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Stop-and-Seize Turns Police Into Self-Funding Gangs
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-12/stop-and-seize-turns-police-into-self-funding-gangs
The threat to individual liberty from stop-and-seize is painfully clear. Without requirements for an arrest or for a warrant, the power to confiscate cash is a clear diminution of property rights. Effectively, the police have been given official sanction to commit literal highway robbery without the threat of punishment. People whose property was seized must pay a lot of money and spend a long time in court for even the chance of getting it back, and police who seize money with no good reason don't, apparently, suffer any threat of discipline.
But stop-and-seize also presents a danger to public trust. When the cops go around taking money from innocent people to fund their own departments and salaries, it understandably decreases trust in the government and the legal system. That is something we can ill-afford at the present time, with trust in the police already at a low ebb over a series of videos of police killings. If they don’t trust the government, people will be less likely to report criminals, and possibly less likely to follow the law themselves.
Even more fundamentally, though, stop-and-seize is part of a worrying trend of less government accountability. The lack of oversight virtually ensures that the quality of government services will decline. This has been painfully apparent in abuses by bounty hunters, mercenaries and private prisons. But if the police are transformed into independent, self-funding armed gangs, the quality of policing -- and thus the effectiveness of all our legal institutions -- is sure to decline.
If you believe -- as many economists do -- that the rule of law is a key determinant of a nation’s prosperity, then you should be worried about this. Stop-and-seize should be stopped.
But stop-and-seize also presents a danger to public trust. When the cops go around taking money from innocent people to fund their own departments and salaries, it understandably decreases trust in the government and the legal system. That is something we can ill-afford at the present time, with trust in the police already at a low ebb over a series of videos of police killings. If they don’t trust the government, people will be less likely to report criminals, and possibly less likely to follow the law themselves.
Even more fundamentally, though, stop-and-seize is part of a worrying trend of less government accountability. The lack of oversight virtually ensures that the quality of government services will decline. This has been painfully apparent in abuses by bounty hunters, mercenaries and private prisons. But if the police are transformed into independent, self-funding armed gangs, the quality of policing -- and thus the effectiveness of all our legal institutions -- is sure to decline.
If you believe -- as many economists do -- that the rule of law is a key determinant of a nation’s prosperity, then you should be worried about this. Stop-and-seize should be stopped.
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