California Passes Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill That Closes Federal Loophole, Adds Conviction Requirement
from the another-win-after-years-of-losses dept
After years of civil asset forfeiture abuse, legislators are finally fighting back. Reform bills have been offered up all over the country. Unfortunately, very few of them have made it to state governors' desks intact. The DOJ itself has played an integral part in thwarting true forfeiture reform, but legislators are also battling powerful police unions and a law enforcement lobby that needs to do little more than say the words "drug dealer" to convince fence-straddlers to come down on their side.
New Mexico's legislature passed one of the most stringent forfeiture reform bills in the nation, only to see it ignored by local police departments who viewed it as applicable only to state law enforcement agencies. We'll see if the same thing happens in California, where another significant reform bill has just become law. Nick Wing of the Huffington Post reports:
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Thursday signed a bill into law scaling back a controversial practice that allows police in the state to permanently seize people’s cash and property without obtaining a conviction or even charging someone with a crime.
Not only does the law contain a conviction requirement -- something that should greatly reduce the amount of abuse -- but it closes a loophole law enforcement agencies love using to route around state-level restrictions.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2017, police departments in California will be largely prohibited from transferring seized property to federal agencies in order to sidestep state conviction requirements. The legislation forbids the transfer of property, like vehicles and homes, and specifically raises the threshold on cash seizures, requiring the government to obtain a conviction before permanently confiscating any amount under $40,000. (The previous cap was $25,000.) For larger cash seizures, authorities must provide “clear and convincing” evidence of a connection to criminal activity before taking the money for good.
These restrictions should create additional barriers against misuse. High-dollar seizures are the exception, not the rule. Law enforcement agencies don't rake in cash from a few large busts a year. The greatest portion of this "income" derives from dozens or hundreds of smaller seizures. The lower dollar amounts ensure agencies will hold onto more money more often. The cost of challenging a seizure is often more than the amount seized -- a fact many law enforcement officers are all too aware of.
Survey results from the Drug Police Alliance show civil asset forfeiture is fairly widespread, with around 10 percent of residents in a number of California counties reporting that they know someone who’s had property confiscated by police without being convicted of a crime. And forfeiture trends in California don’t appear to have changed much since 1992, when 94 percent of state forfeitures involved seizures of $5,000 or less. Adjusted to 1992 levels, the average value of a forfeiture in California in 2013 was just $5,145.
This law puts some due process back into the forfeiture system, preventing agencies from running a rigged game which pits the government against the property seized and doing everything it can to keep the rightful owner from raising objections.
Of course, law enforcement officials and representatives are already complaining that the bill will turn California into Mexico.
There’s also a broader belief that the new law will encourage the criminal element to do business in California.
“The fact is that when you’re dealing with transnational criminal enterprises, one of the crippling things that you can do is seize their assets out from under them,” said John Lovell, a lobbyist for the California Narcotic Officers’ Association. “And that can be, in many cases, more efficacious than jailing a few members of that cartel.”
Except that years of drug warring and asset forfeiture haven't done anything to reduce the flow of drugs into the country. This fact is conveniently overlooked every time law enforcement agencies try to defend taking a few thousand dollars from a motorist passing through the state. The agencies that benefit from forfeiture have almost no interest in securing convictions -- a much longer, more expensive process that involves making more effort than claiming to smell marijuana before helping themselves to any cash they discover.
Agencies are also complaining about expected budget shortfalls, and without any seeming awareness that this is a mess of their own making. Effective budgets don't allow for highly-speculative projections. Agencies have no way of knowing from year-to-year how much they can truly expect to obtain through asset forfeiture. But they pencil in amounts anyway, turning this amount into a goal to chase, rather than a possible surplus that should only be counted when -- and if -- it actually arrives.
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Filed Under: asset forfeiture, california, civil asset forfeiture, conviction
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Telling complaints
If they're really worried about the 'transnational criminal enterprises' then this shouldn't affect them in the slightest, as it should be trivial for them to collect enough evidence for a conviction in order to allow the seizures to go through under the new law. If they don't have enough evidence then they're basically admitting that they're robbing people simply because they think their marks might be criminals.
The only way a requirement for a conviction is a problem is if they have a habit of stealing from people based upon weak or non-existent evidence. This is a solution to a problem that shouldn't even exist, the idea that it's perfectly okay to steal someone's property without first demonstrating their guilt in court is an idea that should have been thrown out the first time someone seriously suggested it, not something that requires specific laws to combat and prohibit.
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Re: Telling complaints
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Don't you think it is difficult enough to keep track of the combinations of donut types, fillings and toppings?
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Arizona Law Enforcement
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Unfortunately... yeah, getting the courts to apply the law rather than give cops a pass, and the fact that if someone wants to contest a robbery at badgepoint they still have to take it up in court which may cost money they simply don't have means this new law may be one of 'looks good on paper, utterly worthless in practice.'
Cops have been robbing people with impunity for far too long to just change overnight, law or no law, so unless they actually suffer should they continue on business as usual I imagine the law won't change much, even if it is welcome as it demonstrates that the problem has been acknowledge as existing and being serious enough to warrant legal action.
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Bullets Have No Name
Natural laws matter
A bullet in the head will kill you... It makes no difference whether fired by a criminal or the "State"
Natural laws will always exist... Human laws won't
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Probably shouldn't give them the idea
Improper lane change? That's an asset forfeiture.
Speeding? That will cost you your vehicle and all your cash.
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And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? ESCROW the assets until conviction.
The cart has leapt over the horse and is galloping down the last furlong to Police Heaven while the worn down old nag is struggling to get out of the stable.
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If only
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Re: If only
2) People have money.
3) Therefore by robbing innocent people they no longer have the money or property required to commit crime, meaning less crime.
Makes perfect sense really, robbing people = less crime.
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The police still seize the assets, call them "evidence" and leave the case open. So they end up just holding the money and whatever for as long as they feel the need to investigate. They could slowly, slowly, slowly move a case forward one interview at a time, one review at a time, and spread it literally over years.
True, they may not be able to freely spend the cash for stuff they want, but the person who had the money seized from them will see the same effects. They will have to get a lawyer and go to court and make motions to move the case forward or have it dropped.
Not sure they really fixed anything here.
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"True, they may not be able to freely spend the cash for stuff they want"
You gave us the answer, then asked the question. I don't understand your post at all.
The point of the legislation is to prevent abuse, not keep the police from preserving evidence. If it's evidence, then it needs to follow the rules of evidence right? It sits until trial in a evidence locker somewhere. If convinced, the court will decide what happens too it. If found innocent, the evidence is returned to the defendant.
It forces the police to bring a case against the person and not the property itself right? At least that's what I take away from the story.
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The effects for the citizens involved would be the same - money and other assets gone for a very long time, and the same process of filing to try to get them back.
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I don't deny the effects for the citizens would be the same, but I guess I'm missing the motivation part. Why would the cops bother if they can't keep or use the money? I hardly think they would go through all that trouble if they don't get to keep it. What, are they going to seize the money and stick it in an evidence locker and spend years investigating someone? The average amount taken is around 5K. Hardly seems worth it to me.
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Because Whatever is an idiot. That's all you need to know.
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To cite other parts of the bill of rights, seizing assets is also against the forth amendment, and finding the assets to seize often violates the forth again
Based on the difficulty of retrieving the property, the sixth amendment is probably being violated as well
If the property is being seized without people being charged with a crime, then the sixth is not being violated, but that also makes their violations of the forth and fifth worse.
If the assets seized are valuable enough, the eighth might be violated as well
I think that it is ridiculous that not only are laws explicitly forbidding this necessary, but also that even those laws are not being that effective.
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Conviction Requirement is a huge step forward
Now the assets must be convicted to remain seized. The assets do not need to assist in their own defense.
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Re: Conviction Requirement is a huge step forward
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I thought state level laws over ride local/municipal laws, that is what they are saying about the anti-anti-fracking laws being pushed in many states. Double standard? Hypocrites? Yup. My way or the highway - blah blah blah
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