[dexterdog]

I have always thought of a hypothetical where a police officer takes a stack of cash off of somebody under the name of civil forfeiture and then doesn't arrest. The victim them kills the police officer and claims self defense because he was the victim of an armed robbery. I can't say that I would find a fault in his argument.

[harryh]

We can certainly argue about the legitimacy of civil forfeiture, but your statement is absurd. The current law is the current law. When a police officer arrests someone that isn't kidnapping. When they take possession of property that someone gained through illegal means that isn't armed robbery.

[dexterdog]

It is if them don't charge the person. That is my point. He knows he's not getting his money back and the officer is not going to report it because he can't. It's armed robbery, plain and simple.

[harryh]

Civil asset forfeiture is reported in great detail.

[ceejayoz]

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/nypd-c...

> NYPD can’t count cash they’ve seized because it would crash computers: Despite multimillion dollar evidence system, NYPD have no idea how much cash they seize.

> The New York City Police Department takes in millions of dollars in cash each year as evidence, often keeping the money through a procedure called civil forfeiture. But as New York City lawmakers pressed for greater transparency into how much was being seized and from whom, a department official claimed providing that information would be nearly impossible—because querying the 4-year old computer system that tracks evidence and property for the data would "lead to system crashes."

So, you're technically correct. It's reported in great detail. So great they can't actually query the data at all.

[dexterdog]

Are they putting each bill into evidence as an entry or are they using a Foxpro database, or both?