-By Warner Todd Huston
A group called the Institute for Justice (http://www.ij.org/) is doing yeoman’s work alerting everyone to the simply un-American powers that police agencies across the country have been afforded by an out-of-control government. Police agencies have been given ever increasing stormtrooper-like powers to steal your property and assets because they merely suspect you might have gotten it by illegal means. All across the country, from your local Barney Fife’s all the way to your favorite G-Men, police agencies are stealing private property with no trial, no jury, even no actual charges filed in many cases.
The IJ has published a great and ominous report on the abuse of forfeiture laws that is a must read.
Now, the germ of this theft is located in the RICOH-styled laws that were created to materially punish drug dealers outside of the result of long court battles. The initial idea was that drug dealers would be financially devastated as soon as they were apprehended. Cars, homes, money, investments, all summarily taken by what ever policing agency was fortunate enough to hit the jackpot by arresting a drug dealer.
Certainly few people have any sympathy for drug dealers and so, with little protest by voters, these sorts of forfeiture laws spread across the land very quickly. But like anything and everything government does, evil quickly follows the good idea. Road to hell, and all.
This quite un-American power needs to be stripped from our policing agencies. It might seem like a boring subject, but this is as perfect an example of American citizens losing their freedom as one can find. It must be stopped.
From IJ:
Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. With civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your property and use it to fund their budgets—all without charging you with a crime. Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but with civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent—and law enforcement has a huge incentive to police for profit, not justice.
If police suspect that you committed a crime, they can arrest you and put you on trial. At that trial, prosecutors must prove you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
But if police suspect your car was involved in a crime, they can take it, sell it and, in most places, pocket the proceeds to pad their budgets. They need not prove you committed any crime—or even arrest you—to take your property away.
Welcome to the upside-down world of civil asset forfeiture.
With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent to get it back.And because most state and federal laws allow police and prosecutors to pocket the proceeds, they have a big incentive to pursue profits, not justice.
How big? In 1986, the Justice Departments forfeiture fund took in 94 million dollars. Now it has more than a billion. State and local agencies receive forfeiture funds, too—but we don’t know how much because most states don’t publicly report on forfeiture.
No surprise—abuse is rampant. One New York police department spent forfeiture funds on food, gifts and entertainment. In Georgia, forfeiture funds paid for football tickets for a DAs office. In Louisiana, cops used funds to pay for ski trips to Aspen. And a DA in Texas used forfeiture dollars to buy TV ads for his re-election campaign.
Meanwhile, citizens are seeing cash, cars and other property taken away for the flimsiest of reasons. Carrying too much cash? Police can accuse you of selling drugs or laundering money and seize it, no conviction or even arrest required.
An Institute for Justice study grades state laws on how well they protect people from wrongful forfeitures. Only three states receive a B or better. The rest range from mediocre to awful—and so does federal law.
Worse, a federal legal loophole allows police and prosecutors to bypass state protections and keep pocketing forfeiture money. IJ’s research shows that the easier and more profitable these laws make forfeiture, the more it is used and abused.
Its time to end civil forfeiture. People shouldn’t have their property taken away without being convicted of a crime. And law enforcement shouldn’t be policing for profit
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site/blog for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Comments are closed.