“Civil asset forfeiture” sounds like a wonky term for some arcane practice, but it can be a powerful law enforcement tool in the battle against crimes such as drug trafficking when it is used correctly. When abused, it can result in innocent people having their property seized, often without criminal charges, says the Washington Post in an editorial. Forfeiture involves officers' taking property they suspect is related to a crime, such as cash from a drug transaction, leaving the person from whom they confiscated it with only difficult options to show it is clean and get it back. For years, the Justice Department’s the Inspector General has prodded federal law enforcement agencies to use this tool more responsibly. At the Drug Enforcement Administration, the most persistent abuser of federal forfeiture, those efforts have failed, a recent IG report shows. The report found that, at mass transportation facilities such as airports, DEA officers defied agency protocols as they harassed passengers and snatched their cash.
The Justice Department paused DEA forfeiture activities pending review. The report underscores that asking law enforcement officers to police themselves on forfeitures does not work. Lawmakers need to reform the nation’s forfeiture programs, the newspaper says. One DEA office developed a relationship with a commercial airline employee, who would alert the agency to passengers who purchased flights within 48 hours of travel. Based on that information alone, agents would stop passengers at the airport to search their bags. If the agents found cash in their luggage, the agency would seize it and share a portion of the money with the airline employee. On both the state and federal levels, forfeiture provides a perverse incentive for officers to conduct searches without compelling evidence of a crime — and to pressure people to give up property, because police departments and other agencies get to keep a cut of the seized property. Thirty-seven states and D.C. have passed legislation to reform their forfeiture laws, and last year the House Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to advance a bill that would direct revenue from forfeitures to the federal government’s general fund rather than to law enforcement agencies. The purpose is not to eradicate the practice; it is to ensure that officers see it as a tool to get the bad guys, not as a way to pad their budgets. By taking away the profit motive, agencies might finally exercise their forfeiture powers with due caution.
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