Sounds like a police department wants to be defunded. They forget who they work for.
This actually worked reasonably well in the US a century or so ago. It’s one of the few use cases for the 2nd amendment that made any sense (other than hunting for food).
Citizen's arrest is a state phenomenon, meaning that there it's not one single law but rather a function of a variety of laws in states and which differ between states.
That said, most modern citizen's arrest systems in the US trace their origins back to the Civil War era, to provide a way to arrest alleged escaped slaves (emphasis on "alleged").
You can imagine how that played out in practice.
The GP stated that
> ...the federal government uses law enforcement for their own agenda...
Can you just state what the agenda is? It can be general, or it can be specific to civil forfeiture since you brought that as an example.
A federal LE agency wants to pad their budget. That's it. That's the agenda.
A state or municipality forbids their own LEOs from employing civil forfeiture. The Feds see an opportunity and collude with the local LEOs to convert local civil forfeiture seizures to Federal seizures thus bypassing the wishes of the locals.
This is an example of the Federal government using law enforcement for their own agenda. I don't know if that's the kind of thing that GP meant, but that was an example that came to my mind.
What percentage of a federal law enforcement agency’s budget is padded using this practice? Does this apply to all federal law enforcement agencies or only some? How can we tell the difference between matters of coincidence and matters of an agenda? Any suggestions?
You have to understand. The relationship is not nearly as straightforward as you make it out to be.