Inquiring minds want to know…what was the starting figure on these forfeitures? “After all the bills were paid the balance was made available”???

Did the seize $50 million? Pay out $49 in legal and lawyers bills?? And then have $1 million left??

Does every picture of the mayor automatically have to draw some lewd or disrespectful comment?

With the amount of cash, property and items seized in the PG area from grow ops etc over the past 12 months I am surprised at what I feel is a very small grant value coming back to our community.

I see a very large RCMP Christmas party coming this year!!

This Civil Forfeiture program is BY FAR the worst law on the books.

Organized crime has no equity in the property they use for grow-ops. Most of the seizures are for small unsophisticated grows that someone has in their basements.

Older people who have no previous records are losing their homes of many years because they cannot afford to fight the Civil Forfeiture Office.

The way the law reads is totally weighted in favour of the very government that created it. The Charter of Rights doesn’t apply, Legal Aid does not qualify, and there is no proof needed. The Police send their information to the CFO, and it is taken as the absolute truth. The defendant has to prove they’re wrong, if they can afford it.

The defendant could be found not guilty of the criminal charges, or they could have been dropped, or even no charges been laid. No matter.

It was supposed to combat gangs and organized crime, instead they’re on a runaway. They just keep hiring more lawyers to deal with more cases.

Any politician who will work to change parts of this law to protect the ordinary person, will get my vote.

I would expect that money from civil forfeiture comes from all seizures made, not just grow ops and if you would go back and read the law again it mentions the burden of proof being “a balance of probabilities” which is the same as civil court (how did you miss that part if you are able to read? Its actually quite simple to understand)so to say there is no proof needed is pretty inaccurate. Hey opine, in case you haven’t noticed, it takes way longer than 12 months to push anything through our court system and I doubt they dish out the money that way anyway (ie: money from PG goes back to PG). I get that some people love to have their opinions heard but man, I wish they would base those opinions on REAL information.

Gotta agree with JB: after all, there are already so many possible ways to direct disrespect at the mayor, given her arrogance and disregard for the electorate. Oh, and that “subway” thing is more properly known as frotage. If you’re going to suggest an impropriety, might as well use the proper terminology.

RealityTime:
Yes, seizures are not just from grow ops, but there’s far too many from small grow ops that wouldn’t even produce anything worthwhile. There should be some criteria for seizures, such as number of plants, sophistication of grow-op, etc. Or better yet, a conviction.

And yes, I’m able to read, and yes I read all about balance of probabilities, but if they can’t afford $50,000 to go to court to get a judges “balance of probabilities”, then it is definitely weighted in favour of the government who has unlimited resources. It is not just the same as civil court, it IS Civil Court. And I repeat, there is no proof needed, unless I don’t know what the word means.

Very few of these cases go to court, only one has been won by the defendant, and it was over an older pickup. Then the civil forfeiture appealed the decision, as if the defendant can once again afford to go to court. Luckily, the appeal court wouldn’t hear the appeal.

It is a terrible law, and it does target grow-ops. You don’t see anyone in possession of stolen property losing their places, do you? It was brought in to combat the gangs, but too many others get caught up in it. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out whether or not they are gang-related.

It rewards sloppy police work. If they don’t have the evidence to even lay charges, then they just take your house. End of problem. We’ll show them.

When the power of the state is used against individual citizens, the standard should be higher than the balance of probabilities used in true civil matters. The idea that civil forfeiture is a civil matter is a legal fiction. In effect, the state is engaged in the prosecution of crime, but because the case is nominally against the property rather than its owner, we pretend that it is a civil rather than criminal matter. As my2bits says, that allows the state to get away with imposing what are in effect often very large fines without providing legal counsel for the defendant and with a very low standard of proof.

The only good thing that I can say about our civil forfeiture law is that it doesn’t give the money to the law enforcement agencies that initiate it. In many US states, that’s the way it works, so the police have powerful incentives to seize property on flimsy excuses. Thank goodness we don’t have that sort of corruption.