wait :-)

This really took effect during the war on drugs. Essentially, the government is saying that the property committed a crime (or could be used to commit a crime) and there is little recourse to reclaim the property (usually it costs more money to reclaim the cash than the actual cash that was seized). If a narcotics agent has the opportunity to follow the drugs or cash, they will always follow the cash, as cash seizures will fund their operations. They are more in the cash seizure business and not the drug stopping business.

I never understood how this is legal. It seems to be a clear violation of the 5th Amendment. "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

As someone who works directly with the agencies that perform these kind of forfeitures I can assure you that the reporting on these methods is extremely one sided. Journalists go out of their way to contact our agencies, find the worst examples, and then act like they are the ONLY examples.

The money is never seized and just kept. It goes through a judicial process. It is tied to money laundering, or structuring, or drugs, etc. A judge (not the investigating agency) then forfeits the money after a legal proceeding, or the person walks away from the money/vehicle/house, or it is returned.

Equitable Sharing does not happen until AFTER everything is done. It does not do anything for the police to seize money that cannot be tied to a crime because we end up having to return it at OUR cost (storage for vehicles and houses, public noticing of funds). The agency gets nothing if this happens.

Sorry to go on a rant, I've just been watching this coverage and it just undercuts all the good that the program does. Do innocents get snagged in the net? Yes. Does the government do everything it can to avoid that? We could do better. But it is not this rampant "the government just goes out and takes what it wants" nonsense that is being reported.

While this may be true in your State, not every State has a simple judicial process to reclaim seized property. Government seizure of property almost always lands in favor of the government. You could make an argument, that this is because the government is only seizing assets from guilty parties. In reality, it is more likely that the seizure policies target the poor, under-educated, and minorities, who are more likely to be victims of bad government practices/policy. Legal fees to reclaim seized property can easily reach over $5,000. With such a high legal cost, there is definitely an incentive to seize any property possible. There are too many departments that have become dependent on the seizure revenue. Police are meant to protect people and not profit from them. Violating free citizenry is not a good policy.

See this is the confusion I'm talking about. I work on the federal level and actually monitor what the local agencies do. When funds are seized in this way there is no complicated legal process to get the funds back. In fact, claims and petitions (forms available online) for the return of seized property are encouraged because it gives us the ability to focus on the individual requesting them back. You'd probably be surprised to find that the majority of bulk funds seized in traffic stops are NOT claimed by the driver (who wants nothing to do with the funds now). If no one claims them then yes, the government administratively 'arrests' the funds. If anyone would like to claim the funds, the case becomes judicial and evidence is gathered as to where the funds originated, what they were being used for, and who was involved. A judge is the final decider.

These are not the seizures of 500 and 1000 dollars that the 'poor' happen to have in their vehicles at the time of a traffic stop. These seizures are of bags of cash 40-50 sometimes 100k at a time being driven across state lines. So are they poor or not?

These people are drug dealers who can't put their money in a bank. Are there some innocents? Sure. We just returned money to a guy who was carrying cash to purchase a restaurant (possibly supplies?). Why he needed cash we'll never know. Nonetheless, he won and we paid the legal fees. Such is the cost of fighting crime. No sharing to the seizing agency.

My point is that the news is focusing on these outliers instead of focusing on the Al Capones and multi-million dollar drug cartels that are caught driving around their illegal funds across the country because they can't use the banking system without getting caught. Why? Because that makes for exciting news, where the jack-booted government is comin' to get ya!

It seems easy to fix - just make sure the seized assets don't benefit the cops or prosecutors in any way.

https://www.ij.org/part-i-policing-for-profit-2

Check out Table 9 for the cash seizures of Main & Virginia. "One-half of all Virginia currency forfeitures were for less than $614 to $1,288, depending on the year under examination." The average value is around $2k, but the much lower median values show that a few large seizures are masking a higher number of low cash seizures.

I find it hard to believe you that the majority of seizures are for large sums of cash. There is very little transparency and most States (nor the Federal Government) publishes useful data.

From your article:

"But these data represent less than half of the states, span different years and cover different levels and types of law enforcement agencies from state to state. The result is that the sample is simply too small, and the quality of the data too spotty, to be able to come to any solid conclusions."

But a conclusion you've come to because 'you find it hard to believe'.

There are several reasons why this data isn't published (cases ongoing, unknown possible accomplices, etc.) but the main reason is because doubters, the media, or anyone can make the data say whatever they want. Want to say the police are doing it for profit? Sure! Did they use the word profit because it was inflammatory? Profit is what a business wants and gets and the funds are used to the benefit of a person. Equitable sharing is monitored and required to be spent on the furthering of law enforcement. No one profits from it, no one gets a bonus in their paycheck.

Show me a source that proves you right. You stated that only large sums of drug dealer cash is seized, but I was able to find two States that published information showing that the majority of their seizures were small. I agree that two States is too small of a sample, but the problem is that there is a complete lack of transparency. The data simply does not exist to the public. The DOJ publishes data on a composite level. There was $1.9B in cash seized last year, of which $774M was in sums greater than a million dollars. How much of the remaining $1.2B was small time cash and with how many people? The DOJ doesn't provide this info. They also do not provide any racial data that could show potential racism in the system.

Argument from authority. He doesn't need to provide facts! He's intimately familiar with the day to day of it! Just believe him.

Wow, just wow. So an article which in itself declares that it doesn't have enough data and your own bias that the government is up to something (possibly racist!) BECAUSE of its lack of transparency on the subject means the media (total bastion of truth right there) is being completely honest and fair on the civil forfeiture program...

I commented because a large push is happening against this specific government function (which I just coincidentally happen to be involved with) which I believe is biased and government fear-mongering.

True I can't provide you a source (or at least not an accurate public one). Yes, you'd have to just take my word for it. It is possible that I'm a covert agent sent to convert the mindless sheep... one porn blog at a time?

I shared because I thought the post, the information within, and your comments on the subject were lacking in critical details that would be apparent if you were closer to the situation. I was not trying to argue from authority. Believe me or not that's your prerogative.

There are no massive government conspiracies, trust me, we're not that organized.

Parallax.

Which leads of course to why there are "Al Capones" and "Multi-Million Dollar Drug Cartels" able to operate at all... is it because there is a product in demand that they are providing? Is it because, like the actual Al Capone, prohibition causes the scarcity of a product to drive up the demand?

The War on Drugs has failed, and hard. If it wasn't directly profiting the CIA to continue it would have been shut down decades ago. This bullshit about seizing property because they are "illegal proceeds" is a symptom of the greater issue, and using a shittier law to justify this shitty one doesn't frankly help your case. You can blame John Oliver for the backlash, but much like this asshat Gruber and the ACA, it isn't so much that people in power do things unscrupulously, it is that certain people have been caught saying it out loud, and the general populace is now enraged. Good luck tamping our the embers.

...

Those kids want to SWAT for chaotic good? Go after this Connelly asshat.