Tennessee Asset Forfeiture Bill Seeks To Abolish Abusive Police Practice
A Tennessee state legislator has introduced a bill to abolish civil asset forfeiture, the controversial legal power that allows police to confiscate and keep property without ever charging the owner with a crime. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Barrett Rich (R-Somerville), would require a criminal conviction of the owner to permit law enforcement to keep any property associated with the crime.
***
Just this month, for example, the owners of the Motel Caswell in Tewksbury, Mass., won a years-long fight to keep the federal government from seizing their business. In that case, the government didn't even allege the owners were involved in any criminal activity. Instead, prosecutors argued that the Caswell family didn't do enough to prevent other people from committing drug crimes while staying at the hotel. As evidence, they cited 15 drug-related incidents at the hotel over a 15-year period. None involved the Caswells or anyone they knew. The family's fight to keep their business required a half-million dollars' worth of legal services -- although some of the defense was handled pro bono by the Institute for Justice.
***
That can create some odd incentives. For example, in a 2011 report, Nashville's News Channel 5 found that the vast majority of police stops looking for suspected drug smugglers were made on the side of the highway leaving the city, not the side entering it. For police coffers, it was better to let the drugs come into Nashville, be sold and then seize the cash as the dealers left town.
Likewise, in a 1994 study published in the journal Justice Quarterly, criminologists J. Mitchell Miller and Lance H. Selva found that several police agencies delayed making busts of suspected drug houses until most of the drug supply had been sold. They waited until the drugs had already hit the streets so that they could maximize their forfeiture bounty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/tennessee-asset-forfeiture_n_2933246.html
= new reply since forum marked as read