Cops shouldn’t be robbers
Amid growing revulsion at systematic plunder by police and prosecutors, California was one of 23 states to curb the abused tactic known as civil asset forfeiture in recent years. Now, with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions striving to revive the discredited practice, state and federal lawmakers must do more to protect the public from what has too often amounted to thinly legalized theft.
Sessions has defended civil forfeiture as a means to “defund organized crime,” referring to the drug cartels held up as deserving targets of cash and property seizures, and “return property to the victims of crime.” The trouble is that forfeiture has created countless new victims by taking money, vehicles and even homes from people of modest means who have not been convicted of any crime. And billions of dollars a year in proceeds are going not to crime victims but to law enforcement agencies, giving them a corrupting incentive to seize even more.
The attorney general is known for his antiquated ideas, but he has topped himself here. Forfeiture is rooted in the literally medieval concept that inanimate objects can be culpable, hence such absurd cases as Texas vs. One Gold Crucifix, Nebraska vs. One 1970 2-Door Sedan Rambler (Gremlin), and United States vs. 11¼ Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness. First borrowed from British maritime law, forfeiture in the United States has proliferated during such dark chapters as the Civil War, Prohibition and the war on drugs.
While California was among the first states to limit forfeitures to criminal convictions more than two decades ago, law enforcement agencies here and elsewhere have cooperated with federal authorities to circumvent such restrictions. San Francisco police have collected more than $3 million over the past three years in so-called equitable-sharing payments from the Department of Justice. In one Southern California case, a man nearly lost his office building for renting to marijuana dispensaries.
The Legislature passed a bill to narrow that loophole last year, but law enforcement agencies retained the ability to seize assets worth more than $40,000 without a conviction. Meanwhile, in Washington, thenAttorney General Eric Holder had imposed moderate limits on federal asset seizures and sharing with local authorities in 2015.
In the wake of Sessions’ reversal, California needs a stronger law on the order of measures in New Mexico and Nebraska, which abolished civil forfeiture altogether. Better yet, Congress or the Supreme Court should move to end abuses even in states that have shown no interest in doing so. Justice Clarence Thomas recently questioned whether “broad modern forfeiture practice can be justified,” and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), has called the problem “one of our best opportunities for bipartisan achievement in criminal justice reform.”
Forfeiture has a powerful constituency in law enforcement, which has profited so handsomely from the practice. Fortunately, it also faces broad opposition among liberals and conservatives alike who rightly distrust such unchecked government power.