Civil forfeiture allows our law enforcement to live the "thug life" they respect so much
A recent state audit in Oklahoma has revealed some pretty egregious improprieties concerning the use of monies taken from U.S. citizens via the controversial
civil forfeiture method:
Among the violations were using seized money to pay on a prosecutor’s student loans and allowing a prosecutor to live rent-free in a confiscated house for years, records show.
The cases were cited in a state commission hearing Tuesday in which authorities objected to new legislation aimed at curbing abuses of civil asset forfeiture by state and local law enforcement agencies. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, has spurred heated opposition from district attorneys and sheriffs.
Living rent-free. Paying off your student loans. Wow, dude. That's pretty f-ing lame. Especially when you consider that there are an estimated 44,000 children who are homeless in Oklahoma—
one of the largest homeless children rates in the country. Let's draw exactly how
nefarious this is.
A 2009 audit of the District Attorney’s Office that represents Beaver, Cimarron, Harper and Texas counties found that a Beaver County assistant district attorney began living rent-free in a house obtained in a 2004 forfeiture. A judge had ordered the house sold at an auction, but the prosecutor lived there through 2009.
Utility bills and repairs made to the house were paid out of the district attorney’s supervision fee account, the audit states.
So, even if the estimated 44,000 homeless children in Oklahoma is a tin-foil-wearing-sized liberal conspiracy to turn our country into the socialist-gay-orgy-terror-dome many conservatives have been lead to believe is coming, and the real number of homeless children in Oklahoma is one homeless child—then this asshole lawyer, WITH A JOB, has been living rent-free for years while a child is homeless.
The audit also found the District Attorney’s Office didn’t report the benefit as income for tax purposes.
Yup. That statement means one of two things. Either the DA's office is trying to not pay taxes or they really really didn't want people to know they were using that person's house to live rent-free.
In a 2014 audit of the DA’s office representing Washington and Nowata counties, the State Auditor’s Office found that $5,000 in forfeiture funds had been used to make payments on an assistant district attorney’s student loans.
The report said the district attorney maintained the expense was justified because most of the cases the assistant DA prosecuted were drug cases.
Grow up, man.