Background on Asset Forfeiture: Seized Drug Assets Pad Police Budgets (NPR June 16, 2008)
It is fascinating to listen to this NPR report from 2008 regarding civil asset forfeiture. Six years later and looking back at 2008, NPR was concerned that some police officers might abuse the powers legally provided to them, seizing assets from law-abiding citizens. Recent developments and serious investigative journalism have exposed a wealth of information to prove that police are actively engaged in what can only be described as racketeering. Moreover, back in 2008, NPR was concerned about the military grade equipment that was being purchased with seized monies, asking why police departments need a sniper rifle. Nowadays, of course, most of our police departments have more military hardware than the U.S. Army Rangers had going into Mogadishu, with sniper rifles drawing yawns compared to MRAPs, mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles.
Civil asset forfeiture and the militarization of police forces across the nation are extremely disturbing trends. We need to press our lawmakers to rein in our police forces and out-of-control forfeiture laws before another six years pass. John Yoder and Brad Cates, both of whom served as directors of the Justice Departments Asset Forfeiture Office from 1983 to 1989, have recently spoken out against forfeiture, even though these two were originally in charge of the federal forfeiture programs. As they stated:
Asset forfeiture was conceived as a way to cut into the profit motive that fuelled rampant drug trafficking by cartels and other criminal enterprises, in order to fight the social evils of drug dealing and abuse. Over time, however, the tactic has turned into an evil itself, with the corruption it engendered among government and law enforcement coming to clearly outweigh any benefits. . . . The Asset Forfeiture Reform Act was enacted in 2000 to rein in abuses, but virtually nothing has changed. This is because civil forfeiture is fundamentally at odds with our judicial system and notions of fairness. It is unreformable.
Take a listen to this NPR piece from 2008 and compare then and now:
