Tag: police

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local leaders too much government

Brave New Budgets

Denver, migrants, police

“Stay here and you will suffer.” 

That’s the message Denver’s Newcomer Communications Liaison Andres Carrera delivered to migrants last month, according to the city’s NBC 9 News.

“You don’t have to walk anywhere, we can buy you a free ticket,” Carrera offered. “You can go to any city,” he said, mentioning New York and Chicago, specifically. 

“We can take you up to the Canadian border, wherever!”

Denver is now preparing to spend $90 million on migrant programs this year. 

In the last fiscal year, New York City spent $1.5 billion “for asylum seeker shelter and services,” and those expenses are going up. Chicago’s “City Council is set to vote on spending another $70 million in city funds for migrant services,” Block Club Chicago reported last week, “just five months after Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 budget allocated $150 million for new arrivals this year.”

We hear about the costs of the border crisis; these whopping numbers certainly clarify that matter. 

Still, something else caught my attention. 

Denver is making a 2.5 percent cut to most city agencies, while reducing the police department budget 1.9 percent, an $8.4 million dollar decrease for cops. Some charge that’s de-funding the police.

“The City of Denver’s adjustment to the Denver Police Department’s budget was carefully crafted with safety leaders and Mayor [Mike] Johnston,” a spokesperson explained, “to ensure there would be no impact to the department’s public services,” 

Crafted with care. And having precisely zero impact.

Imagine had you or I suggested to politicians and government officials that we slice millions of dollars from their budgets. We’d be accused of gutting education and undermining public safety . . . if not starving the children.

Who knew it could be so easy and painless for them?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly

Crime Fighters Give Up

Canada, Toronto, police, crime, prevention

Fight crime — give criminals all your stuff today!

This isn’t my view. But it’s the apparent view of some — I hope not many — Canadian police officers.

At a recent public meeting about coping with crime, a Toronto police officer told people that to reduce the chances “of being attacked in your home, leave your [car key] fobs at your front door. Because they’re breaking into your home to steal your car. They don’t want anything else.”

To reduce the risk to you personally, give up in advance.

Are you following the reasoning? Because I’m not. And I am very disinclined to leave my car keys and cash and my Taiwanese history library in a heap near the front door to buy off home invaders.

Instead, perhaps everybody in high-risk neighborhoods should install a trap door in their vestibule, rigged in such a way that anybody who forcibly breaks into the home is immediately dropped into a vat of starving piranhas.

AIER’s John Miltimore sees an “obvious problem” with the policeman’s helpful advice. The problem is that he is asking people to encourage burglary and theft, to make it “easier, not harder, to steal vehicles, diminishing the time it takes to commit the crime, thus lowering the risk involved.” If a lot of people follow the advice, this would tend to increase car thefts.

It all reminds Miltimore of the movie Robocop and its crime-ridden landscape. “There’s something dystopian in normalizing this kind of violence. . . .”

To avoid dystopia, let’s defend ourselves instead.

And our cars. And car keys. And . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment

Theft Thwarts Thieves

crime, criminal, vigilante, police

It happens plenty in fiction.

Thieves or ex-thieves like John Robie (“To Catch a Thief”), Alexander Mundy (“It Takes a Thief”), and Slippery Jim DiGriz (The Stainless Steel Rat) are among the many beloved reformed or semi-reformed criminals who thwart the criminality of others.

It happens in real life too. Con artist Frank Abagnale eventually taught people how to spot fraud (though apparently still committing it in his memoir Catch Me If You Can). Former black-hat hacker Kevin Mitnick taught people how to protect themselves from hacking and social engineering.

The role of criminals stopping criminals can also be played entirely accidentally.

Last Saturday, three armed men robbed a business called Hi Lo Check Cashing out in Commerce City, Colorado.

“In an unexpected and ironic twist,” says a Facebook post by the Commerce Police Department, “as the trio was robbing the business . . . a fourth criminal stole their getaway vehicle . . . which may have already been stolen.

Police are seeking the third robber and the car thief. I guess they may offer a curt “Thanks” to the latter bad guy just before jailing him.

The Goddess Fortuity won’t always intervene thus. And we don’t want to people to start stealing cars on the off chance that one of their thefts will foil some other theft.

On the other hand, it would be criminal to decline any strokes of crime-stopping luck that come our way, since the politicians and prosecutors aren’t really doing it for us these days.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment too much government

DeKalb Gas Stations DeKneecapped

gas station, surveillance

The gas stations of DeKalb County, Georgia, never did nothing to nobody . . . except provide petrol.

Yet, thanks to a draconian county ordinance, the stations can be shut down if they fail to splurge on expensive new video surveillance systems. Even if they already have security cameras. Which most do.

The law requires the systems to operate continuously; to include cameras at registers, gas pumps, parking areas, as well as entry and exit points; to record at least 24 frames per second; to store recordings for at least 60 days.

Wait, these are private gas stations. 

By what right does the county mandate precisely what detailed security measures business owners must take in order to keep their licenses? This is government turning the tables, rather than keeping these stations safe, the county lords the license over them, demanding the stations spend lavishly on security.

Arguably, the county is acting as yet another disruption plaguing the stations — which already face more than enough criminal invasion of their premises.

The law requires recordings to “be made available to any peace officer for viewing no later than 72 hours after being requested.” Nothing about obtaining a warrant if and when an owner is less than eager to cooperate. (Assuming, generously, that the video would be used to prosecute the robber even if the police and prosecutors had it.)

Lawyers for the Institute for Justice have been talking to the gas station owners, and have sent a letter citing the Fourth Amendment as grounds for DeKalb’s commissioners to drop this “beyond creepy and dystopian” practice.

Let’s hope the outcome is not more suffering businesses but a more limited government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights national politics & policies

Time to Slap Grabby Hands

Civil Asset Forfeiture, theft, law enforcement, crime

Is the House of Representatives readying itself to do something to limit civil asset forfeiture initiated by federal agencies?

The legislation has emerged from the Judiciary Committee, so there is hope.

The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR) would impose substantial limits on federal civil asset forfeiture — on the power of officers to grab someone’s cash or other belongings on the unsupported suspicion that it was involved in a crime.

Currently, this power to steal based on zero evidence and zero due process remains untrammeled. And forfeited funds thus grabbed can then be spent by the agencies that did the asset-grabbing. 

Victims must spend years in the courts to get their stuff back, if they ever do.

FAIR would require “clear and convincing evidence” of wrongdoing. It would also prohibit law-enforcement agencies from being able to spend forfeited funds, eliminating a perverse incentive to rob people naïve enough to be carrying “too much” cash for whatever reason.

At National Review Online, Jill Jacobson says that the bill is “a step in the right direction” but doesn’t go far enough. Arguing on the premise of innocent until proven guilty, she insists “there is no reason why federal law enforcement should be seizing personal property from everyday citizens on tenuous suspicion.” 

Or even non-tenuous suspicion, I would add, for not everyone strongly suspected of doing wrong can be proven to have done wrong. And citizens caught on the wrong end of a government official’s steely gaze should not be regarded as a public resource. 

The reform isn’t finished until civil asset forfeiture is abolished altogether.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment property rights

Half-Win for Forfeiture Victim

Civil Asset Forfeiture

In August 2020, Jerry Johnson made a mistake: he carried a large sum of money while flying from Charlotte to Phoenix to buy a semi truck for his business. Police grabbed the cash when he arrived in Phoenix.

Mr. Johnson had decided to use cash to avoid certain fees and on the assumption that traveling with cash is legal.

Perhaps it is legal according to mere law. But police often grab any large amount of cash they see someone carrying. They accuse the naïve owners of drug-running and care nothing about actual evidence.

Threatened with jail when interrogated, Johnson signed a form that, he later understood, stated that the $39,500 was not his. The government kept the cash until he could wrest it back in court.

This, you may remember, is par for the course for civil asset forfeiture in America, where government agents behave like highway robbers.

But in this case — this course — the story didn’t end well for the robbers, for Jerry Johnson has gotten back his money. 

But he has not been made whole. As Land Line points out, in addition to all the time and trouble, there were the legal expenses that Johnson incurred before he obtained the help of Institute for Justice. 

And Johnson also lost business revenue: “There were a lot of business opportunities I’ve missed out on because that money was just sitting in a government account.”

Thankfully, the story is not over, yet, for there are organizations like Pacific Law Foundation and Institute for Justice to help victims of government predation at no charge. In this case, it was Institute for Justice that represented the victim in court.

IJ will continue the case to press for compensation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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