Incredibly brazen highway shakedowns...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

... I've never seen anything like this. Apparently "civil forfeiture" laws in Tennessee make these money shakedowns all nice and legal. And they're so lucrative for law enforcement they actually have inter-agency turf war confrontations on the highway. Unbelievable.

Anybody had experience with these interdiction cops patrolling I40 around Nashville, or anywhere else?

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[JFN1]

1. Unreal.

And the way the bigwigs defend this, is pathetic and weak.

Cops have devolved into little more than mobsters, organized criminals sanctioned and supported by the State, with the legal authority to kill or imprison you on a whim...

Unreal...we are so fucked...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Agreed. It's stunning how far this has gone. nt.

[Selatius]

4. I hate to say, but cops have always been seen as revenue generators since very early on.

This is why you're more likely to see a city spend money on ticketing speeders than on putting police officers out there in known speed zones to discourage speeding. Nope, they're hiding behind the bushes or behind the billboard with a radar gun waiting for you to do it. However, what is seen in this video is taking things to a frightening new level.

[Remember Me]

15. I think this is a little different,

possibly by an order of magnitude.

[dougolat]

3. your Drug War at work..................nt

[baldguy]

6. This hasn't been "our" drug war for many, many, many years.

If ever.

[Zalatix]

5. Police gangs, indeed. I wonder how long it'll be before people realize this is what they really are.

[PufPuf23]

7. That video shows selective and abusive law enforcement. nt

[TreasonousBastard]

8. Maybe 10 years ago the NY Times did a series on this...

going on around the country.

One case sticks in my mind-- a woman in her 70s had 15 grand or so in cash she was taking to the furniture factories in the Carolinas to buy some stuff for her granddaughter's new house. Cops took it and it took her a few years to get just part of it back.

[Nay]

9. I remember the owner of a landscaping company driving a truck to some other state to buy plants

wholesale. He had 10 or 15 thousand in cash, too, and the cops got all of it. I have no idea if he ever got it back.

[Earth_First]

10. Last summer we were stopped by DHS/Homeland Security on I-87 Adirondack Northway

150 miles from the border outside of Keene Valley, NY in my father's vehicle; he let us borrow his vehicle to drive up to the mountains for a weekend of hiking.

Long story short, my brother got sick, dehydration and we were forced to leave Friday night after only hiking for a few hours.

When I told the officer that we were up to do some hiking 'for the weekend' he informed me that it was only Friday...

Longer story short, it was an incredible inconvienence and a horrible waste of time for us and a federal agency.

[izquierdista]

11. I can wait to have the car repainted

You get a lot less attention from cops if you drive a 20 year old car with the paint peeling off.

[yourpicturehere]

12. see 'em all the time

We go to Memphis on occasion and we have always seen these Suburbans on I-40. I have had one of them come flying across three lanes of traffic right in front of me as they made a U-turn. They always have the belongings of the victim all over the side of the road as they search the vehicle. They usually sit about three to five miles out of Memphis, so we drive very carefully. There is an overpass that they seem especially fond of! This is nothing new...they have been doing this for at least ten years that I know of.

[felix_numinous]

13. Drug war profiteers

this highway robbery is a direct result of a corrupt policy. Corruption trickles down--look at this police chief defending his crooked self.

Thanks for the warning for people driving through TN.

[raouldukelives]

14. Reminds me of the fire departments from Gangs of New York.

Fighting amongst themselves for the right to steal peoples valuables while every thing around them burns.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

17. Yes it does.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Great movie. Daniel Day-Lewis stole it as Bill the Buthcher. Here's a great scene where he shares his survival philosophy, one I worry has been adopted by our own government:

[Odin2005]

16. The police are state-sponsered protection rackets.