Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year

[vacuum]

Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year

By Christopher Ingraham (http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/christopher-ingraham) November 23

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/11/forf.png&w=1484

Here's an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog (http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/39102), Armstrong Economics, last week.

Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/10/report-in-lean-times-police-start-taking-a-lot-more-stuff-from-people/). Last year, according to the Institute for Justice (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/10/report-in-lean-times-police-start-taking-a-lot-more-stuff-from-people/), the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports (https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/burglary) that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.

Armstrong claims that "the police are now taking more assets than the criminals," but this isn't exactly right: The FBI also tracks property losses from larceny and theft, in addition to plain ol' burglary. If you add up all the property stolen in 2014, from burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and other means, you arrive at roughly $12.3 billion (https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/table-24), according to the FBI. That's more than double the federal asset forfeiture haul.

[In tough times, police start seizing a lot more stuff (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/10/report-in-lean-times-police-start-taking-a-lot-more-stuff-from-people/)]

One other point: Those asset forfeiture deposit amounts are not necessarily the best indicator of a rise in the use of forfeiture. "In a given year, one or two high-dollar cases may produce unusually large amounts of money — with a portion going back to victims — thereby telling a noisy story of year-to-year activity levels," the Institute for Justice explains (http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/policing-for-profit-2nd-edition.pdf). A big chunk of that 2014 deposit, for instance, was the $1.7 billion Bernie Madoff judgment (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/01/07/260442151/jpmorgan-chase-to-pay-1-7-billion-to-madoff-victims), most of which flowed back to the victims.

For that reason, the net assets of the funds are usually seen as a more stable indicator — those numbers show how much money is left over in the funds each year after the federal government takes care of various obligations, like payments to victims. Since this number can reflect monies taken over multiple calendar years, it's less comparable to the annual burglary statistics.

Still, even this more stable indicator hit $4.5 billion in 2014, according to the Institute for Justice — higher again than the burglary losses that year.
One final caveat is that these are only the federal totals and don't reflect how much property is seized by state and local police each year. Reliable data for all 50 states is unavailable, but the Institute of Justice found (http://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/policing-for-profit-2nd-edition.pdf) that the total asset forfeiture haul for 14 states topped $250 million in 2013. The grand 50-state total would probably be much higher.

Still, boil down all the numbers and caveats above and you arrive at a simple fact: In the United States, in 2014, more cash and property transferred hands via civil asset forfeiture than via burglary. The total value of asset forfeitures was more than one-third of the total value of property stolen by criminals in 2014. That represents something of a sea change in the way police do business — and it's prompting plenty of scrutiny (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/11/instead-of-raiding-the-assets-forfeiture-fund-congress-should-simply-discontinue-it) of the practice.

[singular_me]

it is getting worse by the months


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW991H7xyqM

[Joshua01]

All in good time my friends, all in good time

[monty]

Justice Clarence Thomas may have taken a little wind out of Jeff Sessions's civil asset forfeiture sails

Read more:
Clarence Thomas Attacks Civil Asset Forfeiture, Lower Court Follows His Lead (http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/21/clarence-thomas-attacks-civil-asset-forf)

Asset forfeiture "has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses."

Damon Root (http://reason.com/people/damon-w-root/all)|Jun. 21, 2017 1:10 pm



As Thomas explained in Leonard v. Texas, "this system—where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use—has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses." For one thing, "because the law enforcement entity responsible for seizing the property often keeps it, these entities have strong incentives to pursue forfeiture." For another, this sort of police abuse disproportionately harms disadvantaged groups. "These forfeiture operations frequently target the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests in forfeiture proceedings," he observed. "Perversely, these same groups are often the most burdened by forfeiture. They are more likely to use cash than alternative forms of payment, like credit cards, which may be less susceptible to forfeiture. And they are more likely to suffer in their daily lives while they litigate for the return of a critical item of property, such as a car or a home."


To make matters worse, Thomas continued, the Supreme Court's previous rulings in this area do not line up with the text of the Constitution, which "presumably would require the Court to align its distinct doctrine governing civil forfeiture with its doctrines governing other forms of punitive state action and property deprivation." Those other doctrines, Thomas noted, impose significant checks on the government, such as heightened standards of proof, various procedural protections, and the right to a trial by jury. Civil asset forfeiture proceedings, by contrast, offer no such constitutional safeguards.

In short, Justice Thomas offered a searing indictment of modern civil asset forfeiture and called on the judiciary to start reconsidering its flawed approach.

[monty]

AG Jeff Session will INCREASE Asset Forfeiture (http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/17/sessions-announces-justice-department-wi)


Jeff Sessions Announces Justice Department Will Increase Asset Forfeiture (http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/17/sessions-announces-justice-department-wi)

“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” Sessions says of law that lets police take cash without charging anyone with a crime.

C.J. Ciaramella (http://reason.com/people/cj-ciaramella/all)|Jul. 17, 2017 3:45 pm




https://d1jn4vzj53eli5.cloudfront.net/mc/cj.ciaramella%40reason.com/sessions-face856.jpg?h=225&w=300
Ron Sachs/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department will issue new directives to increase the federal govenment's use of civil asset forfeiture, a controversial practice that allows law enforcement to seize property from suspected criminals without charging them with a crime.

Speaking at a National District Attorneys Association conference in Minneapolis Monday, Sessions said state and local law enforcement could expect changes from U.S. Attorneys in several areas: increased prosecution of gun crimes, immigration offenses, gang activity, and prescription drug abuse, as well as increased asset seizure by the federal government.

"[W]e hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture—especially for drug traffickers," Sessions said. "With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners."

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment and for more information about the directive.

Asset forfeiture became a prized hammer in law enforcement's tool chest in the 1980s, when the government was struggling to combat organized drug cartels. Law enforcement groups say the laws allow them to disrupt drug trafficking operations by targeting their proceeds—cars, cash, and guns.

However, the practice has exploded since then, and civil liberties groups and political advocacy organizations, both liberal and conservative, say the perverse profit incentives and lack of due process for property owners lead to far more average citizens having their property seized than cartel bosses.

The Justice Department plays a huge role in asset forfeiture through its Equitable Sharing Program, which allows state and local police to have their forfeiture cases "adopted" by the federal government. The feds take over the case, and the seized money is put into the equitable sharing pool. In return, the department gets up to 80 percent of those funds back. The equitable sharing program distributes hundreds of millions of dollars a year to police departments around the country.

Darpana Sheth, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, called Sessions' announcement "a disheartening setback in the fight to protect Americans' private property rights" in a statement Monday.

"Ordinary Americans see that civil forfeiture is unconstitutional, and 24 states have taken steps to roll back civil forfeiture laws," Sheth continued. "The Attorney General's plan to increase forfeitures is jarringly out of step with those positive developments."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), a consistent Republican advocate for reforming asset forfeiture laws, said in a statement to Reason Monday: "As Justice Thomas has previously said, there are serious constitutional concerns regarding modern civil asset forfeiture practices. The Department has an obligation to consider due process constraints in crafting its civil asset forfeiture policies."

Lee was referring to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' notable dissent (http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/21/clarence-thomas-attacks-civil-asset-forf) in an asset forfeiture case this June. Thomas wrote that forfeiture operations "frequently target the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests in forfeiture proceedings."

Data on asset forfeiture backs up what Thomas says. A Reason investigation of more than 23,000 police seizures in Cook County, Illinois over the last five years showed that Chicago's poor neighborhoods were hit hardest (http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/13/poor-neighborhoods-hit-hardest-by-asset) by asset forfeiture. A similar investigation of Mississippi court records showed that law enforcement recorded many big hauls of cash, but the records were also littered with petty and abusive seizures (http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/05/inside-mississippis-asset-forfeiture-ext).

A 2014 Washington Post investigative series (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/?utm_term=.654777d68600) found that warrantless police seizures of cash through the equitable sharing program have boomed since 9/11, hauling in $2.5 billion. Also in 2014, for the first time ever, the U.S. government seized more property from Americans than burglars did (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.287c9ebd053d).

More than twenty states have passed some form of asset forfeiture reform in recent years, but forfeiture opponents say the equitable sharing fund essentially allows local and state police to avoid those new laws by going through the federal government.

Responding to increasing media scrutiny and public outcry, former Attorney General Eric Holder took limited steps (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/holder-ends-seized-asset-sharing-process-that-split-billions-with-local-state-police/2015/01/16/0e7ca058-99d4-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html?utm_term=.7b80f499529f) in 2015 to reform the Justice Department's equitable sharing program.

Although the details have yet to be released, Sessions' directive appears likely to loosen the restrictions on "adoptions" of forfeiture cases by the federal government—an alarming prospect for opponents of asset forfeiture.
"Reversing the ban on adoptive seizures would revive one of the most notorious forms of forfeiture abuse," Sheth said. "So-called 'adoptive' seizures allow state and local law enforcement to circumvent state-law limitations on civil forfeiture by seizing property and then transferring it to federal prosecutors for forfeiture under federal law. Bringing back adoptive seizures would create a road map to circumvent state-level forfeiture reforms."

Sessions' upcoming directive to increase asset forfeiture comes as little surprise. Sessions, a former prosecutor and U.S. senator, has been a stalwart defender of asset forfeiture throughout his career. He has already dismantled Obama-era directives on drug sentencing guidelines and ordered a review of all of the existing consent agreements between the Justice Department and police departments that were found to be violating residents' constitutional rights.

Another Republican critic of asset forfeiture, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, tweeted (https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/887056499494834178) Monday that "This policy takes us backward. Congress must step up to protect the property of Americans from a government that keeps stealing from them."


Photo Credit: Ron Sachs/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom

C.J. Ciaramella is a criminal justice reporter at Reason.

Follow C.J. Ciaramella on Twitter (https://twitter.com/@cjciaramella)

Media Contact (http://reason.com//flatpage/item/media-contact) Reprint Requests (http://reason.com//flatpage/item/reprint-requests)

[crimethink]

Sessions is just as much a piece of shit as Eric Holder. Neither would hesitate to kill you and laugh if it served their "goals."

Anyone who advocates "civil asset forfeiture" makes war on the Bill of Rights, and is, therefore, worthy of death for treason. "Civil asset forfeiture" itself is literal highway robbery when done on the roads. And those types used to be gunned down without much ado.

[boogietillyapuke]

We write down words on a piece of paper and think it gives license to steal: The State

[monty]

New Hampshire can’t seize assetts so they get the feds involved. And the DOJ has no jurisdiction in New Hampshire. So to get their way the feds bribe the state politicians with federal grant money and enter into agreements like the Equitable Sharing program. And WE THE PEOPLE are fu’ked.



The Justice Department Didn't Charge Him With a Crime. It's Going to Take $39,000 from Him Anyway.

(https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/06/the-justice-department-didnt-charge-him)It's not a crime to travel with lots of cash. But you still might be treated like a criminal.

Scott Shackford (http://gold-silver.us/forum/safari-reader://reason.com/people/scott-shackford/all)
Aug. 6, 2018 3:20 pm

[COLOR
https://media.reason.com/mc/2018_08/NHforfeit_856x642.jpg?h=225&w=300
Photographerlondon / Dreamstime.com

ln order to get back any of the money that the New Hampshire State Police took from him, Edward Phipps has agreed to let federal prosecutors keep most of it (http://www.nhpr.org/post/state-settles-case-46000-found-car-trunk-then-seized#stream/0), even though he has not been charged with any crimes.

The cops took the cash during a traffic stop (http://www.nhpr.org/post/loophole-helps-nh-law-enforcement-net-millions-through-civil-asset-forfeiture#stream/0) in 2016. Phipps wasn't even in the car at the time.

The police pulled the driver over for tailgating and for going one whole mile per hour over the speed limit. A search turned up a bag full of $46,000 cash in the trunk. Police then brought in a drug-sniffing dog, which came up empty.

Though they have presented no evidence of any criminal act, police took the money and federal prosecutors declared their intent to force the forfeiture of the funds, so they could keep it. Phipps came forward in July 2017 to indicate that the cash was his, and he said it was obtained legally.

We took note of this case back in March (https://reason.com/blog/2018/03/06/what-forfeiture-reforms-nh-police-bypass), and it looks like the Justice Department succeeded in getting its way. As part of a settlement (http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/nhpr/files/201808/Settlement.pdf), Phipps has agreed to give the Department of Justice $39,000 of the $46,000 seized.

This is was a case of civil asset forfeiture, where law enforcement officials take and keep people's assets that they suspect are connected to criminal activity. Often, they can do this without convicting or even charging any person with a crime. Instead the property itself is accused of being linked to misconduct. The "defendant" in this settlement (http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/nhpr/files/201808/Settlement.pdf) is the cash itself; the Department of Justice is suing a sack of money.

This weird quirk matters because the burdens of proof in civil courts are often lower than the "beyond a shadow of a doubt" required to convict a person. So it's easier for prosecutors to win, and it flips presumption of innocence on its head: Phipps has to hire a lawyer and prove his money isn't connected to criminal activity.

As part of the settlement, Phipps not only agrees to give up everything but $7,000 (which will probably have to go to his legal fees). He agrees never to request that the money to be returned, and he furthermore agrees never to attempt to assert any claim that the government did not have "probable cause" to make him forfeit the money. I'm highlighting that part of the story to show how much lower the legal threshold is to take somebody's stuff and keep it. "Probable cause" is the amount of evidence police need for a search warrant, not nearly enough to convict somebody of a crime.

This wasn't supposed to happen. New Hampshire reformed its civil asset forfeiture laws in 2016 (http://reason.com/blog/2016/06/02/new-hampshires-forfeiture-reforms-dont-t) to require a criminal conviction before police or prosecutors could force people to forfeit money or property.

Unfortunately, the state's reform did not close a loophole that lets local police partner with the feds in a program called Equitable Sharing. In this system, local police use the federal asset forfeiture program instead of their own and then the Justice Department distributes most of the forfeited money back to local law enforcement.

That's why the Department of Justice is involved here. The state police can't seize Phipps' money on their own. So they went to the feds to arrange the forfeiture, and then the Equitable Sharing program lets the Justice Department funnel the funds right back to local law enforcement. It's not money laundering when it's the government.