Egged on by Sheriffs, Trump Endorses Police Practice of Taking Property from Innocent People | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/drugs/police-take-property-innocent-people
n 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from Americans – $4.5 billion – than burglars did. Law enforcement agencies have grown dependent on this easy, no-strings-attached source of revenue, especially regional “anti-narcotics” task forces, SWAT teams, and other paramilitary groups. In many cases, agencies get to keep forfeiture proceeds for their own budgets and spend them as they see fit. Factoring profit into public safety decisions creates an atmosphere ripe for abuse within law enforcement agencies.
Defenders of the current system often claim that the status quo is necessary to combat major cartels and criminal organization, as the Texas Sheriff did. However, this claim is belied by the fact that most forfeitures are for relatively small sums of cash. In fact, a 2014 Drug Policy Alliance report found that the average value of state seizures in California was $5,145 in 2013 and another report by the Institute for Justice found that the median value of property forfeited in 2012 in 10 states ranged from $451 (in Minnesota) to $2,048 (in Utah).
These values do not come anywhere close to the level of “kingpin.” Most often the police simply shake down people they find suspicious, most of whom do not have the resources or the will to fight back, especially when the potential legal fees are greater than the money seized. As with everything else that is wrong with the criminal justice system, civil asset forfeiture disproportionately affects those with low income and people of color.
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