Pubdate: Fri, 06 Feb 2015
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2015 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Marni Soupcoff
Page: A11

WHEN COPS BECOME ROBBERS

It creates dangerous incentives when the people charged with seizing
private property (the police) stand to benefit from the value of
whatever they acquire

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently issued new guidelines to
prevent local and state police from using federal law to seize private
property without a warrant or proof of a crime. But it's a little
early to be celebrating the end of civil forfeiture abuse.

Most U.S. states have their own civil forfeiture statutes, as do seven
Canadian provinces, which means that in most of North America, police
are still free to take people's property - their homes, their cars,
their cash - without even charging them with a crime, let alone
proving one beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

It is difficult to think of a better example of how little will change
thanks to the DOJ's guidelines than a Virginia bust and seizure
reported on recently by The Washington Post.

A high-stakes game of poker was taking place in the basement of a
private home in a well-to-do suburb of Washington, D.C., when a SWAT
team dressed in black and armed with assault rifles charged in and
seized tens of thousands of dollars from the shocked players. Illegal
gambling, you see. The players, who were unarmed and understandably
alarmed by the sudden appearance of officers pointing semi-automatic
weapons at their faces and yelling at them not to move, co-operated
fully.

While several of the players were charged, they eventually agreed to
the deal that prosecutors offered them. It involved the expunging of
the illegal gambling charges, so long as the players kept a clean
record for six months.

The only small catch was that police would keep 40% of the cash they
seized, though they would not comment on how the money would be spent.
If the situation in Virginia is anything like the one in Ontario,
chances are that the cash will be put back into the police department,
in the form of nifty new departmental equipment and toys, such as
ATVs, GPS tracking devices and surveillance cameras.

Ontario has also chosen to use some of the money it has acquired
through civil forfeiture on what it described in a response to a
freedom of information request as, "binoculars used to monitor &
identify vandals in action." For some reason, this amuses me as much
as it depresses me.

The problem, of course, is not with ATVs or cameras or binoculars in
and of themselves, but with the dangerous incentives that are created
when the same people who are charged with seizing private property -
the police - stand to benefit from the value of whatever they acquire.

We have so far not seen quite as brazen and unrelenting civil
forfeiture abuses in Canada as have been typical in the United States.
But it's hard to escape the feeling that things are getting worse
here, even as Americans are very slowly starting to demand that civil
forfeiture powers be reined in. In Ontario, an Orillia couple named
the Reillys stand to lose the two boarding houses they own even though
they are not charged with any crime.

In fact, they haven't even had their trial yet, but the judge has
already ordered that their properties be sold. It's almost as though
the Reillys are being punished for their good deeds: They tried to
provide housing for the disadvantaged and often drove their tenants,
many of whom suffered from addictions, to detox centres or self-help
meetings. Now Ontario says that because some tenants apparently used
and/or sold illegal drugs in the building, the rent the Reillys
received was "proceeds of crime." Ergo, the property must be handed
over to the attorney general to be sold for cash.

There is hope when the anger at the injustices caused by civil
forfeiture is so widespread that the U.S. DOJ feels it must act. But
there is still a long way to go when harmless poker players and
tender-hearted landlords are targeted not for what they've done, but
for what they have.
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MAP posted-by: Matt