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Excerpt:
Imagine a police officer pulls you over and tells you he believes the cash you're carrying was used to in some ******* activity and--based only on that hunch--he is going to take it from you without charging you with a crime. Impossible, you think? Welcome to the down-is-up and black-is-white world of civil forfeiture, where our civil liberties and property rights are under assault.
Consider the story of Javier Gonzalez: In August 2005, Gonzalez borrowed a car from his employer in Austin, Texas, and drove to Brownsville to visit his dying aunt and to make arrangements for her funeral. He brought more than $10,000 in cash to provide for her burial. On his way, Gonzalez was pulled over for having an improperly attached license plate. When officers found the cash, they handcuffed Gonzalez and took him in for investigation. A search revealed no ***** or contraband, but officers seized the money anyway. They told Gonzalez that he could either sign away his legal right to the cash or face money-laundering charges and have the car seized - despite a lack of any evidence of criminal activity. He signed away his rights. Gonzalez was fortunate enough to be able to hire a lawyer to challenge the forfeiture and, in 2008, three years after his money was taken, it was returned. Others are not so lucky.
As outlandish as these facts seem, this happens every day across the country to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Under federal law and the laws of 42 states, *************** officials are entitled to keep most (and sometimes all) of the money and property they seize. The money goes to pay for salaries, advanced equipment and, in one Texas county, travel to Hawaii for "training." When salaries and perks are on the line, officers have a strong incentive to increase and cash in on seizures rather than seek the neutral administration of justice. Research bears out this connection: In a recently released national report entitled Policing for Profit, independent criminal justice researchers examined national forfeiture data and found clear evidence that *************** acts in pursuit of profit. And when state laws make forfeiture harder and less profitable, state and local *************** circumvent those restrictions by turning seizure cases over to federal prosecutors, who then prosecute the cases and return as much as 80 percent of forfeited proceeds back to the states.
The numbers involved are staggering. In 2008, the Department of Justice's forfeiture fund topped $1 billion. By contrast, in 1986, the year after the profit incentive was put into the law, the fund took in $93.7 million. This money does not account for the hundreds of millions seized by state *************** agencies....
Excerpt:
Imagine a police officer pulls you over and tells you he believes the cash you're carrying was used to in some ******* activity and--based only on that hunch--he is going to take it from you without charging you with a crime. Impossible, you think? Welcome to the down-is-up and black-is-white world of civil forfeiture, where our civil liberties and property rights are under assault.
Consider the story of Javier Gonzalez: In August 2005, Gonzalez borrowed a car from his employer in Austin, Texas, and drove to Brownsville to visit his dying aunt and to make arrangements for her funeral. He brought more than $10,000 in cash to provide for her burial. On his way, Gonzalez was pulled over for having an improperly attached license plate. When officers found the cash, they handcuffed Gonzalez and took him in for investigation. A search revealed no ***** or contraband, but officers seized the money anyway. They told Gonzalez that he could either sign away his legal right to the cash or face money-laundering charges and have the car seized - despite a lack of any evidence of criminal activity. He signed away his rights. Gonzalez was fortunate enough to be able to hire a lawyer to challenge the forfeiture and, in 2008, three years after his money was taken, it was returned. Others are not so lucky.
As outlandish as these facts seem, this happens every day across the country to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Under federal law and the laws of 42 states, *************** officials are entitled to keep most (and sometimes all) of the money and property they seize. The money goes to pay for salaries, advanced equipment and, in one Texas county, travel to Hawaii for "training." When salaries and perks are on the line, officers have a strong incentive to increase and cash in on seizures rather than seek the neutral administration of justice. Research bears out this connection: In a recently released national report entitled Policing for Profit, independent criminal justice researchers examined national forfeiture data and found clear evidence that *************** acts in pursuit of profit. And when state laws make forfeiture harder and less profitable, state and local *************** circumvent those restrictions by turning seizure cases over to federal prosecutors, who then prosecute the cases and return as much as 80 percent of forfeited proceeds back to the states.
The numbers involved are staggering. In 2008, the Department of Justice's forfeiture fund topped $1 billion. By contrast, in 1986, the year after the profit incentive was put into the law, the fund took in $93.7 million. This money does not account for the hundreds of millions seized by state *************** agencies....
