Institute For Justice Survey Shows How Philadelphia's Forfeiture Program Preyed On Poor Minorities

from the I-guess-the-gov't-feels-minorities-just-haven't-been-oppressed-enough dept

The Institute for Justice managed to kill off most of Philadelphia's severely abused civil forfeiture program in 2018. Litigation resulted in a consent decree that banned law enforcement from seizing cash amounts less than $250 and seizures of less than $1,000 were forbidden unless accompanied by criminal charges or if the seizure was to be used as evidence in a trial.

This consent decree was necessary because the Philly PD had abused the system for years, taking minute amounts of cash off anyone they arrested as part of a catch-and-release program where alleged criminals were free to go but the PD held onto the cash. Officers were also caught buying seized houses at auction, flipping them to turn a profit, and incentivizing even more bogus property seizures.

Of course, the PD took the "evidence" loophole and ran with it, seizing vehicles as supposedly instrumental to prosecutions that never happened before auctioning them off and pocketing the money.

The Institute for Justice has doubled back on the impetus of its lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia, surveying victims of forfeiture programs and coming up with plenty of reasons why residents should be thrilled these programs are now (mostly) dead.

Its report [PDF] on Philly forfeiture surveyed 407 residents, resulting in data that shows the PD targeted minorities frequently and poor minorities most frequently of all.

The demographic characteristics of Philadelphia forfeiture victims look quite different from those of Philadelphians overall. Figure 1 disaggregates the racial and ethnic makeup of the sample, showing the large majority of respondents were Black. Indeed, as Figure 2 shows, Philadelphia forfeiture victims are more likely to be Black than the general population. They are also more likely to earn lower incomes and be unemployed and less likely to have a college degree or own their homes. These results suggest Philadelphia’s civil forfeiture machine disproportionately entangled members of disadvantaged communities.

This is partly a result of biased policing efforts, which continues to be a problem for law enforcement everywhere, not just in Philadelphia. But targeting low income residents also ensured the Philly PD would be more likely to retain ownership of seized property. Residents making less than $50,000 a year had lower amounts taken from them and often lacked the funds to seek their property's return. With legal fees approaching $3,500 for a successful return effort, most chose to simply walk away from the forfeited property, rather than spend time and money they didn't have fighting against a system designed to deter them from retrieving seized property.

When it comes to forfeiture in Philadelphia, no job is too small:

Police seized as little as $25 in cash, a cologne gift set worth $20 and crutches.

As the report points out, the median value for seized property was just $600. More than 50% of seizures were amounts less than $600. Nearly 70% were for less than $2,000. Less than one-quarter were for more than $3,000 -- an amount that might turn a legal battle for the return of property into a breakeven effort.

But even the initial step in recovering property was often bypassed by the city. You can't try to reclaim property if there's no record of the police taking it from you -- something police officers appear to have used to their advantage.

More than half of respondents—58%—never received a receipt for their property at the time of seizure, and two thirds did not receive any information from police about how to begin the process of getting their property back. A simple receipt may not sound like much in the grand scheme of the complex civil forfeiture process, but people who received a receipt at the time of seizure were eight times more likely to get their property back than those who did not.

As for the argument that confiscating cologne sets and crutches is essential to fighting crime, the stats don't back that up. In most cases, forfeitures were completely removed from criminal convictions or even criminal charges.

Of those respondents who ultimately lost their property to forfeiture, more than half (56%) were never charged with a crime, and three-quarters were never found guilty of any wrongdoing—that is, they were not convicted of a crime, nor did they enter into any sort of plea deal with the court.

As we've covered extensively at Techdirt, abusive forfeiture programs aren't unique to Philadelphia. They're everywhere. It's only in recent years that legislators have decided to do something about abuses entities like the Institute of Justice have highlighted, reported on, and sued about for years. Things are changing for the better in many places, but more work still needs to be done to push cops back to earning their money honestly, rather than just taking stuff because they can.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, bigotry, civil asset forfeiture, legalized theft, philadelphia, poverty, racism
Companies: institute for justice

Philadelphia Residents On The Hook For $9.8 Million For Putting The Wrong Man In Prison For 28 Years

from the give-till-it-hurts-residents,-say-the-government dept

Plenty of people can ruin lives. But no one can ruin lives like cops and prosecutors.

Look, we get it. Everyone likes an easy day at work. But when lives are on the line, the "easy" should be subservient to the "justified." But that's not what happens. When cops decide they like someone for a crime, "correct" is no longer a factor. You can't close a case file without a convicted perp. And closing a case apparently means more than being right, even if it means the real perp is still on the loose.

So (to paraphrase the screw coming down on Paul Newman) you get what we have here: a perp. A perp who wasn't the actual killer, but still lost more than a third of his life expectancy to police and prosecutors eager to close a case. Who pays for this miscarriage of justice? Well, it's the same people who want for all the world to believe a miscarriage of justice will never occur: taxpayers.

We want to believe cops want to protect us from violent criminals. The reality is opposed to this viewpoint. The cops want whoever they can hang a crime on, even if it's not the real criminal. And while cops go to bed feeling they've made us safer, real life shows us cops can sleep through the shittiest railroadings. So can prosecutors.

In Philadelphia, taxpayers are being forced to cough up nearly $10 million to pay for the things that let terrible cops and worse prosecutors sleep the sleep of the righteous. Here's Jeremy Roebuck of The Philadelphia Inquirer, letting us know that horrendous things are being done in our names because it's being done with our tax dollars.

In one of the largest wrongful-conviction settlements in Philadelphia history, the city said Wednesday it will pay $9.8 million to a man exonerated after spending nearly three decades in prison for a murder he did not commit.

$9.8 million is not an insignificant amount of money. That's decent VC funding. That's a comfortable retirement for people who want to retire while they're still in their 30s. That's a monumental amount of cash. And this payout could have been avoided if anyone involved in the investigation had decided the perp that was "easiest" wasn't actually the murderer they were seeking.

But no one did. And it cost an innocent man more than a third of his life.

Chester Hollman III was 21, with no criminal record and a job as an armored-car driver, when he was pulled over in Center City one night in 1991 and charged with the fatal shooting of a University of Pennsylvania student in a botched street robbery. A judge ordered him released last year at age 49, citing evidence that police and prosecutors built their case on fabricated statements from people they coerced as witnesses and later withheld evidence pointing to the likely true perpetrators of the crime.

This is what we get for supplying cops with outsized portions of city budgets. This is what we get for giving the law enforcement side of our lives outsized deference for years. This is what we get for accepting exonerative bullshit for years from cops and prosecutors. We give them an inch and they take 28 years off a man's life.

$10 million is low. But it's all the city can do. As this report notes, cops and prosecutors have cost the city (and by the "city," I mean its taxpaying residents) more than $35 million in a little over two years.

Is this acceptable? It shouldn't be. But those paying the fees for bad cops and worse prosecutors hold almost no power. Sure, they can vote with their expectations and wallets during local elections, but when push comes to courtroom shove, taxpayers are on the hook. They're expected to right the wrongs they never would have allowed to happen. It's their money on the line but they have no say in how it's spent.

Garbage in. Garbage out. This payout isn't a record-setter. But that's only because many of those who dipped their investigative wick in this case were even more awful in the past.

His payout is just $50,000 short of the record for settlements of its kind in the city — a distinction held by the $9.85 million agreement the city struck in 2018 with Anthony Wright, a man who served nearly 25 years of a sentence for a 1991 rape and murder that DNA evidence proved decades later he did not commit. Several of the same investigators who worked to convict Wright were also involved in Hollman’s case.

Vomit in disgust, Philadelphia. Hold your enemies close. But hold your wallet even closer. The city supports bad cops and bad prosecutors. There's a progressive DA in office now, but the horrors of the past can still come and demand you pay for actions you'd never condone.

We're paying for easy days at work. Taxpayers are asked to fund criminal "justice." But when they have their hands out, they refuse to specify they'll take the "justice" in scare quotes over real justice any day of the week.

One [witness] said officers had threatened her with arrest if she did not implicate Hollman. The other [witness] later said he had agreed to provide the false testimony in hopes of securing help with his own pending criminal case.

Keep your receipts, folks. Wave them in the faces of "more of the same" law enforcement candidates. Ask them why the easiest route to "justice" involves threatening witnesses and tilting the scale against people whose innocence is supposed to be presumed. Ask them how they sleep at night knowing they've sent innocent people off to prisons where crime is more rampant than the crime on the streets they're supposed to be policing. Ask them if they're cool subjecting people to violent rape and the loss of their freedom based on nothing more than a bunch of coercion. If they're cool with it, suggest they end their careers, if not their lives. They're not worthy of your respect, much less your tax dollars.

We have a system that's supposed to protect the accused from an overbearing government. But far too often, it only shields the accusers and their busted inputs. For the rest of us on the outside, the only thing it means is higher tax rates and the use of our money to pay other citizens for being fucked by the government we've asked to never put us in this position.

Filed Under: chester hollmann, philadelphia, police, prosecutors, wrongful conviction

Cities Say ISPs Are Being Cagey About Low-Income Broadband Availability During Covid

from the you're-not-helping dept

Back in March, the Trump FCC put on a big show about a new "Keep America Connected Pledge" to help broadband users during COVID. In it, the FCC proudly proclaimed that it had gotten hundreds of ISPs to suspend usage caps and late fees, and agree to not disconnect users who couldn't pay for essential broadband service during a pandemic. The problem: the 60 day pledge was entirely voluntary, temporary, and because the FCC just got done obliterating its authority over ISPs at lobbyist behest (as part of its net neutrality repeal), was impossible to actually enforce. It was regulatory theater.

The rather meaningless pledge has since expired despite the pandemic only getting worse. And because this FCC doesn't actually care about consumer protection (it literally doesn't even collect data on who is getting kicked offline for nonpayment), many ISPs simply ignored the pledge, and kicked users offline anyway; even disabled Americans who were told repeatedly by their ISPs that they wouldn't be booted offline for nonpayment during the crisis. Meanwhile, most ISPs have also restored their bullshit, arbitrary usage caps, making them a pretty additional penny during a crisis.

Meanwhile, because the FCC's broadband availability and pricing data collection is a joke, it's proving harder than ever for local municipalities to help the public during this crisis. With broadband now essential for survival during COVID, many towns and cities are struggling to ensure Americans can get online, and working blind thanks to federal government incompetence and a lack of transparency in the broadband sector.

Government leaders in Philadelphia, for example, can't get accurate low-income broadband household penetration data from either the FCC or Comcast, so they're literally having to go around to ask families if they've got service and how much they pay:

"In Philadelphia, city officials have struggled to get the data from Comcast, one of the nation's largest ISPs and the owner of NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News. So city officials contacted families directly to find out whether they have internet service. Philadelphia said that as of Oct. 21, after a media campaign, surveys and canvassing, it had been able to bring over 11,000 families online since March. In Nashville, Tennessee, a group is starting its own digital divide census, because it isn't counting on ISPs like Comcast and AT&T to help."

Despite what telecom-funded monopoly apologists say, gutting adult regulatory oversight and letting giant monopolies do whatever the hell they want does not result in miraculous outcomes, it results in wealthy monopolists, bullshit, and frustration. Many ISPs like Comcast are quick to use low-income broadband programs for lobbying and marketing, but when people trying to actually bridge the digital divide ask for hard data on who is or isn't served so they can help them, incumbent ISPs suddenly get all sheepish.

Usually that's because being transparent about this data only advertises how dubious these programs are and how patchy, expensive, and non-competitive the U.S. broadband sector is. But ISPs like to pretend how many low-income Americans they serve is some competitive secret:

"It's a battle that public interest groups were fighting well before the coronavirus pandemic began, said Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an advocacy group that works on broadband issues. He said it's time for state and federal government agencies to step in. The FCC and states should be requiring broadband companies to submit basic data about these issues and it should be made publicly available," he said by email. "Public interest groups have argued for this for years but the providers frequently claim it is all proprietary data they cannot let their rivals know about."/em>

With COVID sticking around for a while, competent federal leadership on this subject is going to matter more than ever. We're going to have to do more than throw mindless tax breaks and subsidies at giant monopolies (with long track records of misspending or just pocketing the money) then patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. Fixing broken U.S. broadband requires rooting out both state and federal corruption, prioritizing accurate, reliable data at the FCC, and embracing creative, intelligent solutions to bring new broadband options to struggling Americans, even if (especially if?) they piss off incumbents like AT&T and Comcast.

There used to be a long-standing debate about whether broadband was an essential utility or a luxury. In part because once you realize it's the former, the corrupt bullshit status quo no longer becomes tenable. With COVID (and kids being forced to huddle outside of a Taco Bell just to attend class) that conversation is dead and settled. Affordable broadband is now an issue of survival. This corrupt, sloppy bullshit we've been passing off as "serious broadband policy" for the last thirty years is no longer going to cut it.

Filed Under: broadband, covid-19, digital divide, fcc, low-income, philadelphia

Federal Prosecutor Blames Philadelphia DA For Shootout That Wounded Six Philly PD Officers

from the and-zero-respect-for-the-general-public dept

Inside Attorney General William Barr's long rant about the lack of respect for police officers in this nation was a shot or two at recently-elected District Attorneys (like Philadelphia's Larry Krasner). Barr feels -- like many of the police union reps he was speaking to -- DAs that institute reforms, reduce incarceration, and punish police officers for misconduct are on the wrong side of history.

There is another development that is demoralizing to law enforcement and dangerous to public safety. That is the emergence in some of our large cities of District Attorneys that style themselves as “social justice” reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law.

These anti-law enforcement DAs have tended to emerge in jurisdictions where the election is largely determined by the primary. Frequently, these candidates ambush an incumbent DA in the primary with misleading campaigns and large infusions of money from outside groups.

Once in office, they have been announcing their refusal to enforce broad swathes of the criminal law. Most disturbing is that some are refusing to prosecute cases of resisting police. Some are refusing to prosecute various theft cases or drug cases, even where the suspect is involved in distribution. And when they do deign to charge a criminal suspect, they are frequently seeking sentences that are pathetically lenient. So these cities are headed back to the days of revolving door justice. The results will be predictable. More crime; more victims.

A department that frequently touts the power of prosecutorial discretion is angry because prosecutors are exercising discretion. And it's a bit rich for AG Barr to complain about "revolving door justice" when law enforcement agencies all over the nation continue to hire officers fired for misconduct and abuse by other agencies.

The administration's back-the-blue attitude is on full display. Barr's angry speech about the respect he believes officers are owed has trickled down to the lower ranks of federal prosecutors. In the wake of a shootout between a criminal suspect and several Philadelphia police officers, US Attorney William McSwain decided to take his own shot at Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner.

What I witnessed last night was true heroism by the Philadelphia police. But the crisis was precipitated by a stunning disrespect for law enforcement - a disrespect so flagrant and so reckless that the suspect immediately opened fire on every single officer within shooting distance. Only by the grace of God did they survive.

Where does such disrespect come from?

There is a new culture of disrespect for law enforcement in this City that is promoted and championed by District Attorney Larry Krasner - and I am fed up with it.

It started with chants at the DA's victory party - chants of "F*** the police" and "No good cops in a racist system."

We've now endured over a year and a half of the worst kinds of slander against law enforcement - the DA routinely calls police and prosecutors corrupt and racist, even "war criminals" that he compares to Nazis.

This vile rhetoric puts our police in danger. It disgraces the Office of the District Attorney. And it harms the good people in the City of Philadelphia and rewards the wicked.

While McSwain was bitching about a prosecutor he doesn't like, DA Larry Krasner was praising the Philadelphia PD -- which saw six of its officers wounded -- for their handling of the volatile situation.

McSwain also suggested the federal branch would step in to directly control the actions of the Philly DA. His exact words were "We're going to provide some adult supervision." As Adam Steinbaugh points out, that's not how federalism works. Someone must have pointed that out McSwain, who walked back this comment (but none of his press conference remarks) less than two hours later.

Perhaps the federal prosecutor was just being reflexively defensive. The person who allegedly shot all of these cops was a federal snitch who got a break on his most recent prison sentence because of how helpful he was.

McSwain failed to mention, however, that alleged shooter Maurice Hill’s interactions with law enforcement predated Krasner taking office. Nor did McSwain acknowledge that the 36-year-old Hill, who on Saturday was charged by Krasner’s office with attempted murder and multiple counts of aggravated assault related to the incident, has been a federal informant for years, according to documents obtained by The Appeal.

McSwain may have known this news would eventually come out and needed to get out ahead of the narrative before it flipped. Or he may have been blissfully unware and simply decided to engage in the DOJ's "criticizing law enforcement kills cops" politicking. Neither move makes McSwain or police officers look any better or does anything to close the divide between the public and its public servants.

But this is the narrative that's being aggressively pushed with Bill Barr running the DOJ. Anyone who isn't willing to shower cops with respect and adulation is an enemy -- even those basically playing for the same team. There will be no prosecutorial discretion under this administration. There will only be as much cruelty and punishment as it can possibly mete out. Every time something bad happens to a cop, some federal law enforcement rep will be there to claim it was disrespect -- rather than guns and bullets -- that hurt or killed the officer.

Filed Under: adult supervision, doj, federal informant, larry krasner, philadelphia, police shooting, william barr, william mcswain

Pennsylvania Legislators Quickly And Quietly Passed A Law That Strips Power From Its Reform-Minded DA

from the dirty-deeds-done-with-amazing-alacrity dept

The residents of Philadelphia elected Larry Krasner as their new DA in 2018. Krasner promised reforms to the criminal justice system. And he delivered. He secured 33 resignations from prosecutors and staff who didn't feel they could back his reforms. Shortly after this, he received the best possible (inadvertent) endorsement for his reform efforts, one that took the form of criticism from the head of the local police union.

Krasner eliminated cash bail for nonviolent defendants and made it clear he would not tolerate misconduct or abuse by police officers. More importantly, he did more than talk. Two officers were criminally charged for performing an illegal stop of a pedestrian and Krasner secured an indictment from a grand jury against a cop who shot an unarmed man in the back.

Local law enforcement isn't happy. Neither are many politicians. As Akela Lacy and Ryan Grim report for The Intercept, moves have been made to blunt Krasner's reform efforts.

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania have quietly muscled power away from reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner, passing new legislation giving authority to the state’s attorney general to prosecute certain firearms violations in Philadelphia — and nowhere else in the state. The provision will expire in two years, or just after Krasner’s first term ends.

The bill silently sped through the legislative process. It was referred to the Judiciary committee on June 11th and signed into law by the governor on July 2nd. That's amazing turn-time for a bureaucracy. It appears there are plenty of state legislators who prefer their prosecutors to be hard-nosed punishers, rather than actual arbiters of justice who realize the normal way of doing things (cash bail, stiff sentences, over-prosecution of minor crimes) contributes very little to anyone's idea of "justice."

Krasner's office has responded by pointing out the obvious.

In a statement, Krasner’s office said the move is an attempt by the legislature to undermine the will of voters who turned out in record numbers to elect him. “District Attorney Larry Krasner was elected by an overwhelming margin to push for badly needed criminal justice reforms in one of the most highly incarcerated big cities in the country, and he has serious concerns about what Act 58 does, the potential precedent it sets, and what it signifies for the justice movement at large,” said spokesperson Jane Roh, referencing the legislation the new law amends.

Unfortunately, sometimes you have to point out the obvious to put something on the record in black-and-white -- something the legislators who hastily shepherded this bill through the state legislature can't ignore. And there's more to it than a bunch of legislators yearning to stick it to the new reformer. It appears some legislators were completely unaware targeting Krasner was the goal of this legislation.

Multiple legislators made statements to The Intercept indicating the version the House approved did not match the Senate version, which was apparently surreptitiously changed to narrow the focus of the bill to Philadelphia and Krasner in particular. The version these legislators voted for gave smaller towns better access to attorney general resources. The final bill does none of that. All it does is wrest power away from Krasner and hand it to the state's AG.

Meanwhile, the AG's office is claiming this has nothing to do with Krasner -- whose power it preempts -- and everything to do with the city's gun violence problem. But this is bullshit because the problem the AG's office and supportive legislators have with Krasner's exercise of prosecutorial discretion is that he exercises it too often.

Supporters of the legislation say Philadelphia was singled out not because of Krasner, whose office would still technically have jurisdiction over the offenses, but because the city is home to the bulk of the state’s gun violence. “The Philadelphia DA continues to have the authority to prosecute these crimes, should he decide to start enforcing the law,” Republican Rep. Rob Kauffman, who sponsored the bill and worked directly with White to craft the amendment, wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “This wasn’t done statewide because prosecuting these gun offenses doesn’t seem to be a statewide issue.”

If Krasner passes on gun cases, the AG can now prosecute instead. Prosecutorial discretion means nothing when another prosecutor can push cases dropped by a city DA. The city has found one way to undermine a DA who actually changed things. I'm sure they'll keep experimenting until they can undo the good he's done.

Filed Under: criminal justice, criminal justice reform, da, larry krasner, pennsylvania, philadelphia, prosecutors

Investigation Finds Philly PD Officers Bought Forfeited Houses Seized During Drug Arrests

from the unlisted-job-perk dept

Philadelphia's asset forfeiture programs have subjected the city's residents to all sorts of abuse. Cops have taken cars away from their owners because a child, relative, or friend was arrested while driving the vehicle. Law enforcement has tried to take entire homes away from grandmothers because their kid sold $140-worth of marijuana to an undercover cop.

A recent court settlement is reforming the program -- something the city's legislators have had zero success doing. Cash under the amount of $250 can no longer be forfeited. Seizures under $1000 need to be accompanied by an arrest and charges. The city's law enforcement has been flexing its creativity, using the new arrest requirement to seize vehicles as "evidence" and hoping the wheels of justice grind slowly enough it would be cheaper to relinquish ownership than pay to get the car out of the impound lot.

We know cops directly profit from asset forfeiture, but when we say that we generally mean their agencies get new toys, vehicles, and other niceties by converting other people's property into discretionary spending. But there's an actual personal profit angle to forfeiture that hasn't been discussed. An investigation by PlanPhilly shows police officers have personally and directly benefited from property seizures tied to drug enforcement efforts. (h/t Wendy Cockcroft)

Maleny Vazquez remembers when the police came and took the house across the street. Vazquez has only lived on this block of Waterloo Street for a few years, but in this chaotic section of Kensington, riven by the drug trade, she has gotten used to seeing police empty homes.

“There were lot of guns and a lot of drugs in there,” she recalls. “They took 30 guns out of there.”

In neighborhoods across Philadelphia, the city sells homes that owe back taxes, or have fallen into foreclosure. But the sales in Vazquez’s neighborhood were different. Here, police seized properties after drug raids. Once they were taken, the district attorney auctioned them off to the highest bidder, for cash that went back to the law enforcement agencies.

This program saw Philly law enforcement rake in as much as $6 million a year for most of the past quarter-century. But it's not just the indirect benefit incentivizing property seizures. With this incentive, drug raids could just be home shopping.

[R]ecords showed that members of Philadelphia law enforcement directly benefited from these sales. This investigation detected at least 11 properties that were sold to Philadelphia police officers trying their hands at real estate investment.

The number may not seem like much over the course of twenty-five years, but PlanPhilly says there's no way of knowing exactly how much property ended up in the possession of law enforcement officers. It was only able to examine 1,682 records held by the District Attorney's office, which handled the sale of forfeited homes. The Philly PD conveniently decided not to retain records on forfeited property, ensuring it had nothing to give to PlanPhilly when it started asking questions.

The Philly PD does not actually prohibit officers from buying seized property. It notes it "gives the appearance of impropriety," but apparently feels it isn't actual impropriety worth deterring. Nothing prevents officers from buying up houses they've seized except their better judgment. For at least 11 officers, an appearance of impropriety isn't enough to deter them from looking like they're headed out home shopping every time they don their SWAT gear.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, legalized stealing, philadelphia, philadelphia police department, self dealing

Philly Cops Skirting Forfeiture Restrictions By Seizing Cars As 'Evidence'

from the any-port-in-a-shitstorm dept

A couple of months ago, a consent decree drastically restructured Philadelphia's severely-abused asset forfeiture program. It didn't eliminate the program entirely, but it did eliminate the small-ball cash grabs favored by local law enforcement. The median seizure by Philly law enforcement is only $178, but it adds up to millions if you do it all the time. Small seizures like this now need to be tied to arrests or the property needs to be used as evidence in a criminal case.

Other restraints will hopefully eliminate local law enforcement's worst practices -- like seizing someone's house because their kid sold $40 of drugs to a police informant. It also should slow down seizures of whatever's in a person's pockets by forbidding forfeitures of under $250 entirely.

The consent decree obviously won't solve everything, and part of the problem is the consent decree itself. It forbids seizures of less than $1,000 unless the property is evidence in an ongoing case. Guess what local law enforcement is doing.

In November 2017, Iyo Bishop of Philadelphia was arrested on assault charges after a boyfriend, who she said was abusive, accused her of striking him with an SUV. City police picked her up after spotting the vehicle parked on the street weeks later. Bishop maintained her innocence but was cuffed and thrown in a squad car. She then watched in disbelief as an officer hopped in her 2002 Jeep Liberty and drove off.

Although the charges against Bishop were eventually dropped, she never saw her vehicle again. Police sold the Jeep at auction for $1,155 in storage fees they had assessed while the case made its way through the court system.

As this report by Ryan Briggs of The Appeal shows, the consent decree basically codifies this behavior. Cops seize vehicles when making arrests, ticking one of the requirement boxes. Then they claim the vehicle is evidence, ticking the other box.

Older vehicles worth less than $1,000 simply sit in impound lots racking up fees while the accused's case languishes in the court system. The vehicle can't be returned until the criminal case is processed, so it doesn't take long for impound fees to outweigh the vehicle's value. All of this is completely beyond the control of the person's whose car has been seized.

Even if charges are dismissed or the accused is cleared of wrongdoing, the car's owner still owes these fees. Every day they can't pay it, the total increases. Sooner or later, the vehicle will be auctioned. Now the innocent person has no vehicle and is still ultimately liable for uncollected fees.

This allows cops to make money on seized vehicles even if the vehicle isn't seized from someone suspected of criminal activity. It can happen to crime victims as well.

In 2014, Karin Foley and her husband, Willis, were moving from New York State to South Carolina when their vehicle blew a tire in Pennsylvania. When Willis Foley pulled the car over and got out to change the tire, a semi struck and killed him. Pennsylvania State Police later determined that the truck driver had been at the wheel for nearly 30 hours straight.

But the state troopers who responded to the accident impounded the Foleys’ diesel pickup and a horse trailer packed with their possessions as evidence. Like Bishop, Karin Foley never saw the truck, the trailer, or any of her belongings again.

The criminal case against the trucker dragged on for three years but never made it to trial. In May, he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. State police called Foley a few months later to tell her that she had one week to travel to Pennsylvania—hundreds of miles from her South Carolina home—or they would auction her truck and trailer.

And auction it they did. The seized evidence was never used in court and local law enforcement immediately flipped the seized vehicle for unearned profit. To top it off, the coroner billed the widow $175 for her husband's body bag.

While it's understandable some property will be seized as evidence in criminal cases, fees shouldn't be charged to those found innocent or to victims of criminal activity. This is just another form of forfeiture that provides almost no avenue of recourse to property owners other than paying the government to give them back their stuff.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, consent decree, legalized theft, philadelphia

Philly Cops Face Criminal Charges For Performing An Illegal Pedestrian Stop

from the BAD-APPLES-REMOVED-DAILY dept

Weird stuff is happening in Philadelphia. Things have changed drastically since Larry Krasner became District Attorney. Anyone who enters this office and immediately earns the undying hatred of the local police union is probably someone actually serious about accountability.

Right after taking office, DA Krasner secured 33 resignations from prosecutors and staff who weren't willing to get on board with his reform efforts. He went after the bail system, pointing out it did little else but ensure the poorest Philadelphians spent the most time in jail while still presumably innocent. Then he pissed off the police union by daring to tell incoming police cadets force deployment -- especially deadly force -- is a power to be used only when necessary and handled with the utmost of respect.

Accountability INTENSIFIES. A bogus pedestrian stop performed by two cops has led to [rubs eyes in disbelief] the arrest of the two cops who performed the stop. (h/t Max Marin)

The statement [PDF] issued by the DA's office says two Philly PD officers, Matthew Walsh and Marvin Jones, stopped a citizen for "apparently using narcotics." This citizen filed a complaint, resulting in an Internal Affairs investigation.

The narrative delivered by the two cops on their report was undone completely by video obtained by Internal Affairs.

Based on video surveillance recovered during the course of the IAD investigation, Police Officer Walsh and Police Officer Jones could not have seen the citizen "apparently using narcotics." In addition, the citizen was fully compliant at the time of the stop. Moreover, the search of the citizen (which resulted in the removal of a prescription pharmaceutical from the citizen's pants pocket) was not noted on the "Vehicle/Pedestrian Investigation Report" prepared and submitted by the officers.

Normally this sort of behavior would result in a halfhearted investigation and officers being cleared of any wrongdoing. In extreme cases, someone might be suspended with pay. Lies and illegal stops rarely result in anything more than stern words and civil rights lawsuits. They almost never result in the arrest of the officers involved.

But not here. Officers Walsh and Jones have both been arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy, false imprisonment, tampering with records, obstructing administration of law, and official oppression. Rather than force the citizen to fight this abuse in court, the DA's office has taken steps that will result in far more deterrence of future unconstitutional policing by making it clear abusive actions will be punished severely.

Unbelievably, there's more. Another near-impossibility was achieved only a few weeks earlier.

Today, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is charging former 15th District Philadelphia Police Officer Ryan Pownall with Criminal Homicide (18 Pa.C.S.A. § 2501), Possession of an Instrument of Crime (18 Pa.C.S.A. § 907), and Recklessly Endangering Another Person (18 Pa.C.S.A § 2705). Pownall voluntarily turned himself in today.

The Investigating Grand Jury (IGJ), whose members completed a review of the evidence and events leading up to the shooting death of David Jones, recommended that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (DAO) issue charges against Pownall.

Officer Pownall shot David Jones in the back three times while he was running away from the officer. Jones was carrying a gun, which Pownall found during his search of Jones, but following a brief altercation, Jones tossed his weapon away and ran from Officer Pownall. Perhaps Pownall could have justified his actions (or attempted to) if he felt Jones was still carrying his gun, but his own statements to responding officers made it clear he'd seen Jones throw his weapon away before running. Video recovered from the scene showed Jones was unarmed, never turned towards Officer Pownall or acted in a threatening manner at any point during his brief flight.

As the grand jury sees it, this killing was completely unnecessary.

The IGJ (Investigative Grand Jury) found that by firing his gun in the direction of traffic, Pownall recklessly endangered other people in his vicinity, that at the time of his flight, Jones was not a danger to anyone and that Jones’s death was not necessary to secure his apprehension.

True, it doesn't take much to secure a conviction from a grand jury. But when the target is a cop, prosecutors -- despite playing on a completely-skewed playing field -- rarely seem to be able to talk grand jurors into returning charges. Officer Pownall is innocent until proven guilty, but he'll get to see firsthand what that presumption actually means once a trial's underway.

This has been a big month for police accountability. Hopefully, this trend continues... and expands much further than one DA's office in Pennsylvania.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, illegal stop, larry krasner, marvin jones, matthew walsh, philadelphia

Lawsuit Settlement Looking To Kill Philadelphia's Severely Abused Forfeiture Program

from the no-more-'$40-in-drugs-gets-cops-a-new-house'-crap dept

The Institute for Justice has secured a big win in Philadelphia. The city's asset forfeiture program is being torn down and rebuilt as the result of IJ litigation.

In documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania today, city officials agreed to a set of reforms that will end the perverse financial incentives under which law enforcement keeps and uses forfeiture revenue, fundamentally reform procedures for seizing and forfeiting property, and establish a $3 million fund to compensate innocent people whose property was wrongly confiscated.

The city's program was infamous for things like seizing a house because one resident (not the owner) sold cops $40 worth of drugs. Another case featuring the IJ's legal assistance sought the return of another home seized after a $140 drug purchase. In the first instance, prosecutors dropped the case and returned the property after the litigation received national attention. In the latter, the state's Supreme Court found the seizure of the house unwarranted and unjustifiable -- a harsh punishment that far outstripped the seriousness of the crime.

The proposed settlement [PDF] would drastically alter Philly's forfeiture laws and policies. Importantly, it would strip the financial incentive for seizures by redirecting forfeiture funds towards drug rehab programs and away from the law enforcement agencies that have directly profited from this program for years.

It also would make tiny forfeitures -- the ones least likely to be disputed -- a historical relic. Seizures of less than $1,000 would either need to be tied to an arrest or used as evidence in criminal cases. Cash seizures of less than $250 would be completely forbidden. This is important because data shows the median cash seizure by Philly law enforcement is $178.

More due process is being introduced into the forfeiture process as well. If citizens can show a need for the seized property, they may be able to retain possession of it throughout the forfeiture proceedings. Property owners would -- for the first time -- be allowed to file requests for continuances if unable to make scheduled court dates. It also fully shifts the burden of proof to prosecutors, making them prove owners knew about illegal use of their property.

If the entire settlement is approved, the perverse incentives that have turned a potentially-useful crime fighting tool into a crime of opportunity will be removed and replaced with a set of deterrents that will steer law enforcement towards seizures supported by prosecutions and convictions, rather than by conclusory statements about theoretical illegal activity.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, philadelphia, police
Companies: institute for justice

Police Union Boss Attacks New DA For Daring To Speak To Police Recruits About Deadly Force

from the 'based-on-misinformation-and-prejudices...' dept

The residents of Philadelphia elected new District Attorney Larry Krasner because he wasn't like the long line of police misconduct enablers that preceded him. Fed up with crumbling relationships between law enforcement officers and the people they served, Krasner secured the position by promising to clean house and start representing the people's best interests, rather than just law enforcement's.

Disruption ensued.

Just days after he asked 33 prosecutors and staff members to turn in their resignations, Krasner defended his actions saying this is no different than what others have done when taking over a ship that has been troubled and trying to right its course.

"The coach gets to pick the team. It doesn't necessarily mean the players who were traded are bad players. Some of them might be, some of them might be great players, but they simply do not fit into the strategy of the team," Krasner said.

If prosecutors aren't safe, then no one's safe. That's the message being sent, one that has trickled down to police brass and to the beat officers far below them. Krasner dropped all existing marijuana possession charges and stated his office would no longer pursue charges against people possessing minor amounts of the drug.

Cash bail was targeted, too.

Calling the current cash-bail system “imprisonment for poverty,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced Wednesday that the city’s prosecutors will no longer seek cash bail for nonviolent defendants while they await trial.

Krasner's options are limited on the bail front, as it would take legislation to completely overhaul the system. But it does promise some relief to those charged with minor crimes. As it stands now, one out of every five people incarcerated in Philadelphia have yet to be tried, much less convicted. The bail system keeps poor people locked up and puts them in an even worse position even if they're ultimately proven innocent.

Krasner has made no friends with longtime law enforcement officers. But if he's going to change police culture in Philadelphia, he's going to need the help of new blood. Change will still need to be made up top, but if he can reach those just entering the system, some helpful changes could also bubble up from the bottom.

So, Krasner addressed a class of police cadets, offering some insight and commentary on his office's place in police accountability. This resulted in the head of the local police union publicly blowing a gasket and sending all police union members a letter disparaging the DA and his conversation with cadets.

Krasner’s attempt to share practical information with the soon-to-be officers was “ridiculous and dangerous” and “intentionally sought to endanger your lives,” Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) leader John McNesby wrote in an open letter to the cadet class. He told them to “completely disregard any and all advice received from self-appointed ‘experts’ who seek to deceive or mislead you.”

What made McNesby apoplectic? I don't think McNesby can say for sure since he wasn't even present during the talk and hadn't seen the recording of the presentation made available by the DA's office. Instead -- based on nothing -- McNesby declared DA Krasner an enemy of the police force who wished to see officers injured or dead.

If he had bothered to see the presentation firsthand, he might not have been so quick to remove all doubt that he is a fool.

On Friday morning, Waxman played the video for a reporter. Krasner can be seen discussing several scenarios, including one in which officers fatally shoot an unarmed and mentally ill man who had reached for another officer’s gun and struggled with him over it.

The video shows Krasner referring to “some mistakes that were made” in that scenario, and saying the man could have survived had the officers not displayed “an eagerness to shoot center mass.”

But, the video also shows him saying: “That does not mean those officers committed any crime. That does not mean there’s any disciplinary violation. That means those officers acted with preliminary information, under a whole lot of time pressure with things developing quickly, [and] made an honest mistake. And this District Attorney’s Office is not going to second-guess that.”

All in all, the presentation was supportive of officers and the split-second decisions they make when deploying force. The only thing that might seem unsupportive -- and only in the fever dreams of union bosses who will defend the worst of the uniformed worst -- was his suggestion that officers try something other than "shoot to kill" tactics if at all possible.

He suggested training could help guide when officers choose to fire their weapons, and — in a line that likely riled police the most — whether every shot needs to be “center mass.” Police and military members have for decades been trained to shoot for a suspect’s chest or back, as opposed to arms or legs, to more effectively stop a threat.

A police force that kills fewer people is a good thing. There's no disputing this point. And that was the point implicit in his statements. Fewer deaths mean fewer lawsuits and better relationships with the public. Not everyone carrying a weapon needs to be killed. And those that aren't carrying weapons have a better chance of survival if "reasonably scared" cops try to neutralize the perceived threat, rather than banish it from existence.

The union boss' letter is an ugly testament to the natural state of police unions. When even slightly threatened by a small shift in the status quo, they lash out at everyone -- victims of police violence, political activists, local residents -- with unhinged arguments that assert their desire for zero law enforcement accountability. FOP president John McNesby is no exception. But he is one of the worst. Having already called Black Lives Matter protesters a "pack of rabid animals," he's following up this PR coup by claiming, sight unseen, the new DA doesn't care about "blue lives." It a garbage letter from a garbage human being with more power than wisdom.

Filed Under: fop, fraternal order of police, john mcnesby, larry krasner, philadelphia, police misconduct, police union