by Hannah Cox & Brad Polumbo

Civil asset forfeiture is so unethical that most people won’t believe it’s true.
Did you know police
steal more from Americans every year than burglars do?
Civil asset forfeiture (CAF) is a legal practice so bad
and so unethical that most people won’t believe it’s true until they
read up on it. But under this system, police are allowed to take your
property if they even just suspect you of a crime (No, not charge you
with a crime. No, not convict you for a crime. Suspect). And they basically just get to keep it unless you have the ability (i.e. the funds) to challenge them in court and prove your innocence.
It’s a total perversion of our Constitution, which is
supposed to ensure individuals are innocent until proven guilty and
which places the burden of that proof on the accuser (the state).
Recently, Vera and Apollonia Ward had a run-in with the CAF system. The women run a successful dog-breeding business and
sent
$17,500 via Fedex to purchase two additional dogs. But the San Joaquin
County Sheriff’s Office seized the funds and accused the women of
drug-trafficking. Never mind the fact that they had all the
documentation needed to back-up their story, never mind the fact that
police had no evidence whatsoever of their involvement in the
drug-market.
“To me, it felt like being treated like a criminal, even
though you’re not, it makes you question everything,” Vera said. “They
tried their hardest to intimidate us, and to say that we’re basically
putting our freedom on the line: ‘Give us this money, we’ll make it go
away—or put your freedom on the line for it,” Vera continued.
But
the women wanted to fight. Fortunately, they got in touch with
pro-bono, constitutional litigators at the Goldwater Institute in
Arizona who agreed to take on their case. And within a few months, the
government had to return the money.
But this is their game. Police regularly use CAF to bully
people out of their money and other property, and they mostly get away
with it because (without pro-bono attorneys) the average person can’t
afford to fight the government. The government has endless, tax-payer
funded resources at its disposal, and its attorneys can easily run up
the clock for those attempting to pay a defense attorney by the hour to
get their money back. Police then get to keep these funds and add them
to their budget much of the time.
CAF is not only a disgustingly unconstitutional law, it
also leads to really corrupt police behavior. When police get to profit
off the property they discover on people just because they merely
suspect them of a crime, they are far more apt to behave
like road pirates—targeting and profiling certain kinds of cars and
finding reasons to search people and their cars. They should be focusing
their time on solving and preventing violent crimes, but instead, we
see a vast amount of their resources go to these endeavors instead.
All of this, unsurprisingly, traces back to the War on
Drugs. Politicians and police argue that police need this authority to
stop high-profile drug lords and their drug trafficking operations. It’s
a bogus argument of course. The vast majority of these seizures were for less than $1000 and against people who were never even charged with a crime.

Bottom line, police should never be able to take a
person’s property until they have been convicted of a crime. There’s
really no ethical or constitutional if, ands, or buts about it. CAF
needs to be outlawed at both the federal and state level, and you should
pay close attention to the police, District Attorneys, and other
politicians that benefit from this system working to keep it in place.
Litigators at places like The GoldWater Institute are
heroes fighting the bad guys. Ironically, that’s what we pay the police
to do.
Bottom line, police should never be able to take a
person’s property until they have been convicted of a crime. There’s
really no ethical or constitutional if, ands, or buts about it. CAF
needs to be outlawed at both the federal and state level, and you should
pay close attention to the police, District Attorneys, and other
politicians that benefit from this system working to keep it in place.
Litigators at places like The GoldWater Institute are
heroes fighting the bad guys. Ironically, that’s what we pay the police
to do.
Hannah
Cox is a libertarian-conservative writer and co-founder of
BASEDPolitics. She's also the host of the BASEDPolitics podcast and an
experienced political activist.
