Pubdate: Sat, 24 Jan 2015
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2015 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Author: Jacob Sullum, Creators Syndicate

NEW ASSET SEIZURE POLICY WON'T MAKE MUCH DIFFERENCE

Money-hungry cops are angry about the forfeiture reform that Attorney 
General Eric Holder announced on Jan. 6, which suggests it's a move 
in the right direction.

But contrary to initial press reports, the new policy represents a 
modest change to the rules governing civil forfeiture, which allows 
the government to take people's assets without accusing them of a crime.

"Civil forfeiture is fundamentally at odds with our judicial system 
and notions of fairness," two former directors of the Justice 
Department's Asset Forfeiture Office observed in a Washington Post 
op-ed piece last fall. "Civil forfeiture laws presume someone's 
personal property to be tainted, placing the burden of proving it 
'innocent' on the owner."

Holder did not address that central issue, which is beyond his power. 
Rather, he modified the Justice Department's Equitable Sharing 
Program, which lets police and prosecutors use federal law to dodge 
state restrictions on forfeiture.

Holder's order deals only with "adoption" cases, where local agencies 
seize property on their own and ask the Justice Department to pursue 
forfeiture under federal law, which requires less evidence and lets 
cops keep a bigger share of the loot than many state laws do.

According to a 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office, 
"adoptions made up about 17 percent of all equitable sharing payments" in 2010.

During the past six years, the DOJ says, adoptions "accounted for 
roughly 3 percent of the value of forfeitures in the Department of 
Justice Asset Forfeiture Program."

The program's reports to Congress indicate that equitable sharing 
payments to state and local agencies accounted for about 22 percent 
of deposits during those six years, which means adoptions represented 
less than 14 percent of equitable sharing.

In other words, the new DOJ policy leaves the Equitable Sharing 
Program mostly untouched.

It explicitly exempts seizures arising from state or local 
investigations that are assisted by or coordinated with federal 
agencies, which include seizures by hundreds of federally subsidized 
multijurisdictional task forces.

"As virtually every drug task force I know of has a federal liaison 
on call, this means business as usual (for) local law enforcement," 
says Eapen Thampy, executive director of Americans for Forfeiture 
Reform. "The exception swallows the rule."

In a recent letter to Holder, four members of Congress, including 
three conservative Republicans, urged him to eliminate equitable 
sharing entirely. That is also the approach favored by Sen. Rand 
Paul, R-Ky., who plans to reintroduce his forfeiture reform bill soon.

Legislation is necessary not only to prevent cops from evading state 
reforms, but also to give property owners more protection under state 
and federal laws. Ideally, legislators should require a criminal 
conviction prior to forfeiture and keep cops from getting part of the 
proceeds, a policy that perverts their priorities and fosters corruption.

It would be unfortunate if such reforms were killed by complacency. 
That could happen if the overenthusiastic response to Holder's new 
policy - which some commentators portrayed as putting an end not only 
to equitable sharing (which will continue), also but to civil 
forfeiture (which extends far beyond this one program) - leaves 
people with the false impression that the problem has been solved.

That does not mean Holder's move accomplishes nothing. Greedy 
grumbling by cops suggests it will make legalized theft harder for 
some of them.

Douglas County, Neb., Sheriff Tim Dunning, for instance, complains 
that the elimination of federal adoptions in drug cases will force 
him to comply with his state's forfeiture law, which requires proof 
beyond a reasonable doubt, as opposed to the much weaker 
"preponderance of the evidence" standard set by federal law.

Nebraska also gives cops a smaller share of the take.

"This benefits nobody but drug dealers," Dunning told the Omaha 
World-Herald. "Federal law is a tremendously bigger hammer. I don't 
see what hammer we are going to have over these people now."

Dunning's assumption that only drug dealers need to worry about 
forfeiture illustrates a familiar principle: When you've got a big 
hammer, everyone looks like a nail.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom