Pubdate: Sun, 23 Aug 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248

A RELIC OF THE WAR ON DRUGS

One of the markers of the nation's anti-drug frenzy in the 1980s was 
a sharp increase in civil asset forfeitures, in which law enforcement 
agencies seize the cash, cars and other property that they claim are 
used in the commission of crimes. They are able to target and 
penalize a suspected drug dealer, for example, even when they can't 
win a criminal conviction. What's more, instead of turning a seized 
asset over to the Treasury, police and prosecutors can divide it 
among their own agencies, giving them an incentive to stage ever-more 
aggressive and questionable seizures.

Some of the worst abuses of this flouting of fundamental property 
rights have been corrected by state legislatures (including 
California's) over the years with laws that, for example, require the 
assets to be returned unless the putative owner is charged and convicted.

Even in California, though, property valued at more than $25,000 may 
be kept without a conviction if the police win a civil proceeding 
that targets the property itself rather than the suspect. The case 
need not be proved by the well-known "beyond a reasonable doubt" 
criminal standard but instead a lower civil standard.

And there remains another gaping loophole: Federal seizure laws 
remain in effect, and they don't require convictions; and by 
partnering with federal agencies, local police can operate under 
federal instead of California laws and continue taking and keeping a 
cut of the seized property for themselves - without ever charging the 
property owner with a crime. Abuses continue.

They would be curbed by SB 443, a bill sponsored in the Legislature 
by Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles). It would require the return 
of property seized even in partnership with a federal agency, unless 
there is a criminal conviction. And even if there is a conviction, 
the money would have to be distributed more widely and not be simply 
divvied up among the cops and prosecutors, the locals and the feds.

The proposal would be even better if the money had to be turned over 
to a city's or county's general fund, or was otherwise separated from 
the budgets of the agencies conducting the raids and seizures. A 
fundamental tenet of law enforcement reforms of the 19th and early 
20th centuries was that officers should be paid decent wages, and 
police and other agencies should be properly funded so that they need 
not resort to shakedowns and intimidation to keep the money coming in.

But the bill still represents an important step away from the status 
quo and deserves support later this week in committee and then on the 
Assembly floor.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom