Politics

Have you ever wondered why officers like to ask how much cash someone has that they have pulled over?

Probably one of the worst laws that is easily abused (as written) in the U.S. is Civil Asset Forfeiture. A simple way to describe it is legalized robbery by law enforcement. This is one of the ways that the law essentially treats the victim (property owner) as guilty before a trial has even begun. Law enforcement does not even need to charge you with a crime to take your money.

In order to get your money back the property owner would have to sue the federal/police organization. This means spending your own time and money to fight in court to prove your innocence (rather than law enforcement having to prove you guilty).

In most cases the property owner will spend more money fighting in court than they would get back if they won their court case. In other cases, law enforcement will generally offer a small percentage of the money back.

I get that these can be useful laws when actually taking down criminal organizations, but we really need to fix the laws so that law enforcement only gets the money/assets when the offending party is actually guilty of a crime.

As of 2021, only Maine, Nebraska, New Mexico, and North Carolina have completely overhauled their laws to require that prosecutors prove the owner's guilt. 36 States (and the District of Colombia) have taken steps to scale back these forfeiture laws, however, the vast majority of them have a major loophole in which law enforcement can partner with federal departments (such as the U.S. Justice and Treasury) and split the earnings from a forfeiture. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/08/19/states-work-scale-back-civil-forfeiture-laws-amid-federal-loophole/8181774002/

A little over a week ago a jury rejected a truckers claim to money that had been seized (even though no criminal charges have been brought against him). They took $40k that he had gathered together and was on his way to buy a truck.

https://landline.media/texas-jury-rejects-truckers-claim-to-seized-money/

Additional Sources: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-first-edition/part-i-policing-for-profit/

John Oliver also did a video on this 8 years ago: https://youtu.be/3kEpZWGgJks