More News From The Place Where England Used To Be

Seen at Say Uncle.

You have cash. You put your cash in a safe deposit box. The government takes it by force without notice to or consent by either you OR the safe deposit box site owner. The cash is now property of the Crown, unless you can prove that it was carried by your grandfather across Europe as he fled without papers from the Nazi uprising, and settled in London under an assumed name.

Welcome to the Brave New World of the United Kingdom, where the people, liberated from the danger of their own personal, private guns, cannot effectively protest this sort of treatment of OVER 6,700 safe deposit box owners.

These are the sorts of stories which, in America, might end up with a few perforated crania at our equivalent of Scotland Yard, and a general apology and reversal of the government's evil actions.

In UK, the police have dug in their heels, hoping that the 90% of people whose valuables were in safe deposit boxes were legitimately-gotten, will just shut up and go away. A few highlights (there is MUCH more in the linked article):

"A Hindu priest described how his family's valuables had been carried in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'. Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come from.'"

"Lawyer Sara Teasdale, of City practice Roiter Zucker, whose client had kept more than £900,000 in his box at the vaults in Edgware as cash flow for his business leasing black cabs, said: 'The police are "deep-pocketing" - hauling people through a protracted legal process that they know is so costly that most will roll over.'"

"'This is a remarkable and untenable case of guilt by association' that trampled on rights to privacy enshrined by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. This guarantees all individuals the right to privacy, barring states from intruding unless serious crimes have been committed. Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but they had five crates [of legal documents] belonging to [their client]."

" . . . law that specifically stipulated 'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would later prove to be criminal."

"Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met's history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of boxes seized. Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. . . ."

But VFD! The Police will eventually return all the legitimately-owned goods, right? I mean, they wouldn't STEAL from the boxes! They were on film for crying out loud!

Yeah, right. One guy who was missing a nice car's worth of cash and a bit of jewelery finally got the film. There was a gap in the film several seconds long, after which the film resumed from a different camera at a different angle.

But VFD! The Police wouldn't harass innocent people, would they?

"One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000 cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an official complaint. 'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them my books.' His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 officers. 'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer, everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond earrings.'"

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This is going to cost the Crown millions more pounds to contest the legitimate lawsuits brought by righteously-indignant property owners than it will have netted in forfeited assets. The fun part is, according to the minutes of a 2008 Police meeting, they were looking to fix a budget problem with the seized assets.

Fail.

Liberty? What's that? Rights? Sure, the Crown has some. You? You want rights? In England?