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Are bounty hunters cops1/25/2024 Once their cash is confiscated, they often have no money to hire a lawyer and are forced to let the money go. Across 21 states with available data 2015-19, the average forfeiture was $1,276 – not exactly drug lord fortunes.īecause many low-income and minority people don’t have bank accounts, they use cash and become easy prey for law enforcement. Like so much else in today’s criminal justice system, the brunt of forfeiture falls on those who can least afford to fight back. The majority of seizures are cash. Basically, you’re guilty until proven innocent. They don’t have to charge you, let alone convict you of anything. And once they seize something, it’s up to you to prove in a complex and expensive system that it is not derived from a crime. Police need only to suspect your property is somehow involved in a crime. That’s 69 billion reasons for cash-strapped agencies to grab money, whether or not it’s justified. Since 2000, they’ve taken in nearly $69 billion, according to a report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian legal group that has sued the government in forfeiture cases. One reason is that federal, state and local authorities get to keep all or part of the forfeitures they take in. But the way it has been used for decades, it too often ensnares law-abiding citizens. USA TODAY's opinion newsletter: Get the best insights and analysis delivered to your inboxįorfeiture is meant to battle crime by taking profits from swindlers and drug dealers, and at times it does. Yet it took these innocent citizens more than six months, with help from pro bono lawyers and a class action lawsuit against the government, to get their money back last year.Īt least their nightmare ended happily – far better than for tens of thousands of innocent people whose cash, cars or even homes are seized and permanently kept by local, state or federal law enforcement under “ civil asset forfeiture.” The agent had no reason to suspect Brown of any crime, and neither she nor her father were ever charged with one. When Rolin, a retired railroad worker, moved to an apartment, he decided to entrust the money to his daughter, Rebecca Brown, to open a joint bank account in Boston, near her home.īut as she was set to fly home from Pittsburgh International Airport, the Transportation Security Administration spotted the cash in her carry-on and called authorities. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent questioned her, didn’t believe her answers and seized the money under a program that was created to target illegal proceeds from crimes. What Rolin didn’t realize was that he had more to fear from law enforcement than from banks. Terry Rolin, like his Depression-era parents, shunned banks and kept his life savings of more than $82,000 hidden at his suburban Pittsburgh home.
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