In U.K., safety deposit boxes raided by police
Scary article:
The raid that rocked the Met: Why gun and drugs op on 6,717 safety deposit boxes could cost taxpayer a fortune
Get this: everyone had to explain how they legally obtained the assets in their box, be it jewelry or cash; otherwise it was confiscated. Can you prove that the money in your wallet is related to your ATM receipt?
The economic angle is here:
What we're seeing is gov't protecting its own, in particular salaries and pensions that are at risk due to the economic downturn. For example, Chicago has sold its parking enforcement right to a for-profit corporation, and now people there are routinely ticketed for parking legally (can they prove it?). Now Chicago is considering selling its water rights to a for-profit corp. Bellevue has put in some speed-limit cameras but conveniently there's no sign telling you your current speed as they have elsewhere. Since a for-profit corp. runs the cameras I don't trust them to not lie about my speed. Tickets were $4K on the first day of operation.
The raid that rocked the Met: Why gun and drugs op on 6,717 safety deposit boxes could cost taxpayer a fortune
Get this: everyone had to explain how they legally obtained the assets in their box, be it jewelry or cash; otherwise it was confiscated. Can you prove that the money in your wallet is related to your ATM receipt?
The economic angle is here:
Wow. Call me a conspiracy nut, but articles like this are why I don't trust our own gov't to not freeze & devalue all bank accounts (or at least below a certain value) when push comes to shove. I realize that the U.K. is arguably more of a police state than here, but I don't think we're far behind. The lesson here is, when facing another depression it's prudent to protect assets in ways difficult for the gov't to confiscate.And yet when it first kicked off, one of the things that had endeared [Operation] Rize to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'
What we're seeing is gov't protecting its own, in particular salaries and pensions that are at risk due to the economic downturn. For example, Chicago has sold its parking enforcement right to a for-profit corporation, and now people there are routinely ticketed for parking legally (can they prove it?). Now Chicago is considering selling its water rights to a for-profit corp. Bellevue has put in some speed-limit cameras but conveniently there's no sign telling you your current speed as they have elsewhere. Since a for-profit corp. runs the cameras I don't trust them to not lie about my speed. Tickets were $4K on the first day of operation.