Owe a couple of hundred bucks on some lousy credit card, and you find yourself in the join because of it? Impossible? Seemingly not. While BP hire uniformed cops to keep civilians from seeing the worst of the oil disaster, corporate collection agencies are now using law enforcement to both persecute and prosecute folks in debt. (Which, these days, may be most of us.) The pretext is usually a failure to show up at a court hearing.
"The law enforcement system has unwittingly become a tool of the debt collectors," said Michael Kinkley, an attorney in Spokane, Wash., who has represented arrested debtors. "The debt collectors are abusing the system and intimidating people, and law enforcement is going along with it." How often are debtors arrested across the country? No one can say. No national statistics are kept, and the practice is largely unnoticed outside legal circles. "My suspicion is the debt collection industry does not want the world to know these arrests are happening, because the practice would be widely condemned," said Robert Hobbs, deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center in Boston. Debt collectors defend the practice, saying phone calls, letters and legal actions aren't always enough to get people to pay.” (Click here for long article)
Click here for rather obvious (and colorized) Elvis
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