Time to wean police agencies off asset-forfeiture schemes

Weaning Arizona police departments from dependence on a federal gravy train won’t be easy. But Arizona lawmakers are attempting to do just that. In response to mounting abuse, lawmakers are determined to end state and local law enforcement’s addiction to a federal property-forfeiture scheme that enriches police departments, often at the expense of innocent Arizona property owners unable to afford the legal representation to get their property back.

Here is how it works. Federal law allows local and state police officers to seize your cash, car or other private property on the mere suspicion that it is somehow connected to criminal activity without ever convicting or even charging you with a crime. The property is turned over to the U.S. Department of Justice for proceedings under lax civil forfeiture laws that stack the deck against Arizona property owners.

If enforced, Arizona’s House Bill 2477 that became law in April will safeguard private property by prohibiting state law-enforcement agencies from transferring seized property to a federal agency for the purpose of forfeiture if the seizure did not involve a federal law or agency and involves only a violation of state law.

In addition, property seized in a joint federal-state investigation may not be transferred to a federal agency for forfeiture unless the estimated value of the property is more than $75,000.

To ensure that due process will protect owners of seized property, the new law requires the government to prove the property was involved in a crime by “clear and convincing” evidence, before it can be forfeited.

Still, the movement to curb abuse nationally faces at least three challenges.

First, in 2016, the year before the new law was passed, 24 Arizona police departments fattened their budgets by more than $1.8 million using DOJ “equitable sharing” rules allowing state and local law-enforcement agencies to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds recovered from forfeited property.

The departments included the Scottsdale Police Department, $475,000; the Tempe Police Department, $25,718; the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, $474,104; the Arizona Department of Public Safety, $223,815; the Phoenix Police Department, $362,553; the Tucson Police Department, $16,605; the Kingman Police Department, $44,643; the Mesa Police Department, $97,498; and the Glendale Police Department, $10,531.

How eager are these agencies to give up this backdoor funding channel?

Second, Arizona officers are not alone. The property forfeiture-forprofit incentive is widespread in the national law-enforcement community.

In 2001, almost 40 percent of the police managers and executives surveyed agreed that civil forfeiture funds are a necessary budget supplement. Dependence on these funds has likely gone up since then.

Due to pending Congressional budget cuts, the DOJ temporarily suspended its civil asset forfeiture and “equitable sharing” programs in 2015. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National District Attorneys Association and the National Sheriffs’ Association protested the loss of the financially lucrative tool.

Third, in 2015, New Mexico lawmakers were the first to pass a state law prohibiting state and local law enforcement agencies from participating in the federal “equitable sharing” scheme. Nonetheless, officials in Albuquerque and other New Mexico municipalities continued seizing and forfeiting private property, arguing the new law did not apply to them.

A bill amending the New Mexico law to specifically apply civil asset forfeiture provisions to local police agencies and municipalities is working its way through state Legislature.

Until the DOJ releases its 2017 “equitable sharing” report, we will not know how well the Arizona law has been enforced. If all goes well, the $1.8 million in “equitable sharing” proceeds going to Arizona law-enforcement agencies in 2016 will begin to fall toward zero.

Ronald Fraser writes on public-policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a civil-liberties organization. Write him at fraserr@starpower.net