Armed robbers held a family at gun point and took their belongings

My first response: you sure it wasnt the police?

If a robber breaks in steals your stufd thats home invasion armed robbery major crime.

If police bust in kill your dog steal your plants and your belongings thats just business as usual.

I fail to see a difference.

I still don't understand why the courts have ruled in favor of asset forfeiture. It seems to be a pretty clear violation of the fourth amendment.

If you can't trust the police...

but they are working very hard to catch up.

The police are often tools of the dominant gang, in some cases "lawful" businesses like money-laundering banks, pharmaceutical corporations, and many unlawful groups that happen to be cooperating with with our sketchier, least transparent government agencies.

There's a lot of dirt in the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, the U.S. military, and other alphabet soup agencies.

The police are in many ways the foot soldiers.

The "War on Drugs" especially, is the face of something much uglier.

A reasonable response to drug problems is to treat addiction as a medical issue, not a criminal problem.

But that takes the money out of the game, for both the drug gangster bad guys and the law-enforcement-prison-industry "good" guys who are in no way making this world a better place.