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Forfeiture Insanity: Three Cars for Oxycontin Possession

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That’s right possession. Via The Agitator, the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey has gone crazy, drug war style. They’re cracking down on prescription drug abuse, primarily by indiscriminately confiscating automobiles from all sorts of people, including a cop.

From dailyrecord.com:

Parent Gerard Trapp, a Bloomfield police officer, said the seizure of three family cars is extreme, since neither he nor his wife knew of any alleged drug use by their son, and Trapp Jr. was charged with a relatively minor offense. He was never accused of being a dealer or supplier.

This sort of mind-numbing injustice comes naturally to many local-level drug warriors. I’m shocked, but only sort of, having been recently shocked over and over again by equally horrible tales of forfeiture abuse.

The Trapp family’s lawyer calls it extortion, probably because of this:

The prosecutor's office seized in July the family's 1992 Cadillac SDV, a 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and a 1994 Toyota Camry. Trapp said the prosecutor's office initially told him the three cars could be bought back for $3,000 and have since lowered the amount to $1,500 for all three vehicles. But the Trapps have not bought back their own vehicles.

Good for them. Most people would just cut their losses and get those cars back before they end up in the prosecutor’s garage. But apparently, the Trapps found their son’s minor indiscretion an insufficient justification for having police confiscate their property and demand cash for its return.

Alas, forfeiture thuggery and unscrupulous profiteering just go with the territory. Only by ending the drug war in its entirety can we do away with the daily injustices that too many Americans take for granted.

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Propery confiscation

I am totally against confiscation of property and the insane drug war. But I could not help myself to write and wonder how this cop feels when the tables are turned on him. Now he can feel what so many people have felt as they have watched there cars being towed for minor drug infractions

No Honor Among Thieves

[eom]

really now...

i think it is truly rediculous that any one would put up with that kind of bullying. its just like bullying to get some money out of a little kid. our government is looking away at things like this so as to not be responsible in any sort of way. we must take action to keep this from happening again we need to let the people know that marijuan is safer than potatoes. if you were to eat ten raw potatoes you would die something you've never heard pot doing because it can't it's one of the safest substances in the world. the only thing i can decribe this nation as is "IGNORANT"

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