Policing for Profit. Tim Sandefur Talks to Armstrong & Getty

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Civil Asset Forfeiture, Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, Goldwater Institute, Rita Wilson
2. 6:00 – 9:00: Civil Asset Forfeiture, Fourth Amendment, Goldwater Institute
3. 9:00 – 12:00: The Permission Society, Eminent Domain, Goldwater Institute
4. 12:00 – 15:00: Goldwater Institute

Notable quotes from "Policing for Profit. Tim Sandefur Talks to Armstrong & Getty"

• Indeed tim the lawyer sanderfer is the vice president for litigation at the goldwater institute he's also written a number of interesting books including the ascent of jacob bronowski frederick douglass self-made man.

  about Goldwater Institute · at 1:13

• Up but we want to pay heed to what you've been working on specifically these days which is civil asset forfeiture something a lot of people don't even understand exists oh yeah and i don't blame them because it's so.

  about Civil Asset Forfeiture · at 2:44

• Mob well how in the name of james madison does this score with the fourth amendment it absolutely does not but what happened was this is actually a very old legal principle in fact it was.

  about Fourth Amendment · at 8:03

• Absolutely no business doing like when we're talking about something like eminent domain or the government takes away your house and to build a shopping center there government has absolutely no business doing that whatsoever.

  about Eminent Domain · at 10:01

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Rita Wilson — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:42
  United states and the question is what the scope of that is going to be tom hanks and his wife the actress rita wilson have announced that they have both tested positive for coronavirus to keep new cases from entering our shores.
• Tom Hanks — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:42
  United states and the question is what the scope of that is going to be tom hanks and his wife the actress rita wilson have announced that they have both tested positive for coronavirus to keep new cases from entering our shores.
• Tim Sanderfer — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:34
  Favorites the permission society which was inspired by this dopey little radio show tim sanderfer how are you tim i'm great how are you guys doing i'm terrific i noticed from your twitter picture that you changed it.

Books & papers

• The Permission Society — Book · 3 mentions · first at 1:30
  In 21st america and 21st century america and one of my favorites the permission society which was inspired by this dopey little radio show tim sanderfer how are you tim i'm great how are you guys doing i'm terrific i noticed.
• The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski — Book · 1 mention · first at 1:20
  Litigation at the goldwater institute he's also written a number of interesting books including the ascent of jacob bronowski frederick douglass self-made man corner stone of liberty property rights in 21st america.
• Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man — Book · 1 mention · first at 1:23
  Interesting books including the ascent of jacob bronowski frederick douglass self-made man corner stone of liberty property rights in 21st america and 21st century america and one of my favorites the permission society.
• Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Goldwater Institute — Company · 4 mentions · first at 1:16

Concepts & topics

• Civil Asset Forfeiture — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 2:47
• Fourth Amendment — Concept · 1 mention · first at 8:06
• Eminent Domain — Concept · 1 mention · first at 10:04

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 there are now more than 1 000 cases in 38 states in washington dc the largest cluster in the country it's happening in the new york city suburb of new rochelle the national guard has been called in new states of emergency have been declared in colorado massachusetts and michigan we will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now bottom line it's going to get worse we have therefore made the assessment that kovid 19 can be characterized as a pandemic we have already lost 24 24 of our citizens we're heading towards an epidemic in the united states and the question is what the scope of that is going to be tom hanks and his wife the actress rita wilson have announced that they have both tested positive for coronavirus to keep new cases from entering our shores we will be suspending all travel from europe to the united states for the next 30 days that was a year ago today and we had no

1:00 idea how much more there was to come and um one of the things i'd like to ask tim the lawyer about is the last year in terms of personal freedom and private property since he's an expert in that and we'll get to that indeed tim the lawyer sanderfer is the vice president for litigation at the goldwater institute he's also written a number of interesting books including the ascent of jacob bronowski uh frederick douglass self-made man corner stone of liberty property rights in 21st america and 21st century america and one of my favorites the permission society which was inspired by this dopey little radio show tim sanderfer how are you tim i'm great how are you guys doing i'm terrific i noticed from your twitter picture that you changed it i think you're planning on running for office it has the look of a guy who's running for office it really does have a sort of i'm i'm running for governor kind of vibe to it

1:54 doesn't it yes it's really intentional but i just you know i thought i should update it because my my previous picture did not have my coveted long hair so you still have the beard do you i do and i have longer hair hair down past my ears at this point i really need to take care of this but you're standing in a little you're standing in a lectern in a suit and tie and like pointing and your mouth is open like you're really telling a crowd what's going on so yeah tim lawyer clearly running for office looking like a marxism my wife has put her foot down about this that if i ever run for office she will leave me so that is a wise woman so let's uh we are anxious to talk about just the the liberty the history of the last year in terms of uh liberty and how quickly we've given it up but we want to pay heed to what you've been working on specifically these days which is civil asset forfeiture something a lot of

2:52 people don't even understand exists oh yeah and and i don't blame them because it's so contrary to the basic principles of american liberty that it's it really stuns people to learn that what goes on and this is a legal principle that says that the government can take away your property on the theory that the property was involved in a crime and then just keep it without filing a charges against you and certainly without convicting you of any crime they just come in and they take the property and what happens then when they take it is that you get a little document that says hey we have your property if you want it back you have to come come down to the to the the police station you have to sue us basically and of course when you do sue them what that means is since it's technically considered a civil proceeding and since you are technically the plaintiff the fifth amendment doesn't apply which

3:45 means that you can be forced to testify against yourself and you're required to prove your innocence instead of the government having to prove your guilt so what happens is basically the government the police officers can target you take your property and then force you to come and pay to get it back well give me an example like um i get pulled over at night and they suspect me of drunk driving could they just take my car oh certainly and absolutely they could or if you just have a lot of cash in the car or if they just think that you have you know might be engaged in some sort of drug trafficking trafficking or something like that or even a relative of yours so just this week we've got a good result in a case in massachusetts where the police officers seized our client's car because her son was engaged in drug crimes allegedly and the police officers decided that she was involved somehow

4:40 or the car was involved somehow and and took it and put it in an impound lot and left it there for five years before even serving her with the paperwork wow they didn't even let they didn't even say hey by the way you can get your property back until this year when they took the property in 2015 they took this car in 2015 when she was they never accused her of being involved in a crime they've never filed charges against her let alone convicted her in court or anything like this they simply kept it and guess what when we showed up and said hey we're a bunch of lawyers and we're prepared to take this to court they backed down and gave her back the car and that happens time and time and time again the government takes this property on the on the in the assumption that you are too afraid to get it back now there's no interest in the police or there's no benefit to the police having a lot full of impounded cars

5:31 what's the incentive why is this happening a lot of the time they sell it at those police auctions and things they're also allowed to keep the the cash cash is very often still seized by the government and remember this idea is that it's supposed to be this is supposed to be a tool against big level drug kingpins right like you see like back in the olden days when you saw it on miami vice it was always there they're going to take some some big drug kingpins luxury yacht or something but the reality is that most seizures through civil asset forfeiture are very small less than 500 in most cases and most cases people are not even charged with a crime and this amounts to an enormous amount of money flowing into police departments since they're allowed to keep this money in massachusetts alone in the past 20 years it's been 327 million dollars that has been seized through asset forfeiture that

6:24 goes directly into the accounts of law enforcement on top of the tax dollars that they already get so there's reason to believe that some of it is just a profit deal absolutely we call it policing for profit because the these forfeitures pay for themselves and the prosecutors very often like to use that as an advertisement they say hey this is a great program because it pays for itself the reason why it pays for itself is because the government isn't bothering to have a lawyer actually show up in a trial court and prove the defendant guilty they're just taking the cash and pocketing it and law enforcement in this country has become truly addicted to this influx of cash to the point that many law enforcement agencies don't even bother prioritizing crimes such as rape and murder because those have no profit-making aspect they prioritize going after property from people that they say in some vague terms might somehow be

7:18 involved in a crime we had a case in tucson just a a couple months ago where the the police seized our clients jeep because his girlfriend drove the jeep to a 7-eleven in order to arrange for the sale of an ounce of marijuana and they seized his brand new jeep and when he said i want my jeep back they said well if you give us 1900 we'll give you back the jeep where did the 1900 dollars come from they just came up with that amount they just said give us a little back sheet and we'll return the jeep to you then when we wrote them a letter and said hey by the way now the guys hired a lawyer here at the goldwater institute ah they back down oh no you can you can you can have your jay back you know wow that's something so mobbed that's just the mob that's the mob well how in the name of james madison does this score with the fourth amendment it absolutely does not but what happened was this this is actually a very very

8:13 old legal principle in fact it was around in the founding fathers day and it was one of the reasons for the american revolution what happened was the british government expanded the authority of what was called admiralty courts which were supposed to be governing crimes at sea and the british government expanded their authority to allow british admiralty courts to hear cases that arose on land and what they would do is they would do just this they would seize people's property and force them to come in and prove themselves innocent of a crime and the judge got to keep a cut of it if he ruled against the guy so that's why when you read the celebration of independence the declaration of independence refers to this it says it says that the king has subjected us to a system of laws that is alien to our constitution they're talking about these admiralty courts which were engaged in asset forfeiture 200 years ago

9:01 and yet we allow it to go on in the united states today because of of course the drug war the most famous of those cases of course yar versus r which was decided in favor of our tim the lawyer sander for tim sanders the vp for litigation of goldwater institute uh jack you ready to move on to uh the last year and the incursions into person the address to the nation tonight because there's one year ago today that the who officially declared a depend i think you you can pick a variety of days as well love and liars beginning but uh as a guy who's written books and spoken and thought a lot about private property and personal freedom what's your overarching feel about this last year uh is this shocking to you that these things happen not surprising what well i would say that my overall feeling is that it's um very complicated it's a lot more complicated than people on either side really want to admit

9:58 because we're not talking about something that government has absolutely no business doing like when we're talking about something like eminent domain or the government takes away your house and to build a shopping center there government has absolutely no business doing that whatsoever but when you're talking about a pandemic and stuff obviously government does have a legitimate role in protecting people against infectious diseases and things of that sort so it's it's harder to draw clear lines but what you find is a lot of the time the government says oh well we've got this great idea so we're going to do this truly crazy wild thing based on what was originally a good idea and so you find things like in pennsylvania for example and the governor says well we're going to shut down all these businesses but by the way you can come to me and ask for an exemption and i will grant exemptions based on

10:45 purely arbitrary criteria and i'm not even going to tell you what my reasoning is as to whether or not people get exemptions and by the way my friends get exemptions but other people don't and that sort of thing and that's a real problem and so there have been lawsuits all across the country over stuff like that but those really do violate the constitution so it's hard to answer the question in the abstract one thing though i would say that is a real concern is you mentioned my book the permission society which was indeed inspired by conversations on your show especially joe likes to say whenever you hear the word permit remember that a permit that's actually a verb the government will permit you to do something and this we are sliding very quickly from a country where you are free to act unless you're harming somebody else into a permissioned society where you are not allowed to act unless the government allows you to

11:34 and when that happens then you have to satisfy the government if they may mother may i before you do whatever the thing might be and i would say california for example has has basically become the permission society where you there's virtually nothing you can do without some kind of government approval which depends on on the largely arbitrary decisions of bureaucrats at the city county state level and so forth well speaking of cal unicorn what really troubled me about the coveted response was that the there are specific statutes that describe what an emergency is and when the governor can invoke emergency powers and there has been nothing close to an emergency for many months now in most california counties and yet apparently the mechanisms for correcting that are too slow or something how is the thing here's the thing when it comes to government so government wants to protect people's

12:26 safety right so let's say that the commonwealth is pretty and this is let's say they're all being very conscientious about this let's put aside any question about bribery self-dealing anything like that let's say these people are all angels and they want to protect people's safety well the safest thing to do in almost every circumstance is nothing whatsoever right because if there there's always a risk to doing anything we call that a type 2 error as opposed to a type 1 error which is when you go and do something and it really is risky and you don't know what you're doing right a type two error is when you decide well gosh better safe than sorry and the the there's an old in fact thomas aquinas the the old philosopher used to say if if the captain's number one priority was safety he would never leave port and that's what happens when you prioritize safety over other concerns is you actually end up hurting people more

13:16 for example by withholding medical treatments that could save lives you say well i don't know if i'm going to allow people to sell this medicine because it might hurt people well yeah but it might cure more people but see the government won't get punished if it refuses permission it'll get permission if it allow if it'll get punished if it allows permission and that thing ends up hurting people then you then it's a scandal right uh well how dare you allow the sale of this dangerous medicine and that becomes a big deal but if the government refuses to allow a good medicine to go out well nobody finds out about it right it never occurs to anybody because it just never went on sale so what the government does is it's overly conservative and i i don't mean that politically conservative i mean it's temperamentally it's overly conservative it's afraid to take risks and there's no incentive to do so who

14:03 wants to be the elected official in california who stands up and says i don't know i think it's time for us to waive this state of emergency and then is wrong right they're terrified of that and so there's every incentive for keeping the state of emergency in place and there's really no mechanism for eliminating it what california and other states need to do is to have a law that says a state of emergency automatically terminates unless it is renewed by the state legislature that's where it is and california doesn't have that tim sanford vice president for litigation for the goldwater institute as always we're sitting here wishing we can talk to you all day but we really need to take a break tim really interesting stuff keep fighting a good fight thanks guys yeah kansas is doing that and every state needs to do that your your emergency powers last x number of days and then it has to be renewed by the legislature

14:49 amen brother perfect that'd be a good outcome of this whole thing more on the way armstrong

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Policing for Profit. Tim Sandefur Talks to Armstrong & Getty"?

In order: 0:00 Civil Asset Forfeiture, Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man, Goldwater Institute, Rita Wilson; 6:00 Civil Asset Forfeiture, Fourth Amendment, Goldwater Institute; 9:00 The Permission Society, Eminent Domain, Goldwater Institute; 12:00 Goldwater Institute.

What is mentioned in this Armstrong & Getty episode?

11 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Goldwater Institute, The Permission Society, Civil Asset Forfeiture, Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks, The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Policing for Profit. Tim Sandefur Talks to Armstrong & Getty"?

The episode runs 15 min; the transcript is about 2,912 words in 18 timestamped sections.

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