You should take a civics class while you’re still in school, and I don’t mean the car. Eminent domain has NOTHING to do with this case. And just because California is a blue state doesn’t mean everything they do is “liberal.” If you’re trying to qualify things into the right-left spectrum, then yes, this actually is on the conservative side, though a bit extreme. These people were caught with stolen items and therefore have no rightful claim to them, whether they bought them or not. Realistically they should have confiscated just the stolen pieces rather than having the entire car destroyed, unless everything had come up stolen.