Growing Police State in UK Gets Worse

Casey's Daily Dispatch (10/28/2009)
"Yesterday we ran a story citing an example of the growing police state in the U.K. Well, it gets worse. One of our dear readers and regular correspondents, Sadia, alerted us to this hot-off-the-press story from The Times:

Councils Get 'Al Capone' Power to Seize Assets over Minor Offences

Draconian police powers designed to deprive crime barons of luxury lifestyles are being extended to councils, quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization) and agencies to use against the public, The Times has learnt.

The right to search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organizations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London.

The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.

. . .An 'explanatory memorandum' says that a swath of financial investigators attached to the newly empowered bodies will be accredited, trained and monitored by another quango, the National Policing Improvement Agency. The memo adds that asset seizure will result in financial rewards: 'Investigation bodies will receive a share of money recovered as additional funding to incentivize further work in recovering the proceeds of crime.'

Councils and other bodies had access to asset recovery powers before but only with the authorization and involvement of the police. Now they will be able to act independently of any police force or law enforcement agency.

The memo says councils and quangos will employ 'trained internal financial investigators' and be 'less reliant on more traditional law enforcement agencies, notably the police'. . .

If you want to read the whole story, including a list of the agencies that will receive the expanded powers, please click here.

What's happening here is that the Home Office is incentivizing prosecutors and groups of bureaucrats to seize private property by offering them the bribe of a portion of the money and other assets they seize. As it's been proven that not even the police in the U.K. can be trusted with these powers without mostly harming the innocent, I wonder how good a job these other agencies will do. Methinks they will find a criminal in almost everyone.

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