’ve never had any complaints with people from Massachusetts coming into Salem,” he said.

Nashua Deputy Police Chief Donald Conley said the city does not bar Massachusetts trick-or-treaters.

“All are welcome as long as they behave themselves,” he said.

Conley said it’s possible relatives of south Nashua’s condominium and apartment complex dwellers may bring their children there to trick-or-treat where it’s safer and the treating is more lucrative.

Haverhill police yesterday said that city suspended officially sanctioned trick-or-treating for about a dozen years; it reinstated the practice about three years ago.

The ban resulted in carloads of trick-or-treaters coming to Atkinson, Consentino said.

“Now I’ve got cars driving all over town and I’ve got kids spooking everybody. We have very few cars on the road between 6 and 8 at night and that’s the way we want to keep it,” Consentino said. Trick-or-treating in Atkinson is between 6 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 31.

Eva Perry, who lives on a busy Atkinson street, supports the chief’s position.

“Halloween is typically a night of mischief and having unknown kids running around the neighborhood isn’t a good idea. Kids should stay in their own neighborhoods,” she said.

Atkinson resident Janis Stundze said she has seen a few cars with Massachusetts plates on Halloween.

“It’s dangerous to be driving around with the kids out trick-or-treating in the neighborhoods. I think it should be kept for the local children in our town,” she said.

Union Leader correspondents Janine Gilbertson and Valerie Hershfield contributed to this report.


***********
Cops Caught Issuing Tickets As a Contest


PORTERDALE, Ga. (AP) - A contest between two police officers in a small Georgia town to see which one could issue the most traffic tickets was stopped by a judge who overheard the apparent winner talking about it, the mayor said.

Part-time Porterdale police officers Erin Cox and Frank Jackson wrote about 150 tickets in January, which was significantly higher than in previous months, Mayor Paul Oeland said.

Some tickets were for minor offenses including not reporting an address change to the state or having defective equipment on a vehicle, it was first reported in The Covington News.

The contest was revealed when City Court Judge C. David Strickland overheard the officers talking about it recently. Oeland said ``Jackson indicated he had won the contest.''



``I think it was sort of bragging rights,'' said Oeland, a lawyer. ``They would make a traffic stop for a legitimate reason and then try to find anything else they could possibly write a ticket for.''



The mayor added: ``It is not anything that we as a city support.''



Both officers were asked to resign by Friday by City Manager Tom Fox, Oeland said. They have been with the department less than a year, he said.



Neither could be reached Friday. There was no answer at the police department.




02/27/04 17:13


***********
We locked you up in jail for 25 years and you were innocent all along? That’ll be £80,000 please



 
Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims ‘food and lodgings’
By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor

 

WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett’s fight has been described as “outrageous”, “morally repugnant” and the “sickest of sick jokes”, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 for living expenses by the Home Office.

It wasn’t until two years ago that Hill was finally awarded £960,000 in compensation. However, during the years since his release, while waiting for the pay-out, the government had given him advances of around £300,000. When his compensation came through, the £300,000 was taken back along with interest on the interim payments charged at 23% – that cost him a further £70,000.

“The whole system is absurd,” Hill said. “I’m so angry about what has happened to me. I try and tell people about being charged for bed and board in jail and they can’t believe it.

“When I left prison I was given no training for freedom – no counselling or psychological preparation. Yet the guilty get that when they are released. To charge me for the food I ate and the cell I slept in is almost as big an injustice as fitting me up in the first place.

“While I was in prison, my family lost their home, yet they get no compensation. But the state wants its money back. It’s like being kicked in the head when someone has beat you already.

“I have to put up with this, yet there has not been one police officer convicted of fitting people up. The Home Office had no shortage of money to keep me in jail or to run a charade of a trial.

“But they had enough money to frame me. Nevertheless, when it comes to paying out compensation for ruining my life they happily rip me to shreds.”

Hill is not leading the legal action against the government – instead he has handed the baton to another high-profile victim of miscarriage of justice: Mike O’Brien.

O’Brien spent 10 years in jail wrongly convicted of killing a Cardiff newsagent. His baby daughter died while he was in prison and he was charged £37,500 by the Home Office for his time behind bars.

Hill said he cannot lead the legal fight as the Birmingham Six have fought every legal action together, but now three of them are over 70 and Hill believes it is too much to ask them to join him in taking on the government yet again.

He said he was also worried about the compensation payments for the other members of the Birmingham Six being affected if they joined him in court against the government.

“The establishment hate me and people like me as we proved them wrong,” he said. “They either want to ignore us or hurt us.”

O’Brien took the Home Office to court last March and won, but Blunkett appealed the decision. On Tuesday, the rights and wrongs of the government policy will be decided at the Royal Courts.

O’Brien said: “Morally, the position of the government is just outrageous. It shows total contempt for the victims of miscarriages of justice. It makes me livid.

“I really believe if we win the appeal this week, the government is evil enough to take me to the House of Lords. They are trying to break us. I really think this is personal as far as the government is concerned.

“A government really can’t get much worse than this. But I am confident that we will win as the law and morality are on our side.”

Vincent Hickey, one of the Bridgewater Four who was wrongly convicted for killing a paperboy, was charged £60,000 for the 17 years he spent in jail. He said: “If I had known this I would have stayed on hunger-strike longer, that way I would have had a smaller bill.”

John McManus, of the Scottish Miscarriage of Justice Organisation, said: “This is reprehensible. How can we call ourselves a democratic, civilised society when our government is acting like this?

“The government seems intent on punishing innocent people. The state wants to be paid for making a mistake. It’s hard to believe someone actually thought this policy up. If you tell a child about this they will think it insane.

“Only a sick mind could have invented this policy, yet the government is fighting to retain the right to act like this. It is cruelty with intent. They seem to want to punish people for having the audacity to be innocent.”

The SNP’s shadow justice minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said: “This is outrageous. It is another assault by Blunkett on the rule of law and on civil liberties. These people didn’t chose to go to prison. They were wrongly convicted, and to charge them for it beggars belief.”

The Home Office said an “independent assessor appointed by the Home Secretary takes into acccount the range of costs the prisoner might have incurred had they not been imprisoned”. The spokes man said the assessor was “right” to do this, adding: “Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate.”

‘I was a hostage, now they are billing me’
ROBERT Brown was just a 19-year-old from Glasgow when he was jailed for life for murdering a woman called Annie Walsh in Manchester in 1977. He served 25 years before he was finally freed in 2002, when the courts ruled him innocent of the crime.

He is now facing a bill of around £80,000 for the living expenses he cost the state. For Brown, it is the final straw. An interim payment he was given pending his full compensation offer is exhausted; his mother recently died; his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart and he is facing eviction from his home following a mix-up over benefits.

“I feel like ending my life,” he says. “I’ve tried to maintain my dignity, but the state has treated me with nothing but contempt – now they are asking me for money for my bed and board in jail.

“I never contemplated suicide once while I was in prison, but it’s different on the outside. I have received no counselling or support. Society is treating me like something you’d wipe off the bottom of your shoes, but I’m an innocent man and a victim of a terrible injustice.

“It’s horrific. I’ve been out of jail for 14 months and in that time the state has put me through a war of attrition that it never needed to conduct. I feel my life is disintegrating around me.

“Making me pay for my bed and board is abhorrent. I was arrested, fitted up and held hostage for 25 years and now they are going to charge me for being kept as their prisoner against my will.

“Can you think of a more disgusting way to abuse someone? I really feel that my heart is truly and finally broken.”

14 March 2004
***********

 

Every Police State Needs Happy Police

by Steven Greenhut
by Steven Greenhut

        

Every good police state needs plenty of police, so as the United States becomes more totalitarian it should be no surprise that the job of enforcing all the rules is becoming more lucrative.

Lines are typically long when police agencies begin hiring, given salaries that can easily top $100,000 a year and retirement packages of 90 percent of final pay, or even more. Cities always are promising to spend more on "public safety," which means more cops, bigger salaries, more outrageous pensions, more high-powered weapons and other gee-whiz gadgets to subdue the population.

The work isn’t particularly hazardous, despite the claims to the contrary, and for some reason the populace still gives the police a great deal of respect, despite the never-ending examples of abusive police tactics, the bullying of police unions and the increasing tendency of cops to view their "subjects" with hostility and disdain.

In California, where the state budget is still going bust, there’s always more money to lavish on law enforcement. There are so many more laws, thousands more created each year, that it is absolutely positively necessary to hire new enforcers.

This is one of the few growth industries in the state. It’s a fun job, too. As the Los Angeles Times explained, a recent Independent Review of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs’ department "has identified on-duty sexual conduct as a troubling trend, from consensual acts to improper relationships with minors, to the use of patrol cars to follow women."

Where else can someone get paid so well and have such on-the-job latitude? And there’s little or no punishment for such behaviors. For the worst offenses, the deputies were fired. In one case, the Times wrote that a "deputy caught in a ‘romantic relationship with a 17-year-old Explorer Scout’ was suspended for 15 days."

Imagine how a cop would treat an average citizen who committed such a crime, but being a cop means living under a double standard. As a cop, you can do the things "they" can’t. That’s a rush. It’s such a freeing feeling to live a life that’s accountable to no one, which is another reason to choose this profession.

It’s lucrative work not just in pay and benefits, but from a free-lance perspective. The Times points to a deputy who was suspended for 10 days for selling department equipment on eBay. One deputy, who was reinstated after being fired, extorted a $1,500 motorcycle out of its non-English-speaking owner for $300 after the owner was stopped for illegally riding it on the sidewalk.

Not bad extra money, and well worth the minor inconvenience of getting caught.

Plus, there’s all sorts of other enjoyable stuff one can do if one enjoys ordering people around. There’s little risk. You know your life was in danger when you shot that unarmed guy in the back. Your partner saw him threatening you, too, which is more than enough for complete exoneration. Then there are those car chases. The unnecessary ones are really a rush.

Even though they take the lives of 14 innocent Californians a year due, in large part, to police recklessness, who really cares? You can blame the guy you were chasing. Being a cop means never having to say you are sorry, never having to worry about the pain you caused.

So, as a service to readers in California and elsewhere, who want to take part in this burgeoning industry, and enjoy all the available taxpayer-funded perks, I offer 10 easy tips on how to be effective on the job.
1.
Talk to the media and the public all the time about how you put your life on the line every day for their safety. This gives you the moral high ground, and protects you if and when a problem arises. Don’t ever mention that police are rarely killed in the line of duty. For instance, in one of the nation’s most dangerous cities, Los Angeles, a cop killed on duty recently was the first one killed on duty in several years.
2.
Always look for the easy mark. It’s tough work finding real criminals and pulling over truly reckless drivers. You never know what weapons these scary people might be carrying. Under no circumstances do you want to endanger your life, and lose that pension. So ignore the real criminals and focus on generally law-abiding citizens who may have committed some small infraction. It’s safe, it’s easy, and the law-abiding citizen you harass will probably be respectful to you as you ticket him.
3.
Remember that you are separate from the hoi polloi. The regular citizen is your potential enemy. Don’t be merciful. Never feel the regular citizen’s pain or care about their humiliation. You are the authority, and as those federal law-enforcement training programs emphasize, you are apart from them.
4.
If you mistakenly shoot someone, remember to say what your lawyer tells you to say: "I felt that my life was in danger." Don’t hesitate to lie or have your colleagues corroborate your lies. Your chances of facing any serious consequences are slim to nil.
5.
As the courts repeatedly rule, you are not required to help anyone in distress. That’s why you can ignore the eyewitness reports of a car going off the side of the road near Moreno Valley, Calif., and exert no serious effort to look for the car. When the mom was found dead and her young child found alive 10 days later, you can shrug your shoulders and not give it another thought given that you didn’t owe those people anything. As the California Highway Patrol argued in court, after officers were accused of letting a man writhe in pain until he died below a Sacramento freeway, law enforcement can at its own discretion help people or ignore them. It’s their choice.
6.
When called to a truly dangerous situation, such as a workplace shooting or a shooting at, say, a high school, do not enter the building. Let the shooter or shooters use all their ammunition before you go inside. Otherwise, you will put your life at risk. It is always easier to wait until the shooter is done killing people than to try to put yourself in a dangerous situation.
7.
Always use the badge to lobby for more restrictions on individual rights (i.e., stopping citizens from owning guns) and always lobby for more public dollars for public safety.
8.
Don’t always respond quickly to calls from regular citizens. You have better things to do. If they get frustrated and take matters into their own hands, arrest them. That is easier than arresting the actual bad guys.
9.
Lying in court is OK. No one will know and most juries don’t care.
10.
When you are caught hitting your spouse with the blunt end of your service revolver, blame stress from your job. All those days of putting your life on the line finally got to you. Nothing a little more time off, a bigger pension and more generous police budgets won’t solve.

Those are the basics. Once you master those, we can go into the advanced course of evidence destruction, weapons-planting and buying city councils.

April 21, 2004

Steven Greenhut (send him mail) is a senior editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register.

Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com

Steven Greenhut Archives

                 

 

Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page
***********
Proving identity increasingly difficult

Curt Benward, district manager at the Social Security Administration office in Coos Bay, reviews SSA policy concerning proof of identity. Benward said to avoid identity theft, the office checks ID thoroughly. World Photo By Dan Schreiber

 
 

 

By Dan Schreiber, Staff Writer

In an age when computer data dictates the distribution of money and resources and theft is merely a matter of PIN (personal identification) numbers and a few simple key strokes, government agencies have upped requirements for proof of identity.

This may not be easily explained to a generation older Americans who watch with amazement the acceleration of technology. Small-town residents, especially, are accustomed to being identified by sight or a simple driver's license.

But, according to Social Security Administration policy, because of an increasing problem with identity theft, applicants for new cards must prove they have "existed and continue to exist." Identification must have been established at some point after birth and be of recent issuance to the individual. Acceptable forms of identification include a passport, driver's licenses, employee ID card, military records, school ID, marriage records and hospital records. Birth certificates are not sufficient forms of ID, according to SSA policy, because they could represent a person who has died.

Forty-two years have passed since Warner "Van" VanSchoyck, 87, a World War II veteran, started receiving benefits at the Social Security office in Coos Bay.

When his wallet was stolen recently, he said SSA personnel made it difficult for him to receive a new card, preventing him from getting necessary benefits.

To verify his identity, he said, he brought a letter from Chuck Knight, Coos Bay city manager; a U.S. ordinance inspector ID; medical records and military records. But after three visits, he said, this was not enough for Social Security personnel to issue a new card.

"That does not sound like our country," he said.

VanSchoyck said he provided at least two of the identification sources on the list, but did not receive a new card in a timely fashion.

Curt Benward, district manager at the SSA office in Coos Bay, said he cannot comment on the case specifically, but that administration policy indicates acceptability of documents can vary case by case and takes into account an applicant's situation.

"People don't realize the requirements until they lose the card," Benward said. "We want to make sure the person we're giving the card to is that person."

VanSchoyck, who said he is appalled at what is required of him to prove his identity, said that the addition of a security guard to the office after Sept. 11, 2001, also made him uncomfortable. Other local Social Security recipients feel the same.

"Before, I was used to coming here and it was nice and quiet," said Bruce Donovan, 44, of Coos Bay. "Now they act like you're going to hold them up. Sometimes I think people let their job go to their head too much and it's a waste of taxpayer money."

Security guard Jack McCullough, formerly of Roseburg who moved to Coos Bay for the job, works for Wackenhut, a private Florida-based company. He began guarding the local office in October 2001. Since then, he said, 15 to 20 people have come into the office with guns, all with permits. Knives make up the majority of prohibited articles he sees. McCullough said he faxes reports of all weapons to the Federal Protective Service, Homeland Security office in Portland.

"Some irate people come in here if they didn't receive their checks," McCullough said.

VanSchoyck, a former sheriff of Lakeside who has worked in law enforcement in Empire and Powers, said he was frustrated SSA personnel could not identify him by sight because he has been going to the office more than four decades. But the rules are in place to protect residents, officials say.

"He should be glad we don't just roll over and give out his information," said Willie Sadler, a receptionist at the SSA. "In the electronic age, all you need are numbers. He doesn't appreciate the danger he faces," adding SSA workers catch fake documents three to four times a year.

Although security has been stepped up in the local office, it wasn't terrorism related.

"The reason they are so stringent is not because of 9-11, it has to do with identity theft in the U.S.," Benward said.

He said the door guard has been the only security difference in the office after Sept. 11, 2001.

But VanSchoyck still maintains he was treated poorly at the office.

"Everyone that comes in the office, he (McCullough) asks them if they have a gun," VanSchoyck said. "I still have my gun. I can carry a weapon so that's not doing very much good," he said about the guard.

"I can't understand that. I lived here for a long time and I have never been so embarrassed."

 
***********
Man in Bulldozer Rampage Found Dead
By P. SOLOMON BANDA

GRANBY, Colo. (AP) - A muffler shop owner who plowed a makeshift armored bulldozer into several buildings after a dispute with city officials was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after a SWAT team cut their way into the machine with a blowtorch early Saturday, authorities said.

Grand County Emergency Management Director Jim Holahan confirmed that the driver, identified by the town manager as Marvin Heemeyer, appeared to have shot himself.

Heemeyer plowed the armor-plated bulldozer into the town hall, a former mayor's home and at least five other buildings Friday before the machine ground to a halt in the wreckage of a warehouse.

City officials said he was angry over a zoning dispute and fines from city code violations at his business.


Authorities detonated three explosions and fired at least 200 rounds against the heavy steel plates welded to the bulldozer, which looked like an upside down Dumpster. After the third explosion failed, officials cut their way in with a blowtorch, Holahan said.


A statement from Grand County Undersheriff Glen Trainor said the driver was found around 2 a.m.


Holahan said Heemeyer was armed with a .50-caliber weapon but appeared to be deliberately avoiding injuring anyone during the rampage, which began Friday at about 3 p.m. No other injuries were reported.


Trainor said the dozer's armor plates consisted of two sheets of half-inch steel with a layer of concrete between them.


Grand County Commissioner Duane Daley said Heemeyer apparently used a video camera and two monitors found inside to guide the dozer. Two guns were mounted in front and aimed through portals. Other portals were cut in the back.


It was unclear how many guns were found with Heemeyer. Authorities speculated Heemeyer he may have used a homemade crane found in his garage to lower the armor hull over the dozer and himself.


``Once he tipped that lid shut, he knew he wasn't getting out,'' Daly said.


Investigators searched the garage where they believe Heemeyer built the vehicle and found cement, armor and steel.


Residents of this mountain tourist town of 2,200 described a bizarre scene as the bulldozer slowly crashed through buildings, trees and lampposts, with dozens of officers walking ahead or behind it, firing into the machine and shouting at townspeople to flee.


``It looked like a futuristic tank,'' said Rod Moore, who watched the dozer rumble past within 15 feet of his auto garage and towing company.


One officer, later identified as Trainor, was perched on top, firing shot after shot into the top and once dropping an explosive down the exhaust pipe.


``He just kept shooting,'' Moore said. ``The dozer was still going. He threw what looked like a flash-bang down the exhaust. It didn't do a thing.''


A flash-bang produces a blinding flash and earsplitting boom designed to stun a suspect.


``Gunfire was just ringing out everywhere,'' said Sandra Tucker, who saw the bulldozer begin the rampage from her office on Main Street. ``It sounded to me like an automatic rifle, firing about every second.''


At least 40 deputies, Colorado State Patrol officers, federal park and forest rangers and a SWAT team from nearby Jefferson County were at the scene.


Town manager Tom Hale said Heemeyer was angry after losing a zoning dispute that allowed a cement plant to be built near his muffler shop. Heemeyer also was fined $2,500 in a separate case for not having a septic tank and for other city code violations at his business, Hale said.


When he paid the fine, he enclosed a note with his check saying ``Cowards,'' Hale said.


``We felt he was venting his frustration that he didn't get his way,'' Hale said of the note. ``We didn't think he was going to do something like this.''


Trainor said he believes Heemeyer spent months armoring the bulldozer, and investigators were looking into whether he had help.


Hale said owners of all the buildings that were damaged had some connection to Heemeyer's disputes.


The buildings included the cement plant, a utility company, a bank, a newspaper office, a hardware store and warehouse, the home of former Mayor L.R. ``Dick'' Thompson and the municipal building, which also housed a library.


Crumpled patrol cars and service trucks lay in the dozer's path. A pickup was folded nearly in half and had been rammed through the wall of a building.


Gov. Bill Owens traveled Friday night to Granby, about 50 miles west of Denver and 10 miles south of Rocky Mountain National Park.


State aid will be available to help rebuild local government buildings, and state officials will help businesses seek federal help, said Mike Beasley, director of the state Department of Local Affairs.


William Hertel, owner of High Altitude Audio, said the bulldozer drove by his business at mid-afternoon, crushing aspen trees and light poles after the rampage began around 3 p.m.


``I was up on the roof when he came by. I got down and got my wife and kids out of the back of the building,'' Hertel said. He said he had heard numerous shots.


The scene was reminiscent of a 1998 rampage in Alma, another town in the Colorado Rockies. Authorities said Tom Leask shot a man to death, then used a town-owned front-end loader to heavily damage the town's post office, fire department, water department and town hall.



06/05/04 14:38



© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
 
***********

***********

***********

***********

***********

***********

***********

***********