CRIME DOES PAY FOR UNCLE SAM AND LOCAL COPS

The states also have their own asset seizure laws. During the summers when I wasn’t teaching, I would return to California and work with some law enforcement units. One summer, I think it was 1989 or 1990, I was working with the Riverside Sheriff’s narcotics unit when we raided the home of a 19-year-old meth dealer. The sheriff’s department seized his sumptuous two-story home with its large swimming pool, a one-story recreation building containing a pool table and professional video game consoles, two custom corvettes and all the expensive home furnishings, crystal collections, china figurines, grandfather clock and a foul mouthed parrot. That’s right, he was only 19 years old. Who said crime doesn’t pay?

DOJ’S EXPANDING POWER TO SEIZE ASSETS SPARKS CONCERNS
By Nathan Koppel

The Wall Street Journal
August 22, 2011

The statistics are jarring.

There are now nearly 400 federal laws that empower the federal government to seize assets from convicted criminals as well as those never charged with crimes, a near-doubling of asset-seizure laws since the 1990s.

And last year, law enforcement seized more than $2.5 billion, a haul that has more than doubled over the last five years.

The Wall Street Journal cites these figures as a part of a deep dive today into the world of asset forfeiture, a federal power that critics on the left (the ACLU) and right (the Heritage Foundation) regard as a growing threat to innocent people.

Forfeiture laws are designed to take ill-gotten gains away from criminals and help the government dismantle criminal enterprises.

But of concern to some is the fact that the federal government has the power in certain instances to seize assets without filing criminal charges against the owner of the assets. While people have the power to challenge asset forfeitures in court, they have to be able to afford a lawyer to do so.

Last year, claimants challenged more than 1,800 civil-forfeiture actions in federal court, according to Justice Department figures, WSJ reports.

But Justice Department officials told WSJ that they rarely lose such cases, a fact they cite as evidence that the system is working properly. Forfeiture attorneys, meanwhile, counter that the government often settles cases, returning at least part of the seized assets, if it thinks it might lose.

Another red flag to critics is the fact that the federal government can share seized assets with cooperating state and local law enforcement agencies, which can then use seized funds at their discretion, WSJ reports, noting that the federal government paid out more than $500 million last year to local law enforcement agencies, a figure that had risen about 75% from a decade ago.

In times of fiscal austerity, the police have an incentive to seize first and ask questions later, critics contend. (Here’s an earlier blog post about a Texas district attorney who improperly used seized assets to boost the pay of his employees.)

Justice Department officials say that seized assets are monitored closely to ensure that they are being used properly.