Quotulatiousness

September 1, 2014

Philadelphia’s growing addiction to civil forfeiture

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:25

In Forbes, Nick Sibilla explains how the city of Philadelphia uses the civil forfeiture laws to enrich city coffers and oppress the residents:

Chris Sourovelis has never had any trouble with the law or been accused of any crime. But that hasn’t stopped the City of Philadelphia from trying to take his home.

The Sourouvelis family, along with thousands of others in Philadelphia, is living a Kafkaesque nightmare: Their property is considered guilty; they must prove their innocence and the very prosecutors they’re fighting can profit from their misery. Now the Institute for Justice has filed a major class-action lawsuit to end these abuses of power.

Back in March, Chris’s son was caught selling $40 worth of drugs outside of the home. With no previous arrests or a prior record, a court ordered him to attend rehab. But the very day Sourovelis was driving his son to begin treatment, he got a frantic call from his wife. Without any prior notice, police evicted the Sourovelises and seized the house, using a little-known law known as “civil forfeiture.”

Law enforcement barred the family from living in their own home for over a week. The family could only return home if they banned their son from visiting and relinquished some of their constitutional rights. Adding to the cruel irony, their son has already completed rehab, ending his punishment by the city. “If this can happen to me and my family, it can happen to anybody,” Sourovelis said.

Under civil forfeiture, property owners do not have to be convicted of a crime, or even charged with one, to permanently lose their property. Instead, the government can forfeit a property if it’s found to “facilitate” a crime, no matter how tenuous the connection. So rather than sue the owner, in civil forfeiture proceedings, the government sues the property itself, leading to surreal case names like Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. The Real Property and Improvements Known as 2544 N. Colorado St.

In other words, thanks to civil forfeiture, the government punishes innocent people for the crimes other people might have committed.

Update: As Eve Harris reminded me, civil forfeiture is not a US-only issue, and the police in British Columbia have been feeding cases to the province’s Civil Forfeiture Office (CFO) for further action even when no criminal charges are filed (and sometimes even when the police have violated Charter rights in the process). BC’s CFO was established in 2006 and since then has generated about $41 million in proceeds from civil forfeiture actions. Six other provinces also have civil forfeiture laws, but BC is leading the pack in the scale and scope of their activities. Eve also sent a link to a National Post article (which I can’t quote from without paying a licensing fee, which is why I rarely if ever link to that newspaper).

December 16, 2013

Vikings stun Eagles 48-30 despite Adrian Peterson missing the game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

Now that the Vikings have been officially eliminated from postseason play (not that there’d been much doubt for the last few games, but mathematically they were still alive), it’s less likely that I’ll be able to watch another Vikings game this season. Yesterday’s game which would normally have been carried on the Winnipeg CTV station was replaced by a game with actual playoff implications. I can’t really object to this, but it would have been nice to watch Minnesota dominate the Philadelphia Eagles.

Greg Jennings finally had the kind of game we’d hoped he’d be having all season, finally going over 100 yards receiving and scoring a TD. Cordarrelle Patterson had an impact on the game from the start, as Philadelphia avoided kicking to him as much as they could, which gave the Vikings better field position after every kick. Running back Matt Asiata, filling in for the injured Adrian Peterson and Toby Gerhart, had his first, second, and third career touchdowns, while Matt Cassel had the best outing of any Minnesota quarterback all season (and one of the best games of his career: 26 of 35 for 382 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT and a 116.6 passer rating).

The Daily Norseman‘s Ted Glover clearly enjoyed the game:

On a day when the Minnesota Vikings celebrated the ‘All Mall of America Field’ team, it was fitting, in many ways, that almost 50 points would be put on the board. After all, an all time team that has Daunte Culpepper, Robert Smith, Adrian Peterson, Anthony Carter, Cris Carter, and Randy Moss on it could hang 50 on damn near anyone.

The thing is, if you told me somebody was going to score almost 50 Sunday, the last team I would’ve picked would have been the Walking Wounded version of the Vikings. Adrian Peterson was out, Toby Gerhart was out, Kyle Rudolph and John Carlson were out. And that was just the offense. On defense, it was almost as bad, and what the Vikings fielded on Sunday was an amalgamation of second stringers, practice squad refugees, and NFL journeymen. It was a game that felt like the Vikings had virtually no chance to win.

Yet, they cruised 48-30. The NFL, go figure. It was the most gratifying win in almost a year, since the last game of the regular season last year. And for one day, at least, the most high powered offense in the NFL belongs to the Minnesota Vikings. Instead of the Eagles flying high, it was the Vikings. Flying like the Eagles. To the sea. DO YOU SEE WHAT I JUST DID THERE STEVE MILLER?

Update: At the Star Tribune, Jim Souhan says that this game may end up upending a few “foregone conclusions” about the Vikings after this season:

Foregone conclusion No. 1: Frazier will be fired.

Sure, that’s possible, maybe even likely. Frazier went 3-13 in his first full season and is 4-9-1 this year. The suggestion he’ll be fired as he nears the end of his contract is logical.

But is it wise? Last year, the Vikings won their close games and made the playoffs. This year, they’ve lost a half-dozen close games and will miss the playoffs. Their losses this season have been caused by bad quarterback play and late-game defensive collapses.

[…]

The Vikings have been so desperate to develop their own franchise quarterback for so many decades that, in the 2011 draft, they chose Christian Ponder in the first round because he shared some of the same attributes as elite quarterbacks, such as breathing oxygen and speaking in complete sentences.

It turns out that the Vikings would have been better off signing another Jeff George or Warren Moon than wasting a first-round pick on a quarterback.

This year, the Vikings are 2-2 when Cassel starts, with victories over Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. They are 2-7-1 when Cassel doesn’t start, including the game against the Bears when he rallied the Vikings to victory over Chicago when Ponder suffered a concussion late in the second quarter. Cassel is not a franchise quarterback, but he could save the franchise from making a rash decision in the draft.

Cassel is no Lamborghini. He’s a taxicab sitting in front of a bar at 2 a.m. You don’t pick him for the thrills; you pick him to avoid making a big mistake.

October 3, 2013

The Bystander Effect in Philadelphia

Filed under: Randomness, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:04

Techdirt‘s Tim Cushing talks about an incident in Philadelphia where a transit police officer was losing a fight with a suspect, yet none of the people came to the assistance of the cop or even called 911:

The fact is that a certain number of citizens aren’t going to come to a cop’s defense simply because they’ve seen too much abuse occur at the hands of cops. When law enforcement struggles with an arrestee, they’re not too shy about bringing in several more officers to help out, or just sending an attack dog after them. They’re also in possession of several more weapons than most citizens carry — including pepper spray, batons, tasers and guns.

The odds are stacked in favor of police officers. When one is suddenly unable to avail himself of all the weapons at his disposal, police leadership seems to think the public should jump in and save their “heroes,” or at least call 911.

Over at PINAC’s writeup of the event, the oft-arrested/hassled photographer Carlos Miller points out why that’s a bad idea.

    I admit I would be the one video recording, not necessarily because I wouldn’t want to help the cop, but because pulling out my camera and recording is very instinctive for me, while dialing 911 is anything but.

    In fact, my instinct is to avoid calling 911 at all costs because I don’t trust police enough not to turn me into a suspect when they arrive, which we have seen happen numerous times in the past.

Beyond the chilly relationship between citizens and cops are further factors, legal and otherwise, that Chief Nestle isn’t considering when he expresses his shock at the public’s inaction.

First, there’s the Bystander Effect. Very basically, the more people present in a situation, the less likely that someone will offer aid. Two factors that came into play during this beatdown are empathy and the “diffusion of responsibility.” Many people simply don’t empathize with cops, even when a citizen has gained the upper hand. This disconnect leads directly to less altruistic behavior. The more someone empathizes with the victim, the more likely they are to respond. Judging from the majority of the comments under the news report, it’s very unlikely that any crowd would be filled with empathetic individuals.

April 12, 2013

Conor Friedersdorf: “Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story”

Filed under: Health, Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:34

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf explains why the Philadelphia horror story should be front-page news, but isn’t:

The grand jury report in the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors,” it states. “The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels — and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”

Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Dr. Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate’s coverage includes testimony as grisly as you’d expect. “An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions,” the channel reports. “Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.’ He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, ‘it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'”

One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, “Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell’s idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania.”

April 11, 2013

“Elite Panic” and the media gatekeepers

Filed under: Health, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:57

There’s a pretty horrific tale unfolding in a Philadelphia court room, but most people won’t have heard about it because — while it’s bloody and otherwise eminently newsworthy — it will “send the wrong message” if it gets the traditional full-court press of media attention. At Ace of Spades H.Q., this is noted and explained by Ace:

I think this is how those who imagine themselves to be elite justify their complete embargo on the Kermit Gosnell serial-murder trial.

People who do evil generally don’t imagine they’re doing evil. In fact, some of the worst evils are perpetrated by those who’ve convinced themselves they’re doing good. One’s conscience tends to restrain one from evil; but if one can trick one’s conscience into thinking one’s doing good by doing evil, well. Then you’ve really got something.

I imagine the media believes it’s “doing good” by being so cautious about What Truths the Public Is Capable of Hearing. After all, if this Gosnell trial were publicized, people would Get Angry, and come to All the Wrong Conclusions, and put the allies of those in the media (such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood) on the defensive.

Hell, these maniacs might even get in into their skulls to hurt people!

Well, we can’t have that. We can’t let the Wrong Kind of Information — true information, but the sort of information the non-enlightened may be confused about — passing into the Wrong Kinds of Brains.

Thus, this embargo on the Gosnell story is not just partisan bias, fronting for the Democrats by refusing to mention anything that might be used as a wedge issue against them.

No, this embargo is done for the Public Good, even if the public is too stupid to understand that. If the public heard about these things … Well, that’s not gonna happen. Not on our watch.

It’s been occurring to me lately that much media behavior is explainable by this prism. They don’t want to report certain facts, not because the facts aren’t true (they’re facts by definition), but because they’re Concerned About The Capacity of Non-Journalists to Successfully Interpret These Facts.

April 10, 2013

The former players’ class-action suit against the NFL

Filed under: Football, Health, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:05

John Holler opines that the players are morally right, but that the legal system probably won’t give them the vindication they hope for:

Inaccurately known as the City of Brotherly Love – a more appropriate definition would be the City of Unholy Beat-Downs In the 600 Level – Philadelphia was the site Tuesday of the first big meeting on men in $5,000 suits and matching ties and pocket splash.

Judge Anita Brody heard arguments Tuesday from the NFL and a class-action group of more than 4,000 NFL players concerning the NFL’s culpability for not diagnosing concussions in the formative years of the NFL becoming the financial juggernaut it is today.

It’s a complicated and sometimes emotional battle. From a personal perspective, I teared up (that’s a generous description of it) after interviewing Brent Boyd at a time when he was a lone candle in the wind seeking justice for his injuries at a time when the NFL denied any connection to playing the game and post-concussion symptoms. Boyd was in an a cappella group at that time. Now he has a loud chorus of backup singers in the choir. Boyd was right when he told Congress that the NFL’s policy toward worker’s compensation claims were characterized – in his words – as, “Delay, deny and hope they die.”

On the other side of the coin is the legal question. It’s not a coincidence that Lady Justice, the sculpture of a woman holding the scales of justice, is blindfolded. The intent of that symbolism is that a jury can only render a verdict on the facts presented. A former NFL player from the 1970s once posed the question to me, “Does Boeing owe former employees more benefits now because the company became successful?” That was a hard pill to swallow considering that, even in the 1970s and 1980s, there were enough former players suffering from dementia and game-related debilitation that an impartial juror could see the connection between playing NFL football and the results that have followed in post-football life for thousands of former players. Yet, what does the current NFL owe them?

December 29, 2010

Vikings surprise Eagles in rare Tuesday game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

The Minnesota Vikings were two-touchdown underdogs to the Philadelphia Eagles, and some said even that overstated how much of a mismatch this game was going to be. It was such a foregone conclusion that the game wasn’t even broadcast in my area.

As they say, however, the predictions are just guesses. The game certainly didn’t go the way it was expected to:

The victory was sparked by Adrian Peterson’s 118-yard rushing performance and an astute defensive game plan that put consistent pressure on Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. But it also was the result of a performance by a Philadelphia team that looked as if it had spent far too much time celebrating clinching the NFC East on Sunday, when the Packers beat the Giants.

The Eagles were called for 12 penalties as they lost to the Vikings for the first time since the 1997 season, ending a five-game winning streak. The Vikings had not won at Philadelphia since 1985. Philadelphia’s performance was reminiscent of the Arizona Cardinals’ effort in 2008 after they clinched the NFC West and then lost to the Vikings 35-14.

“It was an absolutely pathetic job on my part of getting my team ready to play,” Eagles coach Andy Reid said. “We didn’t coach well and we didn’t play well. It was a complete tail-whipping right there.”

Normally, as Gregg Easterbrook constantly points out, the team that blitzes too much gets burned by the quarterback throwing to his “hot read” (who is uncovered because the defender is blitzing). That wasn’t the case last night:

A game plan designed by Frazier, who had been defensive coordinator before taking over for the fired Brad Childress on Nov. 22, and interim defensive coordinator Fred Pagac made sure Vick was never was able to get comfortable because he faced a variety of looks and was consistently pursued by Antoine Winfield, who blitzed both from the corner and inside.

Vick was sacked six times and finished with an interception and two lost fumbles, including a crucial one late in the second quarter when Winfield stripped the ball from him on a sack, then picked it up and raced 45 yards for a touchdown that tied the score 7-7. Winfield finished with two sacks.

I had been looking forward to watching the game particularly to see how Joe Webb handled his first NFL start at quarterback. He seems to have done well enough:

Webb, meanwhile, got better as the game went along in his first career start, completing eight of 11 passes for 124 yards in the second half. He led the Vikings on scoring drives in their first two series of the third quarter, the first ending with a 30-yard field goal by Ryan Longwell and the second with a 9-yard touchdown run by the raw quarterback, who didn’t see open tight end Visanthe Shiancoe on the play.

Brett Favre is still the starter, if he’s healthy, so there isn’t a quarterback controversy. Whether he’ll be healthy for the final game at Detroit’s Ford Field on Sunday is still unknown.

December 26, 2010

Vikings-Eagles game snowed out, to be played on Tuesday

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 20:13

Could this season be any more disrupted? Yes, apparently it can:

With a blizzard expected to hit Philadelphia today, the NFL announced that the Vikings road game at Philadelphia against the Eagles is now scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. CST.

This move came amid predictions of an intense storm that could bring more than a foot of snow to this city and also winds that could reach 40 miles per hour during the game. It sounds like the storm is supposed to be intense from this afternoon into early Monday.

In an e-mail to the Star Tribune, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said: “Due to public safety concerns in light of today’s snow emergency in Philadelphia, tonight’s Vikings-Eagles game has been postponed. Because of the uncertainty of the extent of tonight’s storm and its aftermath, the game will be played on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. [CST]. This will allow sufficient time to ensure that roads, parking lots and the stadium are fully cleared. The National Weather Service states that a winter storm warning in Philadelphia remains in effect until 1 p.m. [EST] on Monday.”

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