Hacker News Reader

> To clarify a few things, at least on the county level: > I review every single civil forfeiture in a rather large county

Which county is that, and is your county representative of all counties in the US?

> the affidavits officers submit read something like: "I stopped Bob after an informant purchased a large amount of heroin from Bob, Bob had syringes, heroin, weed, a scale for weighing drugs etc... on his person, and a rolled up wade of bills". The money is then seized as proceeds of criminal activity.

If that's usually the case, why wasn't Bob arrested? In your scenario, he had illegal drugs in his possession, so an arrest seems more appropriate than a simple seizure.

I think most the criticism of "stop and seize" stems from the the cases where a seizure was made without an arrest, perhaps under a dubious theory like "cash == drug money".

> IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO CONTEST A CIVIL FORFEITURE > saying the forfeited property is not proceeds of a crime. They then have to appear in court, before a judge, and demonstrate this fact. The bar is not high, but I have never once seen this happen.

Lets say Bill, who is unbanked, wants to buy a car. He saved the money for it in cash under his mattress, and now has $3000. He's transporting it, and a cop pulls him over, thinks "CASH == DRUG MONEY" and seizes it.

How exactly does Bill go about demonstrating to the court that his money was not proceeds of a crime, are they just going to take him at his word? What if he employed irregularly or informally or doesn't meticulously keep his receipts? What if he physically can't make it to court? What if he's just not smart enough to make an articulate argument and is too poor to hire a lawyer?

> Which county is that, and is your county representative of all counties in the US?

Multnomah County, Oregon (I cited to our state statute though... most that I have seen are very similar). Seizure law is either State or Federal.

> If that's usually the case, why wasn't Bob arrested? In your scenario, he had illegal drugs in his possession, so an arrest seems more appropriate than a simple seizure.

Bob usually is arrested. Bob often pleas out, rats out his friends and is not charged, or occasionally is arrested and not charged because the DAs office is overworked as it is. The civil forfeiture is entirely separate from the criminal proceedings. I agree though: for example, the young man that was on the train a while back who had a large amount of money on his person should not have had it seized. That was absurdly bogus. But, as far as I can tell, that was an anomaly.

> Lets say Bill, who is unbanked, wants to buy a car. He saved the money for it in cash under his mattress, and now has $3000. He's transporting it, and a cop pulls him over, thinks "CASH == DRUG MONEY" and seizes it.

First, Bill would have to have drugs on him, at least in the State of Oregon, and most states. That is what constitutes "prohibited conduct" under the seizure statutes. Also, having a bank account does not matter. This is a civil case, so Bill would just appear in court and prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the money is not from drugs. He could say "I have a job, this is my savings" or "my grandmother gave me $3,000 to buy a car." No need for loads of evidence - opposing counsel likely cannot refute anything he says. A judge would then order his money returned. It is that simple. Also, if the seizing officer did not have probable cause to believe the funds were proceeds of prohibitive conduct to begin with the judge would return the monies.

Caveat - I think I sound super pro-seizure here, but with all the bad stuff the government does it bugs me when something like this gets blown out of proportion. I guess you can argue that keeping proceeds of drug dealing is alright - usually it is cocaine, heroin, and meth - but this all feels very tin-foil-hatty from the perspective of someone who reviews civil forfeitures every day. I could also be jaded by living where I do - our court system and police seem to be behave themselves well compared to the rest of the country.

addition: there are other portions of the statutes that allow for seizure of profits from other conduct, like if you subject someone to indentured servitude, but these portions of the statute are seldom, if ever, used to seize funds or property. I am honestly not sure why.

I believe I have read stories of people in Tennessee on known drug routes, and a member of the Libertarian party at an airport, being detained for hours being questioned about their possession of large amounts of cash. The man in TN didn't get it back. The man from the LP did, eventually.

I simply don't believe, based on what I've read in the past, that the presence of drugs is a prerequisite for peoples' money to be stolen by police.

> Also, having a bank account does not matter.

Bill, being unbanked, does not have the benefit of bank paper trails to prove where his money came from if challenged. It's also the reason that he to keeps, transports, and transacts with cash.

Being a banked white person, almost all of my money has a paper trail closely associated with it. If I ever have a wad of cash, I can point to records showing where I got it.

So, being banked or unbanked matters here, since it speaks to the existence of 3rd party evidence that can be use to back up claims about the source of the money.

> No need for loads of evidence - opposing counsel likely cannot refute anything he says. A judge would then order his money returned. It is that simple.

What if he can't show up in court for whatever reason? He loses his sized cash, right?

Someone made a good point upthread: these seizures end up reversing the traditional burden of proof: they money is assumed to be "guilty" until proven "innocent" (even if that burden of proof is really low). If someone has their money seized, the burden of proof should be on the state to connect them to a crime and charge them to justify the seizure, if it can't do that, the state should hand-deliver the money back to the person it was seized from.

"They then have to appear in court, before a judge, and demonstrate this fact."

We fought a revolution over this sort of garbage and enshrined the presumption of innocence as a core principle in our constitution.

How about we seize all of your assets, give you a "single piece of paper" to enter a not guilty plea, then force you to prove in court that these powers are not widely misused. "The bar is not high", but somehow I doubt you would succeed.

It would be as easy as saying "I have a job" or "my grandmother gave me $2,000 for rent and necessaries". It could be done by a self represented person easily. And again, the person who has property seized from them always has drugs... police are not just randomly taking money. Drug legalization is another another matter (I am pro, FWIW), but for now it remains illegal.

Unfortunately in Boston they are.

"As he describes his job, he looks through the newspapers and looks at the Internet, looking for news stories of properties that might be forfeitable and brings them to the attention of the U.S. attorney"

http://www.wbur.org/2012/11/14/tewksbury-motel-owner-fights-...

> And again, the person who has property seized from them always has drugs.

This seems like anecdotal evidence to me. Moreover, police officers do lie on signed police reports (it's happened to me). Were you present during Bob's arrest?

> I have a job

So, if I have a job paying $20k/year and I have $2k in my pocket would that be a sufficient reason for having said currency?

> My grandmother gave me $2,000 for rent and necessaries

Would my grandmother have to appear before a judge as well? What if the court date was scheduled 3 weeks after my arrest? I'd probably be evicted out of my home by the time I ever saw a judge.

https://www.google.com/search?q=civil+forfeiture+abuse

Plenty of examples of potentially innocent citizens being effected by this tactic. Heck, there's even an entire website dedicated to it: http://endforfeiture.com/ - Plenty of data there.

With regards to point 2, at the federal level things do seem to work very differently. Here is a flowchart outlining the steps you would have to take to reclaim your assets from federal forfeiture:

https://reason.com/assets/mc/2015_06/forfeitchart.jpg

Regarding point 3, part of the problem, too, is that the federal government engages in sharing programs with local agencies. So if most of the money from a local-level forfeiture does not go back to the agency, the agency has a strong incentive to bring the feds into it because then they will keep a considerably larger fraction of the proceeds.

> They then have to appear in court, before a judge, and demonstrate this fact.

Strictly speaking, the government has the burden of proof (not the property owner) in forfeiture cases, but the burden is the usual civil burden of proof (preponderance of the evidence) because it is a civil action, not the criminal burden of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt). This is one reason forfeiture (and other civil remedies, where available) might be pursued in a case where criminal charges would not be, the burden of proof is lower.

> Perhaps at the federal level things work very differently and the process is abused

No, the main abuse due to federal law hasn't been by the feds, its by local agencies using provisions of federal law allowing them to keep the proceeds of federal-law based seizures when the state law those agencies deal with requires state law seizures to go to the state general fund, which provides much less incentive for law enforcement agencies to abuse seizure powers as a revenue source.

Do you review the federal seizures in your county? That is, would you see anything covered by the Equitable Sharing Program? My understanding is that its common for state agencies to use that to make an end run around your point 3.

Unfortunately no, I have never had any interaction with the feds and handling civil forfeitures. Reading a lot of the articles the majority of the problems appear to be with the feds and not local governments. So it could be that at the federal level abuse truly is rampant.

> There are always drugs when property is seized this way.

Nope. Several years ago the FBI stole $6M in Platinum, Gold and Silver. Some of the theft was of protected political speech-- literally copper & silver pieces with Ron Paul's picture and a campaign slogan on them. No allegations of drugs was involved, and the criminality claim -- that using gold and silver as barter threatened to undermine the US dollar -- was absurd on its face.

> IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO CONTEST A CIVIL FORFEITURE.

BS. The $6M in precious metals was melted down (reducing its value actually) and sold off to the profit of the FBI, despite a very large and expensive legal effort to try and reclaim the money. The owners of the assets were never convicted of a crime.

> The money does not all go directly to the seizing agency. Much of it goes towards drugs programs, oversight for civil forfeitures, and other programs.

IT's still theft.

Agreed. Theft is theft. I want to write an article on this now and really research the numbers and number of cases - there appears to be a vast difference in when and how federal vs state forfeiture powers are exercised.

I came here to mention this example as well.

Minting your own gold currency is illegal: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/25/486.

How is that relevant to this case? In a way that wouldn't also indict e.g. http://www.americanmint.com/?

The oversight of civil forfeiture is financed by civil forfeiture? Is that true? Sounds like a serious conflict of interest.

Not entirely. I would have to search hard to find the exact information, but it is primarily funded by the general fund. This is all at the state/county level though; I have no familiarity with federal civil forfeiture.