And do we even need to mention the sanctimonious Bush family, whose scion, George W., dismisses
his own “youthful indiscretions” while (as governor of Texas) increasing minimum sentences for the
“indiscretions” of less monied, less connected young people?

Money is more than a means of buying exemptions from punishment. Money is, at bottom, what keeps
Inquisitions and crusades rampaging, long after their moral depravity has been exposed.

Forfeiture

[Pope Innocent III] was plainly sickened by the slaughter and the vile passions of his instruments,
but he made vast material profit for the Papacy out of the monumental crime…In fine, these “confiscations”
which Innocent III had recommended were becoming a very profitable source of revenue, and the Papacy
wanted its share. The sordid scramble for gold amongst the bones of the dead had already begun.
In the now-famous 1992 case of Donald Scott, Los Angeles County deputy sheriff Gary Spencer was unable
to verify an informant's claim that Scott, a 61-year-old rancher, was growing marijuana on his Ventura
County estate. However, Spencer did take the time to have the property appraised before conducting a raid.
When he and his force of 30 (including agents from the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service,
the DEA, the National Guard and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) came crashing in to seize the 200-acre
ranch, Scott - just awakened, naked and possibly drunk - came out of his bedroom with a gun.
Spencer and another deputy shot Scott to death. There was no marijuana. The L.A. County sheriff
and California Attorney General Dan Lungren both issued reports saying Spencer and his raiders had
done nothing wrong. The Ventura County D.A. also found that the shooting was self-defense, but resoundingly
declared that the prime motive for the raid was the law enforcers' desire to profit from Scott's ranch.9

Bringing suit against possessions

[According to Vacandard] torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means
of eliciting the truth. Torture is so vulgar, so passé. No one uses it any more in America - except,
of course, for the occasional broomstick up the butt, or flick of a button on an electronic stun belt to
make an uncooperative prisoner writhe on the floor screaming.10 Law enforcement agents now have a more sophisticated method for gaining the cowed cooperation of innocent and guilty alike. Civil forfeiture.

Under federal law the government can seize property based solely upon probable cause to believe that
the property was used unlawfully. This probable cause standard for seizure allows the government to
dispossess property owners based only upon hearsay or innuendo - “evidence” of insufficient reliability to be
admissible in a court of law. The probable cause standard relieves the government of the burden of
proving anyone's criminal guilt to obtain a forfeiture judgment over his property.
…When asked to justify the extraordinary powers granted to them by such laws, law enforcement officials
find themselves invoking peculiar legal fictions that date back to feudal times or earlier, wherein inanimate
objects are given life and then forfeited to the government for “their” criminal misconduct.11

Thus, rational people are asked to accept - without laughing or crying -- such legal cases as United States
v. 9844 South Titan Court and United States v. $405,089.23 in U. S. Currency.

The motive for such uncivil treatment? As defense attorney Jeffrey Steinborn bluntly puts it:

Criminal forfeiture statutes allow the government to simply combine the forfeiture and the criminal
prosecution in the same case. But civil forfeitures are preferred by the government, because the property
owner is presumed guilty, and, therefore, can seldom prevail, and because they have the added benefit
of impoverishing the property owner as he or she faces a criminal prosecution.12
And of course, the agencies making the seizures get part of the take.

No, the Drug War inquisitors rarely use torture. But now they don't even bother to wait for a guilty verdict
before seizing everything the drug heretic owns. For many years 80 percent of all forfeitures have been
done against people who are never even charged with any crime, let alone convicted.13 And make no
mistake, this scramble for gold among the dead, the imprisoned and the merely terrified is highly lucrative.
According to forfeiture expert, Leon Felkins:

It is estimated that the Federal government now confiscates nearly a billion dollars per year
(1996 is last year for which an accounting has been released) with states and cities likely confiscating as much
or more. Estimates are difficult because government agencies are real shy about making such accounting
readily available to the public, but the totals are roughly comparable to the “victim costs” from “Crimes of
Violence and Robbery” as reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.14
Forfeiture is just one of several forms by which police agencies are being increasingly corrupted.

Militarization and corruption of police

Imagine the president of the United States informing the gunmen of Chicago - Christian knights in those days
had no higher ethic - that he permitted them to invade and sack Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Pasadena,
and you have something of a parallel.
Dinuba, California (population 15,000) had just 12 cops. But, thanks to gifts of surplus submachine guns and
combat gear - all courtesy of the federal government - half those cops got to play at being members of a
Special Enforcement Team - their version of a SWAT squad. Not much going on in Dinuba, though.
So they found something to occupy themselves. In 1997, hearing that a sawed-off shotgun used in an
attempted murder might be in a certain home, they crashed through the door in the middle of the night,
wearing black masks and cammies. Terrified, the 64-year-old farm worker who lived there grabbed
a folding knife. Dinuba's finest machine-gunned him to death. The weapon they were seeking
(which reportedly belonged to the man's son) was not in the house.15

The Dinuba debacle wasn't a drug case. But what happened there was a direct result of the federal Drug War.
Not long ago, a quest for evidence would have brought a pair of uniformed policemen to the front door
in broad daylight, knocking, explaining their mission, warrant in hand. No more.

Continue to Prt 5