http://www.youtube.com/v/fj2zJSUiUH8?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0
QuotePhiladelphia Police are Seizing People's Homes and Not Because they Can't Pay
By Cassandra Rules on September 2, 2014
The Philadelphia police are putting home owners on the street and it has nothing to do with their ability to pay the mortgage, nor are they being charged with a crime.
Christos Sourovelis works hard and owns a painting business. He has built a "dream house" in a Philadelphia suburb, and without warning, the city came along and siezed their home. Sourovelis and his wife, Markela, have never been charged, or accused of any wrong doing.
They are now suing the Philadelphia DA after their home was seized when their son was found with $40 worth of heroin.
A month and half after their son was arrested the police showed up. They opened the door and had their gun drawn on the families dog before Markela Sourovelis even knew what was going on.
This family isn't alone. Civil forfeiture allows the city to seize any property without charging the home owner with a crime.
From 2008-2011 Allegheny, PA, filed only 200 petitions for civil forfeiture, in 2011 alone, Philadelphia filed 6,560 petitions.
"The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has turned this tool in to a veritable machine, devouring real and personal property from thousands of residents, many of whom are innocent, and converting that property in to a $5.8 million average annual stream of revenue," Darpana Sheth, a lawyer with the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public-interest law firm told CNN.
Civil forfeiture was authorized in 1988 as a means to go after drug traffickers to take away the "tools of the trade", meaning anything used or earned from the drug business. However, because these cases are technically civil actions, property owners receive almost none of the protections that criminal defendants receive. Instead of them having to prove your guilt, you must prove your innocence.
The governent must only prove that a property, not the owner, was "more likely than not" involved in the perpetration of a crime.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/philadelphia-police-seizing-peoples-homes-charges/#uwt0DZFczYvSotV5.99
Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes
A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network's chat rooms and sharing "trophy shots" of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?hpid=z2