Sunday, August 03, 2014

Your Property Could Become the Police’s Property—Even If You Do Nothing Illegal

Civil asset forfeiture is a growing national scandal and the Institute for Justice is on it with a new initiative to promote reforms of the laws. Under state and national civil forfeiture laws, police can seize your property if they believe it been used in a crime. When that happens, the only way to get your property back is to prove that the police are wrong. If you can’t do that, they get to keep the property or sell it and use the proceeds to pad their budgets. That’s true even if nobody is convicted of the crime in which the property was supposedly used. This set-up gives police the incentive and the means to steal your property—legally. The Institute for Justice has been writing about the problem for years. Here is a video overview they have produced:

http://youtu.be/_hytkAaoF2k


The group has also produced a number of reports on the topic, including “Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture,” (by Marian R. Williams, et al., March 2010). These and other resources on the issue are available IJ’s new website: EndForfeiture.com...more

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