The Washington Post reports on a change to the Federal civil forfeiture program:
The Department of Justice announced this week that it’s suspending a controversial program that allows local police departments to keep a large portion of assets seized from citizens under federal law and funnel it into their own coffers.
The “equitable-sharing” program gives police the option of prosecuting asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law. Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize — even if the people they took from are never charged with a crime.
The DOJ is suspending payments under this program due to budget cuts included in the recent spending bill.
Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog takes excited note:
Nearly a year ago, then-Attorney General Eric Holder took some initial steps to curtail civil-forfeiture programs, but this latest move was less the result of policy preferences and more a result of fiscal concerns: Congress cut the Justice Department’s budget.
Nevertheless, we’re talking about a status quo in which law enforcement takes and often keeps “cash and property from people who are never convicted – and in many cases, never charged – with wrongdoing.” And at least for now, this practice will be less common.
The Institute of Justice‘s Lee McGrath notes:
“Many police, sheriffs and prosecutors want to circumvent state laws because outsourcing forfeiture litigation to the federal government is lucrative” said Lee McGrath, Legislative Counsel at the Institute for Justice, “State lawmakers should enact an anti-circumvention provision that respects federalism and refocuses law enforcement’s attention on stopping crime by allowing only seizures greater than $50,000 to be forfeited under federal law.”
Some police are not happy. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“This is going to have a huge impact on police departments not only in St. Louis but around the country,” St. Louis Chief Sam Dotson said Wednesday. “It is an inconsistent message from the president whose focus is on 21st Century Policing, and yet this happened without having a serious conversation about how this will impact local law enforcement.”
I’m not excited, as this change in forfeiture policy is not motivated by principle, but by a random unfortunate reality. Until elected officials take up the idea that forfeiture is nothing more than judging a suspect to be guilty without trial, it’s very difficult to see this as nothing more than a temporary stop to one program amongst a suite of programs clearly built on a notion at odds with a basic principle of our country. Let either party decide to fund the program properly and the injustice returns.
Mr. McGrath suggests a lower limit before forfeiture can be invoked, which is interesting, but I would suggest that simply the knowledge that the funds exist at the time of the arrest should be enough that a law could be written indicating the funds must be available for forfeiture IF the trial is lost.
And for all those police agencies who depend on forfeiture for funding? They should go to the proper taxing authorities and tell them to stop living off the poor and others who cannot afford to sue for the return of their funds, and raise taxes appropriately. If it’s a choice between legalized theft from those who cannot defend themselves, and raising taxes, stop wetting yourselves and do what’s necessary – raise taxes on those who have been benefiting and can afford to pay them.
