Eric Holder Cuts Off Program That Helped Spur Police Asset Seizure 'Shopping Sprees'
from the good-move dept
Well, here’s a bit of a surprise. For years we’ve been highlighting the ridiculousness of police asset seizure and asset forfeiture laws (and, actually, were working on another post on some new such laws that we may now need to revisit…). These laws have basically become a legalized way for local police to steal cars and money without ever charging anyone with a crime. And then… they get to keep the money and sell off the cars. Some have even admitted the process is basically the police going “shopping” for stuff they want. They can seize anything, claiming that it was used in a crime, even if no one is ever charged with a crime. Effectively, they’re “charging the thing” which is why you get crazy case names like the (actual case): United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls.
However, on Friday, somewhat unexpectedly, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he was massively limiting a federal program that helped make these seizures so valuable to police:
?With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,? Holder said in a statement.
Holder?s decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total. This would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the program.
While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments. Many states require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.
There’s still more to be done to fix bad asset seizure and forfeiture laws, but this is a really big step forward.
Of course, just watch as police departments start to protest that they can no longer go “shopping” for “toys” that they can steal:
The policy will touch policing and local budgets in every state. Since 2001, about 7,600 of the nation?s 18,000 police departments and task forces have participated in Equitable Sharing. For hundreds of police departments and sheriff?s offices the seizure proceeds accounted for 20 percent or more of their annual budgets in recent years.
Either way, kudos to Holder for making this move.
Filed Under: asset forfeiture, asset seizure, cars, doj, equitable sharing, eric holder, feds, money, police
Comments on “Eric Holder Cuts Off Program That Helped Spur Police Asset Seizure 'Shopping Sprees'”
Boo hoo
“Of course, just watch as police departments start to protest that they can no longer go “shopping” for “toys” that they can steal.”
Boo hoo, cry me a river.
Good. Fuck ’em!
If your budget depends on asset forfeitures, you’re doing it wrong.
Re: Re:
If your budget depends on asset forfeitures, you’re probably breaking the law
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asset forfeiture IS against the law!
The 4th makes it DAMN CLEAR! The entire idea of asset forfeiture is to trick people into thinking the 4th no longer applies… Sad that most Americans are stupid enough to believe!
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Also the Fifth Amendment applies. I can’t think of a more apt example of private property being taken for public use without just compensation.
Re: it also shows
that so called law enforcement is essentially used in organized thievry in the guise of revenue collection. Fucking scumbags.
Holy cow batman. That guy just dropped a big dooky all over the police departments money. I hope he is ready for the backlash. OMG, it is going to be Epic to see all those police departments use the unions to make it legal again. The outcry and general whining, lol. The big money grab is over? i doubt it.
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Can’t wait to see the NYPD throw another hissy fit
Re: Re:
more like ‘Holy cash cow batman!’
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Holder is on the way out. Probably why he waited this long to do it.
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Maybe we should limit everyone to one term so they’ll just get in there and get something done and get out.
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Maybe just one year. The last year in office seems to be the time for a politician to actually do things. Look at Obama these days.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Logic really… on the off-chance you actually get a politician (or political appointee – same difference) who wants to do something useful, anything really useful is also desperately unpopular because fixing things requires some pain. This leads to not having a job any more – hence only doing things on the way out.
Basically… Winston Churchill was right.
Incentives
“For hundreds of police departments and sheriff’s offices the seizure proceeds accounted for 20 percent or more of their annual budgets in recent years”
Which is *exactly* the problem, of course, because it pretty much compels the cops to asset seize whether it’s justified or not.
Re: Incentives
Might I humbly suggest a 20% cut in the size of these police forces to bring their budgets in line with the no-longer-permitted-to-steal situation?
Re: Re: Incentives
Depending on their budget allocations, a 20% cut to the police forces might not only not reduce the budget by 20%, but may leave the police forces of a given department genuinely understaffed.
You have to go about these things in an intelligent manner. For example, I’m willing to bet that ending online “sting” programs, and routine SWAT team deployments, will result in some impressive budget savings for relatively minimal pay cuts and personnel reductions.
I guess the only time you can get anything done in the government is when you’re on your way out with nothing to lose.
Damn! Nice to get some good news about what our government is doing.
“For hundreds of police departments and sheriff’s offices the seizure proceeds accounted for 20 percent or more of their annual budgets in recent years”
Oh, they’ll just make up for it in ticket revenues….
Re: Make it up on ticket's
At least when you get a ticket, they can’t demand you pay the fine on the spot. Even an idiot could see what would invite corruption!
The willful ignorance of politician’s that pass these kind of law’s, make’s beating you head against a brick wall, seem relatively sane.
Re: Re: Make it up on ticket's
A legislator in Texas was proposing a bill that would allow police to collect traffic fines on the spot via credit cards. His “thinking” was that it would save money if it didn’t have to go through the courts. What abuse could possibly go on there? (sarcasm)
The thing that was important about Federal assistance in this program was it was a way to hide from accountability in city budgeting as to where the money came from. Instead of having to claim they got the money through selling one (description of item) they could say that participation in the federal confiscation program resulted in $X for the year. The feds took a percentage and sent the rest back, in essence doing money laundering to hide the source.
Talking of forfeiture in confiscations this article states:
http://www.communityradar.com/story.php?title=budget-review-does-dunwoody-need-a-narcotics-task-force-officer-and-a-swat-team
When cities start using confiscation income as part of the city budget years in advance, it is no longer about illegal goods but rather about a lottery of what citizen gets what stolen for the year to pay for the budget. It has become another abuse that the citizens of this nation are fed up with in police and government powers as it is a license to steal.
Olfactory
I too would like to put an end to proceeds from ham sandwich indictments being paid into the pork fund.
Ooops.
If I could hold my nose and clap at the same time, I would.
Mr. Holder still stinks.
I agree that that this is a big step forward, if nothing else than for increasing public awareness of this massive problem.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with Holder’s exceptions concerning illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, I do find it interesting that extra forfeiture/seizure laws aren’t really necessary for those items, because in most in instances, it’s illegal to possess those items anyways.
Maybe if these guys would stop buying military grade weapons for themselves, maybe they wouldn’t have to worry about shortfalls in their budget…
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Maybe if these guys would stop buying military grade weapons for themselves, maybe they wouldn’t have to worry about shortfalls in their budget…
Most of that stuff is obtained from the military at little or no cost. Another program I’d like to see ended.
Actually, it says they can still swipe things “associated with child pornography”. Expect police departments to suddenly start catching a whole lot of “suspected child pornographers” who just happened to have shiny cars and/or piles of loose cash.
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Grady Judd will be happy so augment his departments diminished income providing training.
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Why else would you have lots of cash in your vehicle but to sneak over a state border and buy lots of illicit photos?
Having cash is practically an admission of guilt.
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Having cash is practically an admission of guilt.
That seems to be how police are thinking these days. Or maybe that’s just their cover to steal people’s money.
“While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, … Many states require seized proceeds to go into the general fund. “
So how about a rundown of which states do not require seizures to go into the ‘general fund’?
put away the champagne (for now)
In reality, the US DOJ’s new policy changes very little, because it only effects federal law. FBI and DEA busts will obviously no longer share their booty with local authorities as in the past. But state and local police can still confiscate people’s assets under each state’s own civil asset forfeiture laws … which could very well be expanded to make up for the shortfall.
Re: put away the champagne (for now)
But it is a positive step, because this program was often used to circumvent local limitations on police departments self-funding via seizure. If your state had a law that said “all the money from seizures goes to the state, no extra money for the PD”, and you had a case that had anything to do with drugs, you whistled up the FBI, they ran the seizure as a federal issue, and then dropped a big chunk of the money back with the PD. That kind of end-run is no longer possible (at least, so long as the AG doesn’t change his mind…)
Thank god this is anonymous. I know a person that is a part of the IT for a local police department. He was quite excited about a kindle fire that was hacked to run plain android that he was dying to show me. Now given, I understand a bit about police seizures and all that. But what the F’ is a glorified tablet going to prove about any crimes that warrents seizure from the victim going to help anything. IE. This was basically just legal stealing, but it’s sadly common place in US legal system. Since it wasn’t used as forensic evidence of any crime, they knew it was just going to sit in holding forever. Now in his credit, he was more amazed by running android on a Kindle fire when they first came out, but it’s still just stuck in my crawl that this was a legal officer and honestly a good friend telling me this…
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if your friend supports such things then he is not a “good officer”
To be such he would have to be against such acts
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it’s still just stuck in my crawl that this was a legal officer and honestly a good friend telling me this…
Craw, not crawl (apologies if that was just a typo – I’m an idiom Nazi, not a typo Nazi).
Brace for massive spike in child pornography investigations Captain!
Re: Like the Holy Inquisition and Witchhunts.
Holder’s decision allows some limited exceptions, including… property associated with child pornography
I’m with AC here.
What is about to be associated with child pornography?
Everything.
Belt Tightening Time
I guess police departments will have to cut spending on all of those military toys they have been buying.
Re: Military toys and booze
Nope. The military toys they get to buy at super-discount, and the feds send grants to be spent specifically on military toys.
Asset Forfeiture money is spent on extra booze at the secret police balls and margarita machines.
And, I think a Zamboni for no explicable reason.
Respect?
I am actually not sure how to feel about this. Not in the way that this isn’t the right thing to do, it most certainly is.
What I am in doubt about is if I should be deeply respecting Holder for making this excellent law, or if I should be disgusted that it took so long to make such an obvious decision.
Shouldn’t we expect our politicians to prevent such obvious “legal” robberies? It says much about our current state of affairs that this seems like such a huge thing… it should be an obvious thing to do, and should have been done the second there was event a hint of a whisper of this behavior.
Re: Respect?
Shouldn’t we expect our politicians to…
There’s your problem right there.
Should our representatives do something about it? Of course.
Will they? Not very likely.
Should we expect them to in our current established system? No.
Should we endeavor to change the system so that we could realistically expect representatives of the people to act quickly and decisively when such events come to light? Absolutely.
Are you sure?
I don’t think that he is requiring a conviction. I think now all the police have to do is claim there was a crime (that is file charges). I suspect that nothing will change. Instead they will just start filing the paperwork with the DA now. The DA will of course dismiss the charges, and the police get to keep the money/car/whatever.
I wish Holder had simply said that a conviction was required.
I also wish he had said that people don’t have to sue to get their property back. Nor do people have to settle for less than 100%. If they fail to prove a crime, then they have to return ALL the property immediately. Right now they make you sue them and fight it for years.
Re: Are you sure?
I wish Holder had simply said that a conviction was required.
I also wish he had said that people don’t have to sue to get their property back.
I think you’re ascribing to him more power than he has. He can’t do anything about state and local seizure laws, all he can control is the federal program.
Re: Are you sure?
What this does is force the police departments to use local and state law to perform the seizure rather than involving the federal government. As someone else mentioned this program enabled money laundering essentially because the arrest and seizure would take place at the local level under local laws (city, county state). But the seized items were handed over to the federal government to be processed for forfeiture under federal law. Why the switcharoo? Most states require a conviction for forfeiture.
The local cops are allowed to seize stuff quite easily. But in order for them to keep it, forfeiture, you usually have to be convicted of the crime the seizure was associated with. The federal forfeiture law has no requirement for a conviction at all.
Kevin Bollaert
Testimony began today.
Might want to write a post detailing how your “this is bad, but plea bargain” post was completely wrong.
Re: Kevin Bollaert
Thank you for meeting my media needs quickly, smoothly, and with confidence.
Re: Kevin Bollaert
There’s a link at the bottom of the page you can use, ‘Submit a story’, for any stories you think TD should cover. Random posts on articles don’t exactly do much.
Almost, but not quite
Sigh. Since “drug-related” seizures could just base their claims on the officer smelling something funny or being able to hold a dog leash, I’ll expect to see a whole lot of child pornography charges for officers pouncing on an adult in the process of changing a diaper before it is justifiably soiled. Or seizing the assets of people who bought baby powder without plausible explanation.
Or collect dolls as an adult (remember that collections of Japanese manga comics involving sex acts where an assignment of age to the rather unrealistic body shapes is rather tricky might get you charged with child pornography) that are naked beneath their clothes.
Of course, child “protection” services will be like a hawk after any such seizure pretense in order to make sure that the victims do not just lose their money but also their children and normal life.
So now their passing laws for police to “legally” steal………hey, your mafia is showing
Re: This has been going on for a while.
And yeah, police engaging in Mob-style racketeering has been extremely evident.
Then again, most (if not all) major criminal organizations emerge as a result of either abuse or negligence of law-enforcement bodies. The Mafia itself was shielding people from the holy inquisition when it got started.
Re: Re: This has been going on for a while.
Yo Uriel-238,
Do you have a link to some history on this:
“The Mafia itself was shielding people from the holy inquisition when it got started.”
Would love to learn more on this topic.
Was that when they were called the Black Lantern or something similar?
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police seizures
One of the few thngs I agree with this might stop familes from having to go without things such as a car.To get food and kids to school.When they are not responsible for anothers action.
HOLDER & OBAMA
These 2 are a joke and shame to the United States. They can not attend any of the government statements made in Paris last week against the terrorist murders in Paris. That just showed the entire world how ignorant the president and his so called 2nd hand man really are. What a statement they made for the once most powerful country in the world. How low and stupid this country has gone by electing this idiot to be president. But he appointment a federal investigation for a lawless lowlife that strong armed robbed a business owner and then tried to shoot and kill a police officer with his own gun. The town businesses were destroyed, burned & robbed but our president did not have the class to attend any of the services with all the other world leaders that stood together against the terrorist that murdered 12. What does this say about our president and his losers
i wonder what excuse(s) will be used by the police forces who ignore this, how long they are able to get away with it and what punishment they will receive IF they are held to account in the end?
Re: Re:
It’s not really a matter of the police forces ignoring it. This is the justice department changing one of it’s programs so that it’ll no longer accept “seized” assets outside of some fairly narrow constraints. Assuming lower level employees don’t wholesale violate department policy, and assuming Holder’s replacement doesn’t change things back immediately, police forces will be stuck. They can still seize stuff, but they’ll be forced to obey state and local laws, instead of using federal law to get around local attempts to mitigate blatant abuse.
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Right then, in the order you asked:
1. Whatever they can think of at the time, knowing full well whatever they come up with doesn’t need to be even remotely reasonable or even sane.
2. Forever, or some length thereof.
3. ‘AHAHAHHAHA’ or ‘None whatsoever’, depending on whether or not you were being serious.
Its PR time!
“Holder’s decision allows some limited exceptions, including illegal firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography, a small fraction of the total.”
Hmmm…. could Florida’s “Every Horny Male Is A Child Molester” property confiscation program be going nation-wide??
Are we soon to be witness to 500,000+ un-convicted, but publicly shamed and property bereft horny single males being “pulled in” for NOT molesting the imaginary children offered up for clandestine sex, by the social media entrapment police forces??
Looks like its a really good time to forgo the social media coupling route and go back to simple one hand clapping masturbation sessions boys, if you happen to own a car or a house you’d like to keep.
If there is one thing that never changes, it is that once a crook gets used to a certain “method” of “easy cash”, they will do everything in their power to insure that nothing comes between them and that method, including murder, extortion and manufacturing false documentation.
Today’s Cowboy Cops are NOT going to take kindly to the idea that they can no longer steal millions of dollars a year from the general public, at will, legally. If they don’t put up a huge fight against this legislation, then that just means they have already figured out a way to circumvent it and keep on stealing legally.
Ways like using the child molestation loophole and taking the Florida entrapment process nation-wide.
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Damn it Andy, I’ll have to going for real Christmas shopping for my wife next year, Yes Barney you will.
“kudos to Holder for making this move.”
No. Holder is attempting to make Loretta Lynch’s past reliance upon the program less of a sticking point during her upcoming confirmation hearing by eliminating the possibility of any future usage. Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that the current piece of shit nominee stole heavily from American citizens in her past.
Should be fun
As I understand it, many police departments have already set their budgets around estimated “income” from seizures; the loss of that money could impact all the nice toys they pl.. I mean, policing. yeah, that’s it.
Re: Should be fun
Or the Cowboy Cops will petition the crooks in office locally to establish new laws for state and local police to carry on in exactly the same manner as before but without the cream going to the feds.
Considering that this would make the process even more lucrative for the city cops, I see it as the obvious solution to the financial problems the police will soon be facing without the old “you keep what you steal” laws.
After all, as you said, they will be facing budget shortfalls without the Reverse Robin-Hood revenue, so it will behoove their local politicians to write new legislation to insure the Cops get to keep the cash, houses, computers, boats, jewelry, clothing and cars they steal from the public, just like the old days and that the budget needs are fulfilled.
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I think that the budget should not be dependent on seizures made during the police work. This is an abnormal point of view. The federal level can of course take it under its’ jurisdiction, but this will have no impact on local budgets. I think this money will be just lost in its’ way. That is why people should not rely on it too much, it is much better to use New Brunswick payday loans that will obviously help in any difficult situation.