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Civil Asset Forfeiture

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CitizensHaveRights:
It's not often that I watch 16 minutes of HBO's political speech and think it was time well spent, but this was one of those times:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/06/john_oliver_on_civil_forfeiture_with_jeff_goldblum_he_creates_new_law_order.html

bigt8261:
I watched this the other night. I know CAF was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. Hopefully Tom McMillin will succeed slowing this in Michigan.

CitizensHaveRights:
Back in the 1980s I saw an article in Reader's Digest on the subject.
They mentioned a county in Georgia where the deputies would stop Orlando bound tourists on the freeway, and if they had more than $100 in their wallets the sheriff's department would steal it as allegedly 'related to the drug trade'.

I was pretty much a kid then, but I couldn't figure out why anybody would allow themselves to become armed robbery victims like that without putting the car in reverse and driving it over the thief 10-20 times as soon as he turned his back to return to his own car.

gryphon:
Several states are notorious for stealing money from citizens.  FL, GA, TN, TX, and LA are some that come to mind.  Cops in LA would take money and the cars if they were nice.  In Texas many cops would pick on Americans of Mexican descent, knowing they were intimidated by law enforcement.  Many couldn't speak English well and didn't know the legal system.  Some cops just pocketed the money themselves. 

One of the more famous cases in TN that comes to mind is a businessman who was traveling to Nashville and a cop took $22,500 from him that he had to purchase a car.  He even showed the cop the proof it was for the car.  It took him a long time to get the money back, and he only got it back after the news did an investigation.  And he had to sign a statement waiving his constitutional rights and promising not to sue.  And they made him drive from NJ to TN just to pick up a check.  They wouldn't mail it to him.  I could probably find the news article online.  Yep, here it is:

http://www.jrn.com/newschannel5/news/newschannel-5-investigates/policing-for-profit/265578441.html

He was never arrested.  In fact, most aren't arrested, they just take the money without proof of anything illegal and let them go.  A TV news crew did an expose on Tennessee law enforcement seizing money.  In one dashcam video they obtained, two cops from different agencies got in a (verbal) fight on the side of the interstate arguing over who was going to make the seizure as one cop pulled in front of another cop to make the stop.  One cop threatened the other.

Ha!  I just watched the video above and it contains the Reby story!

State legislators are trying to get the law changed so that any seized money cannot be kept by the arresting law enforcement agency, but must be turned over to the state for other uses (schools, etc.)  The thought is that it will cut down on false seizures just so they can keep the stolen money for themselves.

And now this just happened.  A NY cop stole $1,300 from a construction worker who took the money out from his bank account to take his wife out for a birthday celebration.  Here is the news story and cell phone video of the money grab.  You can see it.  The money has NOT been accounted for.  Supposedly it is under "investigation."

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/10/watch_nypd_cop_allegedly_take_1_000_from_construction_worker.html

gryphon:
Another couple of cases come to mind.  This might have been in PA, not sure without looking it up again, but this was a recent one.  The owners had their hotel seized because fourteen people (customers) had been arrested over the course of fifteen years there for drugs (smoking pot, etc.)  An arrest did not prompt this seizure.  The agency was going over their arrests looking for property they could justify seizing for profit, and they discovered these arrests over the course of, as I said, fifteen years. So they took the $2.1 million property.  The couple had a big fight getting it back.

One of the more egregious cases happened in California.  A retired couple owned some very valuable property that the cops wanted, so they did a no-knock at 4AM.  When they busted into the bedroom, the man thought they were being attacked by robbers and so grabbed his bedside gun.  The cops shot him dead in bed.  The agency then searched the acreage hoping to find some marijuana plants thus justifying the raid.  Of course, there weren't any.

I don't remember what the lawsuit came to on that.  This stuff happens all the time.  The problem is--as if that weren't enough--that the cops are never reprimanded, fired, or arrested themselves, and the citizens have to pay for the lawsuit.  Even if the agency's insurance covers it, the citizens pay through increased insurance costs.

Some PDs have been shut down because either they can no longer afford the cost of the insurance, or the insurer refuses to insure them any more.  Just the other day a city near Cincinnati, Lincoln Heights, OH, disbanded their PD because they had so many lawsuits they were uninsurable.  WCPO 9 Cincinnati conducted "one of the most eye-opening investigations into police corruption this year."

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