Replies

This process has been used to seize billions of dollars of huge numbers of innocent people’s assets. The reason government agencies keep doing it is because it has been very profitable. I personally know of several situations that were every bit as bad as the ones mentioned in the article.

A small municipality near us even hired a chief of police mostly because he was an expert at using this tactic to raise money. He had previously been employed as a detective by a larger department which confiscated a lot property and he knew the ins and outs. The odd thing is that they were able to steal property and assets from people who never had any connection to the small municipality ever.

We live on a small residential airpark (an airport with homes built around it). Washington has quite a few and there are several others near by. At one of the neighboring airparks which is actually further from the small town than we are, the police rented part of one of the resident’s hangar to house a Pilatus PC-6 TurboPorter that was worth more than a million dollars that they had somehow seized.

This was a STOL (short field take off and landing) airplane that they claimed might have been used for drug smuggling. Never mind that there was no actual evidence that the owners or the airplane had ever actually been involved for this type of activity. The owner of the plane was a legitimate small business owner who had a collection of aircraft. He had no connection with the small municipality at all. Somehow the police were able to hire someone to steal the plane which was based over 100 miles from where our neighboring small town.

The police encouraged owner of the hangar let us and many others look over the plane. They were trying to find people who would be interested in purchasing it. We never got a straight story from anyone indicating how this was a legitimate seizure. But the police were eventually able to find a buyer. Eventually the police chief was caught up in some other questionable activities and fired.