One of the truly scary things about living in The Homeland, as it is officially styled nowadays, is that you are subject to punishment prior to conviction. Merely to be accused is sufficient to deprive you of liberty and property.
And even when – after much expense (yours) and time forever lost – you are eventually able to prove your innocence (as opposed to them having to prove your guilt) those who abused you are never themselves punished for what they did to an innocent person – and good luck getting them to make you whole for what they did to your innocent person.
The WarrnTrr – and The War on Some Drugs – account for much of this, but the rot goes deeper. The Homeland’s armed goons – and the Homeland’s robed goons – can summarily seize your person, your property and dispose of them as they wish for almost any reason.
Even a trumped-up traffic ticket.
This happened to Melanie Pence in my part of the Homeland, Roanoke Virginia.
Pence was involved in a minor fender-bender and one of the Homeland’s armed goons showed up to make the problem worse.
Usually, the armed goons of the Homeland will simply hand out extortion notes demanding that sums of money be given over to the higher-up goons, as punishment for various transgressions of statute – usually having nothing to do with any harm caused.
Usually, you are not forced to hand over money (or other property or your liberty) until after the asserted transgression has been adjudicated and a robed goon has decreed you to be guilty.
This courtesy was not extended to Pence (news story here).
The Homeland goon, using his Infallible Computer, determined that Pence was driving on a suspended license. In fact, she was driving on a restricted license – a difference that makes all the difference.
But not to the Homeland’s goon, nor the subsequent robed goons.
Despite a call at the scene to the clerk of the Salem General District Court – to confirm to the Homeland’s goon that, indeed, Pence was lawfully driving on a restricted rather than suspended license, the goon seized Pence’s vehicle and had it towed to an impound lot.
Where, less than a week later, the company that towed the vehicle sent Pence a letter advising her that it would be sold forthwith if she did not cough up $1,890 in “towing, administrative and impound fees.”
This works out to about $300 a day, a tidy racket for these guys.
Pence attempted to get her car back, according to a subsequent lawsuit – and even attempted to pay the outrageous ransom demanded by G&J Towing of northwest Roanoke – but they would not release the car without a court order.
And when Pence did not pay the larcenous sum demanded, they sold off her car – a 2012 Hyundai Sonata – for “approximately $1,000.”
Keep in mind that Pence had not committed any offense against the Homeland – much less been adjudicated guilty of any offense. She had merely been accused. This is sufficient – as in many other cases – to simply dispose of her (and by implication, anyone else’s) property.
That is, to steal it.
How else to describe it?
The word is brutal, but precisely appropriate. The Homeland’s goons took Pence’s vehicle from her, then – having control over it – gave it over to a towing company that acts as its enforcement arm and had it taken away to a car prison, then sold out from under Pence before the specious charges against her could even have been heard in court. It takes weeks – usually, in Virginia, a couple of months – before a traffic ticket court date arrives.
Pence’s car was sold out from under before one week had gone by. During which time the mafiosi tow company levied “towing, administrative and impound fees” that would embarrass a New Jersey loan shark.
All perfectly legal, too.
The law in the Homeland – Virginia gau – is that an impounded car may be sold off at auction – to settle the “towing, administrative and impound fees” – in as little as 10 days, provided the retail value of the car is deemed to be less than $12,500. In which case, it may be sold off for as little as $1,000 – in order to recompense the towing company for “towing, administrative and impound fees.”
It is amazing there isn’t violence.
But probably, it is coming.
Because this is not unusual. And because it is “lawful.”
The bogus charges against Pence were eventually dismissed. But Pence’s car is gone. Only the government – and the mafia – can steal people’s things with impunity.
And the mafia doesn’t do it under color of law.
Not just cars, either.
The government – its goons, buzzcut and robed – have decreed they have the lawful authority to steal cash merely by dint of your possessing what they decree to be “excessive” amounts of it. Then it’s on you to prove said cash was not obtained “illegally” … at your expense and on your nickel.
It has become a gangster organization far worse than the actual mafia – which is generally a local or regional problem and one you can attempt to avoid/defend yourself against without that being characterized as “criminal.”
Another recent case that’s even more appalling than the Pence case – if such is possible – is that of Katelyln Ebner of Georgia. She was pulled over by Homeland goon Tracy Carroll and subjected to a roadside sobriety check. Which she passed, She had not been drinking. So Carroll asserted that Ebner was “high.” Without any evidence beyond his say-so as a “drug recognition expert,” Ebner was arrested and caged by Carroll.
Ebner asked Carrol to administer an objective test to prove she was not “high” – but Carroll refused. “You’re going to jail, ma’am,” he exults.
A subsequent blood test established that, in fact, Ebner was not “high” and that Carroll was wrong. All charges were dropped. But as Bill Murray’s character in the movie, Meatballs once said – it just doesn’t matter.
Ebner – who worked as a waitress – lost her job over the bogus bust because she had been accused of driving under the influence. She spent months and thousands of dollars proving her innocence – the goons of the Homeland, buzzcut and robed alike no longer being under any obligation to establish guilt.
Carroll goes on his merry way, accusing people of being “high” and using his Magic Powers of Intuition to place them in manacles and cart them off to jail, depriving them of their liberty and their property . . .
It is all entirely legal.
Sentence first! Verdict afterward! So said Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen. The literary fantasy of the 1870s has become a very ugly reality.
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“It is amazing there isn’t violence.
But probably, it is coming.”
From your keyboard to God’s ears.
Vigilante visits ensue.
Chinese tourists at a Thailand jumbo shrimp buffet. It’s like an American black friday hunger games but these guys are even more uncucked in grabbing the gibs. Love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBCLXZmMQNs
I have a proposed solution to this scam.
First: Eliminate crimes that don’t involve a real victim. This will reduce the need for the Goon Squad to look for people turning right on red without coming to a full stop, along with many other superfluous “crimes”. And it will have the secondary benefit of officers being assigned to actually investigate real crimes.
Second: Require that all Goons that investigate traffic accidents be certified as accident investigators. This will allow them to use a marketable specialty in the field, instead of practicing theft against unwitting individuals who just happened to drive 55 in a 50 zone, or some other equally moronic “offense”.
Third: Each jurisdiction could establish a set fee for investigating traffic accidents, which must be reasonable in relation to the actual costs of investigation. $200 ought to be adequate. This is to be assessed only after the case is tried, and would be assessed against the driver the Goon deemed most at fault for the accident.
Fourth: Eliminate roadside checkpoints that really act as fishing expeditions against drivers unwary enough to be driving on the wrong road that day.
The results of this would be that we would have much fewer Goons on the streets. We would also reduce the number of threats by the Goon Squad against the people. Officers would be dedicated to their core competencies (if any): Either performing accident investigations, or chasing violent criminals.
Most people assume, all other things being equal, that this kind of corrupt policing has no effect on the rest of the economy. I assert that it is having a significant effect but the effect is being hidden within the very real economic downturn we are experiencing. When you know that any cop can do horrible things to you any time he or she pleases, up to and including murder, it makes staying home very attractive. Of course, staying home is no longer any guarantee of being safe from these thugs, but it’s safer than being out on the road. So all of the expenses related to discretionary driving (nights out, vacations, weekend trips) are not spent into the economy. My driving has plummeted to 1/10 of what it was over the rest of my life because I don’t want to expose myself to the police state any more than absolutely necessary.
Hi To –
Yes, indeed.
It has become reasonable to – as a for instance – attempt to get away from a cop who is looking to pull you over for a moving violation. Not only because the punishments levied for even minor traffic offenses are becoming outrageous (a friend of mine in DC just got a $500 ticket for an illegaL U Turn) but also because these buzzcut, stormtroopers are often
Not only have America’s Swinest long been out of control, we have more swine per capita than any other nation in the known world. One cop for every 300 mundanes.
We could fire 90% of these useless and often abusive tax-feeders without the slightest increase in crime, violent or otherwise. Contrary to the oft-repeated mantra that “They lay their lives on the line for us every day,” they do no such thing. Being a cop is in fact statistically one of the most risk-free outdoor occupations of all.
Roofers rank #1. Highway repairmen, pavers, electricians, cattlemen, sheep-herders, bush-pilots, commuter pilots, truck-drivers, etc all have far higher risk factors than do cops, and unlike cops members of these other occupations can’t retire after twenty, get a full pension, then go to work in another department for another twenty, get yet another pension, and finally plop into a twilight of ease and luxury. Suchadeal!
I once was the victim of a hit-and-run in Atlanta. When the police finally arrived after about an hour, I was told that, based on my description of the accident, I would have to get a ticket if I wanted an accident report, since I was under an equal duty to assume it was safe to pull out. I asked the officer why, if it was my fault, the other driver ran, he said that’s just the rules and it is up to me to decide whether I want to take the ticket and get a police report. Basically, get hit, get a ticket.
I had a head-on with an oncoming pickup in my lane. Since they couldn’t give me the ticket and the other guy was an old local they wouldn’t ticket, I was coming back from picking up the car with a new engine in it. I got to eat that car due to “no one at fault”. At least I had another car that I could use the engine in. I built the A-frame I still have to change engines for the next car.
It would be interesting to know who bought the vehicle…..
I saw this article is highlighted at http://www.libertarian-international.org via the Libertarian Institute facebook.
I used to work with a guy whose wife is Panamanian. He is black. When he would go down there, he would take a roll of $50’s and when he would get pulled over, detained, or otherwise harassed (he stood out since he is black) he would just whip out the roll and peel a few off to hand to whatever Panamanian gov’t thug was harassing him at the time. Cost of doing business as he saw it.
Unfortunately in America these days, the corruption is official and throughout the whole system. My guess is that since police officers have nice pensions from the state, they are not amenable to being bribed at the side of the road. Now, should those pensions go away, and cops have no long-term thing, then I believe they will become amenable to being bribed at the side of the road. Which actually would be more libertine than the situation we have now.
Hi Tom,
I’d much rather honest thievery, too. Just give the bastard a $50 and spare me the lecture about saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.
Tom, thuggery pays big dividends these days if you can nab a “money” vehicle, a stash of cash. Some LEO’s in my county got to split up a bit over a Mil on one of those, according to the guys in jail who drove the car. It seems the 2.5 or whatever it was that was turned in was only part of the cash. The car was literally stuffed with cash. They got another also although not that magnitude.
Years ago my neighbor was a well connected street pharmacist – strictly professional, all business and all business clients. One of his suppliers lived on the same block as Mario Cuomo and used the house he lived in to store excess product.
it was front page news when the police raided the house and announced a huge $1Million seizure – my friend and everyone that knew what was in that house all laughed. The announced seizure was barely a quarter of what was stored in that house. Lots of heroes retired very early to their boats and winter houses shortly after that seizure.
Still goes on. Now it is not bribery or theft. They just say: “No money was vouchered by the arresting officer.” They openly rob small stores too. A candy store was robbed of all of its cash $2600 by heroic NYPD – of course the blue lie claimed it was a fabrication until the store’s security video clearly showed the hero pocketing the register receipts was aired on local television. When confronted with the video evidence, the thin blue lie claimed the officer had just not vouchered the money .http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/NYPD-Detective-Steals-Cash-Deli-Raid-Surveillance-Video-Brooklyn-299234631.html
Showtime ran a documentary called “The 75” that was all about the corruption in the 75th precinct, robbing drug dealers openly, acting as drug dealer enforcers and brazenly displaying their corruption. It went on for years. If anything, it has grown even more systematic as we now hear Serpico, the famous “honest cop” from the 1970’s who took a bullet to his face as a message, that the corruption now is by far worse than when he was a cop.
Couple is still paying on the car loan…
Salem couple sues over car that was impounded then sold –
due to a glitch in a Department of Motor Vehicles computer
http://www.roanoke.com/news/dan_casey/casey-salem-couple-sues-over-car-that-was-impounded-then/article_59f2403c-3cba-5010-9146-72a6c17512ce.html
These cops are loathsome beyond description. How does one get up every morning knowing you’re going to go punk and thug people for a living?
Ever notice on many of their costumes, they plaster huge American flags…usually on the shoulder….to prove how righteous and patriotic they are? They actually belong in Havana, Caracas, or perhaps Nigeria.
Hi Aljer –
Yup.
It takes a dick to wear those opaque Intimidate Them sunglasses and their stormtrooper outfits, too.
Fish heads for all.
….Hi Eric…..I was raised in a family of corrupt cops and law enforcement. The culture you portray is fairly accurate…however, you cannot leave out the individual personalities of these people. I’m in my late fifties, and most of my corruption experience was decades ago, but you can still see the ego-driven, sociopath-like-behavior of these animals…in which they actually delight in the conduct they are allowed to exhibit. When we were much younger, my now-deceased, corrupt-cop-brother used to take me with him for a “ride-along”… in which he would attach a suction-cupped-bowl of marijuana to the dashboard of the police car, puffing on a 3 foot line of aquarium tubing, as I would burn the bowl….as we cruised suburban suburban neighborhoods. We would drive around, switching on and off as to who lit the bowl and who smoked the bowl…then he would pull someone over! Rather than a bland group of bureaucrats, simply implementing policy, many of these creeps get their self-esteem by being able to laud over people and command them to do their bidding…(in the moment). However…unless these…”random, blind attacks on innocent cops just sitting in their cars”…are false flags, perhaps the violence you predict has arrived.
RJ O’Guillory
Author / Webster Groves- The Life of an Insane Family
The biggest and most despicable example of Stolen Valor among civilians is seen in so-called law enforcement. All this crap, flag pictures, military insignia of rank when they do not have such status, campaign ribbons, chest medals, and all sorts of other pseudo military paraphrenia are so ethically bankrupt it takes my breath away. One of the most amusing, but not realized by the idiot badge wearer, is the adornment of the flying saucer hat styled as a “Fifty Mission Crush”. This is where the sides are bent down, as though head phones have been worn while flying the fifty missions. NYC cops seem to love this image.
The sun glasses, jack boots in Ca, and the Mine Resistant Vehicles are all “Military Bling” and should be an object of shame. But then, the bully knows no shame: “Strong before the weak, and weak before the strong”.
Still do not see the Fascism ?
“…Still do not see the Fascism ?”
It ain’t just the “fascism”: ALL totalitarians exhibit these traits. The “communists” are equally vile on these things.
The items you artfully and accurately mocked are on steroids with the North Koreans. Good grief, those hats they wear!
“The biggest and most despicable example of Stolen Valor among civilians is seen in so-called law enforcement.”
In Henrico County, va, a local “hero” was found in possession of war souvenirs stolen during a phony drug raid. He claimed they were his own property that he collected during his tours in the Marine Corps until a check into his background revealed that he had never been in any branch of the military and had been faking a military record for years.
Hi Ed,
It always rankles me to see “heroes” in law enforcement wearing colonel’s eagles and general’s stars. These guys remind me of the SA stormtroopers with their confected ranks (e.g., obergruppenfuher).
They have to fly those flags so you know who’s robbing you. They’d be guilty of piracy if they didn’t fly the flag.
“These cops are loathsome beyond description”
———–
Everybody lives somewhere. Everybody has something to lose. People do evil to other people bc they believe they are beyond consequence. When actions are untethered from negative consequence, the actions continue.
I once “stole” my truck back from the tow company. They figured out who I was because I had cut the tow strap trying to free my truck as Officer Friendly was enforcing a non-law (dispute in private parking lot over no-parking sign).
I did the same thing when I was a kid. Cops locked me up for “driving to endanger” (that’s a story for another day!). Anyway, bonded out at about 2 in the morning, walked over to the impound yard, hopped the fence, got in my car and then drove it right thru the locked gate. They never did figure out it was me, since the license plates on it at the time didn’t belong on that car in the first place. Long before computers and databases, so back then, as long as your plates weren’t listed on the “hot sheet” of stolen cars, you could almost always get away with unregistered/uninsured. Obviously, I’ve never had much respect for authoritatah.
Ah, pensioned ISIS rounding up mundanes. That “heroic” officer exhibits signs of recent steroid abuse, having free based cocaine and injected heroin during a child pornography and serial child raping binge – he is clearly a threat being armed with semi-automatic weapons and body armor. Surely a righteous, motivated man of justice should take notice of his terrorism.
Still copsuckers will praise these pensioned ISIS for their actions of railroading Americans, stealing from our taxes and all too often robbing us by gunpoint in “undocumented” asset seizures.
Awhile back, someone claiming to be with the NYPD called my 85-year-old father looking for donations for the police department – his reply was I already donated when you robbed me. “Heroic” cops literally stole his Christmas present money in 1953. A number of his friends had money stolen from their homes by “police” when their ne’er-do-well children got arrested. “Police” stole every penny out of their cookie jars.
Just before the Freddie Gray murder by “rough ride” – NYPD were doing the same thing in Staten Island. They rounded up men off of the streets after searching them for drugs, when one man who had a joint on him, they arrested his friend who he was speaking too for good measure. For hours they went around doing the same until the van was filled, purposely slamming on the brakes and gas, making violent turns. When one of the “arrested” protested, they beat him with their nightsticks and broke his arm (all inside the police van where there are no pesky cameras or citizens with those blasted cellphones that have cameras).
When they were released from custody, they learned that the incorruptible NYPD “had failed to voucher” the money they had in their wallets. A man whose “crime” was speaking to someone who had a joint in his pocket was robbed by the NYPD.
These are the cases that no one reports on, the victims cannot be bothered to file complaints because we all know how these things go. Nothing will happen to the badged criminals and the victims risk being further victimized by the badged mafia for daring to talk – like what happened to one man in my neighborhood who filed a complaint against a cop. He was “visited” by four detectives who “suggested” he drop the the complaint. When he refused, he went out one morning to find all of his tires slashed and a “hero” sitting on the hood of his car who said “I guess you could use a cop now” before walking away.