Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture

[BrentWil]

Hello. I am new here. Long time viewer, just never joined. What made me join is that I wanted to get your opinion on Civil Asset Forfeiture.

I found this video.

video

This article below gives you the basics. If you click the link you can see the full study.

Article Link

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture
By Marian R. Williams, Ph.D.
Jefferson E. Holcomb, Ph.D.
Tomislav V. Kovandzic, Ph.D.
Scott Bullock

Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property.

Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture chronicles how state and federal laws leave innocent property owners vulnerable to forfeiture abuse and encourage law enforcement to take property to boost their budgets. The report finds that by giving law enforcement a direct financial stake in forfeiture efforts, most state and federal laws encourage policing for profit, not justice.

Policing for Profit also grades the states on how well they protect property owners—only three states receive a B or better. And in most states, public accountability is limited as there is little oversight or reporting about how police and prosecutors use civil forfeiture or spend the proceeds.

Federal laws encourage even more civil forfeiture abuse through a loophole called “equitable sharing” that allows law enforcement to circumvent even the limited protections of state laws. With equitable sharing, law enforcement agencies can and do profit from forfeitures they wouldn’t be able to under state law.

It’s time to end civil forfeiture. People shouldn’t lose their property without being convicted of a crime, and law enforcement shouldn’t be able to profit from other people’s property.

So simply question. Is this a correct use of state power? Is it possible to change?

[BrentWil]

1. I am a little disappointed no one seems interested in this..

Just because most of the abuse is at the local level and not the national, doesn't mean it still doesn't suck. No one takes offense to this? Anyone wish to defend it?

[TheKentuckian]

10. I'm very interested and obviously there should be no profit motive or any cousin of such

in law enforcement. I don't hold with the state confiscating anything.

[MagickMuffin]

2. This has been happening with the WOD for a long long time

Case in point Donald Scott was murdered by the Feds i.e. DEA and other cohorts.

The raid

Early on the morning of October 2, 1992, 31 officers from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Border Patrol, National Guard and Park Service entered the Scott's 200-acre (0.81 km2) ranch. They planned to arrest Scott for allegedly running a 4,000-plant marijuana plantation. When deputies broke down the door to Scott's house, Scott's wife would later tell reporters, she screamed, "Don't shoot me. Don't kill me." That brought Scott staggering out of the bedroom, bleary-eyed from a cataract operation -- holding a .38 caliber Colt snub-nosed revolver over his head.<4> When he emerged at the top of the stairs (note: this was a one-story residence), holding his gun over his head, the officers told him to lower the gun. As he did, they shot him to death. According to the official report, the gun was pointed at the officers when they shot him.

Despite a subsequent search of Scott's ranch using helicopters, dogs, searchers on foot, and a high-tech Jet Propulsion Laboratory device for detecting trace amounts of sinsemilla, no marijuana -- or any other illegal drug -- was found.


The fallout

Scott's widow, the former Frances Plante, along with four of Scott's children from prior marriages, subsequently filed a $100 million wrongful death suit against the county and federal government. For eight years the case dragged on, requiring the services of 15 attorneys and some 30 volume binders to hold all the court documents. In January 2000, attorneys for Los Angeles County and the federal government agreed to settle with Scott's heirs and estate for $5 million, even though the sheriff's department still maintained its deputies had done nothing wrong.

Michael D. Bradbury, the District Attorney of Ventura County conducted an investigation into the raid and the aftermath, issuing a report on the events leading up to and on October 2, 1992. He concluded that asset forfeiture was a motive for the raid.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department issued their own report in response, clearing everyone involved of wrong doing while California Attorney General Dan Lungren criticized District Attorney Bradbury. Sheriff Spencer sued D.A. Bradbury for defamation in response to the report. The court ruled in favor of Michael Bradbury and ordered Sheriff Spencer to pay $50,000 in Bradbury's legal bills.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_P._Scott


There are countless other cases, but this one came to mind.

[BrentWil]

3. Well..

Not that what you wrote isn't bad, but the article is more about the ability of police to seize property without finding someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. THey can sue your property, and if they find that most of the evidence shows that it was involved in a crime, you lose it. It doesn't matter if you even had control over your property at the time.

[MagickMuffin]

5. It seems to me my example is exactly what your OP was about

My post is about the law enforcers taking someone's life without proof of a crime. Scott was killed by authorities that wanted his land.

"Additional evidence which was not included in our report but released to Los Angeles County Sheriff Block and select others as part of the investigation file supports the conclusion that forfeiture of the property was at least one of the motivating factors for obtaining the search warrant. On September 2, 1992, at a briefing conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department regarding the investigation of the Trail's End Ranch, officers present received documents which included a property appraisal statement of the Trail's End Ranch and a parcel map of the area. Both of these documents are attached. DEA Special Agent Charles A. Stowell, who made the aerial flyover, made a notation on the parcel map indicating that the property encompassed 200 acres and that 80 acres "in the area" had recently sold for $800,000.

We can find no reason why law enforcement officers who were investigating suspected narcotics violations would have any interest in the value of the Trail's End Ranch or the value of property sold in the same area other than ff they had a motive to forfeit that property. ..."

http://www.fear.org/scott.html

Again, CAF's are most common in the WOD, because it is rather easy to take one's property without ever charging someone with a crime. And the tactics enforcers use by breaking into someone's home in the wee hours of the morning, screaming and shouting, adds to the confusion the homeowners experience upon waking, with the bonus of becoming a casualty in the chaos of a home invasion.


Interesting links, thx for sharing. I'm sure there are probably a lot of people who do not realize this is happening in our country but also around the world. My state received a D- which didn't surprise me in the least.


:hi:

[BrentWil]

7. I agree...

I do not know how this should be a sixth amendment issue. The fact that it isn't, shows how wrapped the legal system is. I agree with my libertarian bothers on this one. Law enforcement should only focus on stopping other people from hurting me. Nothing else. Certainly not funding itself with theft.

Sorry about not reading your post fully. I did what I thought you had done, with is assume that I knew what the post was about by reading a few lines. I apologies.

[MagickMuffin]

9. It appears our Bill of Rights only apply to certain types of people

No one seemed that concerned that our Fourth Amendment was being abused all during the 80's and 90's. No one paid much attention to the details, because well let's face it, as long as it involved those pesky "drug dealers" who cared if law enforcers busted down your door without a warrant, or pulled you over on the road and searched your vehicle without a warrant.

There are countless stories out there about law enforcers raiding the wrong house and in the process killing the occupant.

Yeppers, it wasn't until Bush and his illegal wiretaps that people started paying attention. Then IT mattered.


I posted about this invasion of our 4th Amendment rights being abused during the wiretapping scandal. However, they never generated much interest.



Also right now I'm trying to get my neighbor returned to her home after being abducted by the APS. If they decide to keep her the County and State will confiscate her property, along with the bank.

[BrentWil]

13. That is an overstatement

It is a bit of the an over reach to say NO one cared. The ACLU, Libertarians, and certain liberals have been concerned about this for a long time. It is just the numbers are small and this has always been a "back burner issue"

[TexasObserver]

4. recommend

[BrentWil]

17. Thanks..

[Political Heretic]

6. I am very interested.

Thanks for bringing up a really important topic that I don't think many people have often thought about. Good link resource too.

[BrentWil]

8. Thanks..

I don't think many people think about it. Conservatives talk alot about a profit motivation for business. It is interesting what happens when the same motivation is given to cops.

[madmusic]

11. K&R

[BrentWil]

18. THanks..

How does Noah's boat get more attention?

[Flaneur]

12. Asset forfeiture is a real problem.

It distorts policing so that it is about generating revenue, not fighting crime.

The article links to a study released a couple of weeks ago, which very handily looks at the ways all the different states handle asset forfeiture. Check out your state.

[BrentWil]

14. It is rather amazing..

Here is another article on the subject.... http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/looting-of-america.html

It kind of reminds me of the amount of police work that goes into a car break in and drugs. One crime has a victim, but no profit and the other has no victim but chances for huge profits. Guess which takes precedent. I have had my car broken into a few times. You are lucky if they come out to file a police report.

[NaturalHigh]

15. K and R.

[BrentWil]

16. Full disclosure...

I came across the study because I enjoy Reason TV and hit and run. Reason TV Hit and Run I am not saying I agree with everything on the site, but I think Hit and Run is a very good blog and they do some interesting stuff. Well I googled "policing for profit the abuse of civil asset forfeiture" and found this discussion on the Sean Hannity Website. http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=1923631">Civil Asset Forfeiture on Hannity Site. No one there defended it besides one person. I wanted to see what would happen if I took the same argument and put it here. So, I basically copied to OP from the Hannity site, and posted it here.

So now is the bigger question. If posters on the SEAN HANNITY website AND the DU agree that this is bad, why the HELL can't we get rid of it? Is it simple apathy?

As one person on the Hannity site put it, this isn't about left or right. It is about right and wrong. With that being the case, why can't we change these laws?

[BrentWil]

19. No one finds this interesting..

At All?

[Lance_Boyle]

21. We can't change the laws because to do so would be perceived as 'weak on crime.'

Doesn't matter how many conservatives and liberals agree - we elect people who will *never* risk appearing "soft on crime" by sticking their necks out on the issue. If a D raised the issue, his R opponent would have "he's soft on crime!" commercials out the next day. Same thing on the other side if an R raised the issue - her opponent would nail her with it. This is a prime example of politics getting in the way of governance.

[BrentWil]

22. Can someone not explain what is going on to the public?

I mean, once the facts are in hand, who supports it?

[BrentWil]

20. Kick..

One last time. I think the issue is important, but I now understand that there will never be much hope of changing it by public outrage.