As if civil asset forfeiture, where police can seize your property without having to prove you actually committed a crime, wasn’t contentious enough already, a new device allows the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to steal money directly from your bank account — on the spot.
And it’s already in use.
The Electronic Recovery and Access to Data Machine, known by the acronym ERAD, can scan your bank account and prepaid cards, giving OHP instant access to the balance — and the funds — if a trooper believes the money is tied to a crime. OHP rolled out 16 ERAD devices in May, and unsurprisingly, has already employed the technology.
You don’t even have to be charged with a crime to be a victim of these badge-wearing armed robbers — which makes OHP’s new ERAD device an astonishing prospect.
“We’re gonna look for different factors in the way that you’re acting,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent told local News 9. “We’re gonna look for if there’s a difference in your story. If there’s some way that we can prove that you’re falsifying information to us about your business.”
What Vincent seems to be saying is OHP will try its damnedest to find a reason to rob you at gunpoint.
“If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we’ve done that in the past,” Vincent added.
This reasoning turns the very concept of innocent until proven guilty on its head. And State Sen. Kyle Loveless said cases where police abused this new system have already come to light, including single mothers, a cancer survivor who had their medication seized, a Christian band, and a number of other completely innocent people.
“We’ve seen where the money goes and how it’s misspent,” Loveless said.
In fact, this is intensified policing for profit. News 9 obtained a copy of the contract between the state and ERAD Group, Inc., which shows Oklahoma paying “$5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes.”
But law enforcement obstinately claims this isn’t about the money.
“I know a lot of people are just going to focus on the seizing money,” Vincent stated the obvious. “That’s a small thing that’s happening now. The largest part that we have found … the biggest benefit has been the identity theft,” he added without further explanation.
Controversy over civil asset forfeiture (CAF) surrounds the fact law enforcement is under no obligation to prove the property it seizes could in any way be tied to criminal activity. Once police have your property, most departments are free to essentially divvy it up amongst themselves.
Countless cases dot headlines around the country evidence thousands of innocent people as victims of this financial terrorism perpetrated by the government. Police even managed to ‘seize’ $53,000 from a Christian band, an orphanage, and a church.
Earlier this year, one of the creators of CAF tellingly called for the program to be abolished — and though it was briefly suspended, the Dept. of Justice allowed CAF to resume in April.
Sen. Loveless feels a conviction should be necessary for police to seize money using ERAD, and plans to introduce legislation.
“If I had to err on the side of one versus the other, I would err on the side of the Constitution,” he explained. “And I think that’s what we need to do.”
Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.
I suggest aiming for the head. These terrorists need to be destroyed.
Highway robbery indeed.
Cop Pigs are what they are? The pigs are on the loose.
Despite what DECADES of communist pro-police state TV propaganda has told you, people only join the police so that they can break the law and get away with it. Period. There isn’t an honest, law abiding cop on the force, they’re all in it to rob the tax cows blind and use them for target practice if they get uppity. Gotta serve the bankers by keeping the people all ‘feared up’…
Do some actual academic research on what communism is before you spout your mouth off about what your brain doesn’t know.
Communism is the marketing of a banker dictatorship to gullible, low information idiots who believe everything that a deadbeat who never worked an honest day in his life has to say.
Go lick the boots of banker puppets like Marx elsewhere…
You really have no idea. Go read a book, please. Highlight of my day…
“You really have no idea. ”
Coming from a troll who confuses MARKETING with reality, this is rich!
“Go read a book, please”
I prefer factually based entertainment, not banker-inspired polemics that belong in the fiction section. Go study the collapse of the Soviet Union before peddling your insipid Marxist fairy tales. Good day…
You don’t even realize the Soviet Union wasn’t Marxist Communism, it was Leninism. You really don’t get it.
Oh for crying out loud, that’s like saying ‘It wasn’t rape, it was sexual assault!’ Potato, potatoe, you’re avoiding the facts while desperately clinging to your MARKETING points as if they somehow cancel out reality. I am done wasting my time talking with you…
Except I’m not marketing… I’m trying to teach you some basic political science.
The end-goal of Marxist Communism is NO government…
“The end-goal of Marxist Communism is NO government…”
THAT IS MARKETING FOR F*CK’S SAKE!!!! That’s why Marxism has NEVER resulted in ANYTHING BUT a banker-driven DICTATORSHIP EVERYWHERE IT HAS BEEN APPLIED!
People who want no government are ANARCHISTS, not communists or Marxists. Bakunin proved that distinction hundreds of years ago – would be nice if YOU educated yourself instead of blindly flinging propaganda and claiming that it’s factual…
GASP YOU REALIZED THAT COMMUNISM EVENTUALLY LEADS TO ANARCHISM!
The difference between Bakunin and Marx is HOW to dissolve the state. Marx believed the state should be used to dissolve itself AFTER socializing.
“GASP YOU REALIZED THAT COMMUNISM EVENTUALLY LEADS TO ANARCHISM!”
You really are a special kind of stupid, aren’t you? That has never happened, was never meant to happen and never will happen. Because people like you drink the Marxist marketing kool-aid and are incapable of studying history with any kind of discernment.
“The difference between Bakunin and Marx is HOW to dissolve the state.”
Wrong again. Bakunin said that Marxism would create a dictatorship and that government would never dissolve itself. He was right – decades of ‘communist’ dictatorships the world over exist as evidence. Next time you push banker fairy tales, be a good chap and ride in on your unicorn while doing so, mmmkay?
So you admit that theory and execution are different?
Marx NEVER intended for a dictator to take hold. Just because someone claims dictatorship in the name of some other idea DOES NOT make it that idea! Its the same thing as mass murderers calling themselves men of god.
Once again for the conceptually challenged: Theory is the *marketing* used to promote the execution, which is the power grab that was intended all along. Period. No exceptional snowflakes can change hundreds of years of cold, hard facts. Communism ALWAYS ends in a brutal dictatorship. Always has, always will.
Marx didn’t give a sh*t about workers because he himself never was one; in fact he refused to even participate in raising his own children. He was a deadbeat who survived only because aristocrat bankers like Engels took pity on him and found him useful to craft their world domination ideology.
The proletariat isn’t ONE PERSON. He’s talking about the proletariat taking power and SEIZING THEIR OWN means of production. If the proletariat is in control, its ever so much more akin to a democracy where representatives (read, republic) can’t hold power for themselves.
Wearing a uniform and carrying weapons is just another excuse for extortion and theft, along with the misuse and abuse of official power that we’ve seen in the form of police brutality and abuse. For some reason, the US courts have rendered court decisions making it legal for police department to refuse to hire educated or intelligent candidates. Go figure. Not only do the police want the dumb and ignorant, they want the mean spirited and dishonest. I will stay out of Oklahoma. I have stopped going through Kansas and Connecticut as well. The US Constitution guarantees us that we are innocent until proven guilty. This is official theft, and every legislator in Oklahoma should be arrested for grand theft and thrown in state prisons. Despicable.
The police departments don’t want smart cops. There was a 60 minutes show about a guy that aced the cop test and he was rejected. He said they only hire cops with low IQ. I guess they don’t question stupid or unjust orders.
Another reason not to trust the banks. It is clear they are trying to collapse the system and take as many people with them as possible. Own physical gold and silver.
I don’ think banks are trying to collapse the system, I think they’re just ignorant. Which is far worse.
Wrong. Banks totally need to wipe clean their balance sheets. Too much junk debt that is not collectible. With a system collapse all those bad investment vehicles suddenly disappear and they can start over for another half-century of rapine greed and worship at the altar of Mammon. Since the mode of rationale, priorities, and values have not changed in the people, neither will the product of those rationalizations, misplaced priorities, and skewed values.
“If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money
it will be given back to you. And we’ve done that in the past,”
In other words if they want what you have they will take it & they are more than willing (eager in fact) to kill you to get what they want. Modern day highway men. In the old robbers & highway men hid behind a mask, these cowardly thieves hide behind a badge.
when I made a comment a few days ago about the roles of people and the police being reversed. they screamed at me like I was out of my mind, I simply finished by saying that all the good guy’s are inside and the really bad guy’s were wearing uniforms. does that not sound like reality to you all.
Gee, with banks paying .25% interest my money is under my mattress, and I cut my credit cards to pieces 30 years ago.
0.25% interest! I wish.
BoA is 0.01- 0.06, depending on the size of the account.
Real criminals would not put money in a bank account for they would have to recognize this to the tax man. Civil asset forfeiture in my recollection was ostensibly there to take money from drug dealers who would carry large amounts of cash which they could not account for the origin of…. now, they want cash you’re carrying AND your bank account. It is completely criminal and out of control. Your money is safer out of the bank.
“Civil asset forfeiture in my recollection was ostensibly there to take money from drug dealers who would carry large amounts of cash which they could not account for the origin of”
That’s the MARKETING the feds used to push the naked theft at gunpoint; considering how the Afghan war was fought to protect CIA heroin production, how the US military distributed heroin for the Golden Triangle during the Vietnam war and the CIA introduced crack cocaine into US inner cities, it is obvious that the US government is the biggest drug smuggler of them all.
Notice how the feds ‘can’t account for’ trillions in taxpayer dollars ‘gone missing.’
Still not clear on how they will scan your bank account? I assume it means thru your smart phone if you have online banking. I won’t bank online and if you carry a smart phone it should have password which you are not required to give them. Have a camera in the car filming everything.
Your bank account information is stored in the magnetic strips on your card. That is how its read at an ATM or register.
Don’t carry an ATM card either. Sorry. Only use banks to cash checks to pay bills.
Welp you’re probably safe then.
This confiscation without compensation and without proof of a crime, is undemocratic, unethical, immoral and turns the idea of rule by law on its head. I’m very surprised something like this is even Constitutional.
Surely you jest.
Unfortunately I don’t, but thank you for the satire.
States like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Mississippi are definitely no go, if you are smart!
Stay out of Tennessee and Kentucky too.
and the other 44 too.
Definitely Tennessee!
Just another example of Americans being used as an ATM by government.
Succinct and to the point!
Civil asset forfeiture was unconstitutionally instituted to corrupt cops by tempting them to steal assets from anyone and place the financial burden of regaining your property legally through our corrupt judiciary. Had it been “criminal” asset forfeiture, the cops would have to go first go through the system and get a conviction. It’s part of the NWO agenda,
Yes, they are quite happy being backward.
Not all of us are backward… its not like this was something made law or a will of the people or anything. Actually, there was a bill that probably didn’t pass to reign in civil forfeiture (authored by Loveless) this session. However if my whole family didn’t live here I would be as far away from Oklahoma as I could get.
Wait, and the people of Oklahoma aren’t storming the palace?
You (and, sadly, us here in Canada) let them get away with it this far…. now they’re going full out. Same with everything else, the elites are winning, step by step…. until the will to truly fight is strong enough, we’re screwed, 🙁 We have civil asset forfeiture here in Canada too, not to this extreme yet… but if this starts a precedent, it could spread first throughout the US and then worldwide. Civil asset forfeiture was a horrific idea that should NEVER have been allowed to be put into practice. I was disturbed to find even here in Canada they have it. This is going to harm alot of people and it will spread.
Attorneys need to go after the manufacturer of this “system” and drive them into bankruptcy.
Now there is a good idea!
Why are they doing this? It is part of the plan to bankrupt everyone except the elites. It is part of Agenda 21. If this is not checked this will be used to impoverish us all. Do you think it is a coincidence this is coming out at the same time as the cashless society?
Dude… If the Judas Class in D.C. hadn’t raped my retirement, I’d have left this NATION! It’s like Oklahoma all over. Staying out of OK is a good start but if you got what they want….you are f**ked in any state of this brand-new “kosher” oligarchy.
BlackJackk77 – you just got 21. Nice sum up.
Its all about Probable Cause .
At one time it required certain evidence of a crime for Probable Cause to be exercised.
Now Probable Cause means simply if there is something worth taking, take it.
The time has again come where traveling in well armed caravans is best to deter roadside ruffians.
I wonder something (an unintended consequence of this) if when the police use this card scanner and they steal monies from your account and they reduce your balance too low for automatic withdrawals, then who will be responsible for the overdraft charges that banks love to keep re-assessing you with? Will the police department pay those overdraft fees, or is that yet another institution joining in on the rape of us? Police take one half and the bank takes the other. Sweet.
and this from the article:
“”“If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we’ve done that in the past,” Vincent added.””
Is “MY MONEY IS PAYMENT FOR MY LABOR” not legitimate enough? Liars, all of them. Is stealing a legitimate reason to take something that belongs to another? (I stole this so it legitimately becomes mine)?
Will police be charged for possession of stolen property now? Who will charge them? Who will convict them? Who will fight them?
ERAD=Electronic ‘Recovery’ and ‘Access’ Data Machine?!?!?!? Really??? More like…
Electronic REQUISITION and APPROPRIATIONS via Data Machine.
Just another venue provided to facilitate the transition of licentious governmental powers to totalitarian mobsters.
WOW – one of the SICKEST, most illegal things I’ve heard cops doing lately……………and that’s a lot. cheers
This can be stopped. Contact your congressional representative, and tell them to support Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s resolution, the Due Process Act (H.R. 5283). Do it TODAY!