Civil asset forfeiture makes it really annoying to travel through some of the prettiest parts of America.
Say that you like the parks and forests in places like Montana, Arkansas, Utah, New Mexico, etc. You're going to do a lot of driving along state highways with a lot of nice things packed away, and maybe a small water/dirt vehicle.
Most of those state highways have small towns every 20-80 miles where the speed limits briefly drop in increments of 10mph down to 30-40mph. In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one. You can feel the desire to just take everything that you own; it's palpable. I've gotten enough "warnings" to make a suit out of carbon-copy paper.
That's to say nothing of racial prejudices in many areas of the US, and you'll probably have to stop for CBP checkpoints in states like New Mexico, even in the middle of 80mph+ interstates.
It was a bad situation in 2018-2019, and I can't see it getting much better when restrictions start to lift in 2021. We badly need our courts to strongly re-assert the 4th Amendment.
Decades ago, it was well known in many areas that if you had a military sticker on your car you were to be pulled over whenever possible. They did this because they knew you weren't a local.
It seems the courts treat the 4th amendment about as well as they do the 2nd and the 10th.
More than anything the War on Drugs, which Civil Asset Forfeiture is a part of, has lead to the direct destruction of the bill of rights.
This is one of the primary things that lead me to be a political and philosophical libertarian, and why I oppose prohibition completely (even for so called hard drugs)
Most people think anyone that oppose prohibition on weed or other drugs simply wants to use them, but for me it is recognition that the War on Drugs has lead to the complete subversion of every single right protected by the US Bill of rights, every single one.
When posters from rural areas complain about "coastal elites" (often a dogwhistle for PoC) stealing from their hard-earned living via taxes, this is one of the things that flashes through my mind. So many - SO many - of America's small towns cannot sustain themselves through honest business and labor.
These are the people who erase the visceral horror of slavery from textbooks, who detest cosmopolitanism, who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants). But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so, that they have to move. That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism. But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s
I have been. New Mexico in particular with out of state plates I've been pulled over 3 times for little to nothing.
Then I moved to NM and have lived here for over a decade (with NM plates) and have been pulled over once and let go with a warning.
I have to back OP up on the little towns, rapidly dropping speed limits and desire for revenue because it matches my experience completely.
Interstates are a different situation so maybe that's the difference in perception. Or maybe I just got unlucky. There were no dogs in any of the pull overs although in one case they did want to look through the car.
Yes, plenty of people unjustly have their property seized.
No, the chance of it happening to you just driving through these states on a vacation is very, very low. For example, there were 400 total forfeitures in Utah in 2015[1] and well over 10M tourist visit the national parks in Utah alone.[2]
I've road tripped all over the US without ever encountering that kind of behavior. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but your characterization of expecting to be pulled over and have a dog search your car is a bit melodramatic.
I’m a white guy. I can absolutely attest to the type of policing the parent comment is referencing. I’ve grown up in and traveled all over the midwestern and southwestern United States and I can tell you right now, police in rural areas absolutely _are_ looking for any and every excuse in the book to pull you over, search your vehicle, and question you far more intensely than the situation warrants. I’ve also had my car searched by K-9 after getting pulled over for an alleged turn signal violation, so it’s definitely not melodramatic or hyperbolic. For reference, I was driving a stock Acura with in-state plates when that happened. Not anything flashy or suspect. They rely on asset forfeiture for income to make up budget differences and it’s absolutely immoral to leverage law enforcement like that. They know that what they seize goes directly into their budgets and they act on it. More than likely we have the war on drugs to thank for it, too, but that’s a different argument for a different day.
It's worth noting that these civil asset forfeiture programs were sold to a lot of these small towns as a way of generating revenue off of popular drug routes.
E.g., a town is off a highway that's a known part of a drug route. A consultant comes in to the police dept. and does a powerpoint showing an average annual amount of drug money they can confiscate in order to fund the police/town budget. And the consultant probably has numbers from other towns who did the same. Boom-- you've got yet another civil asset forfeiture program in yet another small town.
So you get this town's police pulling over a larger and larger set of people who fit whatever description they've taught themselves rakes in the dough. There's a big incentive to do this, and to enlarge the set of who can be pulled because-- until relatively recently-- there has been very little risk.
I'm going to rankly speculate that the value of the OP's stuff he was lugging was high enough for such officers to take the time to pull OP over. But since OP didn't fit the drug runner description and the officer couldn't find any other pretense, they let them go.
I'll also rankly speculate you've carried stuff of much less value visible to an officer who sees you drive by.
Race almost certainly plays into this as well, but I haven't read a study to know the numbers on that.
I understand your misgivings, and I'll admit that I don't literally have enough carbon paper to make a suit out of warnings.
But I do have a lot of them, and no actual tickets from those areas. I have had multiple K-9 searches with a clean car, and I did regularly get pulled over for doing less than the posted speed limit.
I can't prove that civil asset forfeiture is the reason, but my vehicle would have been a juicy target because of the things attached to it.
I've had a lot of problems crossing the borders between Colorado and neighboring states, presumably because my Colorado plates are considered probable cause that I'm smuggling marijuana. It's always "oh I thought your tail light was out but now I see it's not", "your registration has expired... oh I must have read it wrong". I've been ticketed for things that when I showed up to court were laughed at or dismissed for not even being a thing. I've yet to have a drug dog search the car, but I've had a handful of very confrontational and aggressive police officers get in my face and take a good look around my car making vague comments about how something fishy is going on, asking where I'm going, where I've come from, who's who in the car, etc.
The only time I ever got pulled over in that part of the country is when I was doing about a hundred mph. I think that was a bit unfair since the road was straighter than an arrow from horizon to horizon, but breaking dumb laws is still lawbreaking I guess.
Civil Asset Forfeiture is one of the greatest constitutional crises of the modern era United States. It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties and I truly hope that the people can find a way to get rid of it. 84 percent of Americans reportedly oppose it, and I often have a hard time understanding how the Supreme Court hasn't struck it down (outside of the obvious reason they don't, which is to continue to have stronger federal power).
The Supremes don't roam the legal badlands like caped crusaders, looking for injustices to set right. Somebody has to appeal a verdict in a lower court to them and they have to agree to hear it. Which generally doesn't: according to [1] they receive over 7000 petitions per year, so something like 30 per working day.
Do you know whether they have in fact refused to hear a case against CAF, or heard such a case and upheld it?
It ruled that civil asset forfeitures are subject to the 8th Amendment prohibition against excessive monetary fines. This doesn't mean that they necessarily violate the 8th Amendment, only that they are subject to it. Unfortunately, almost every state already has such a restriction on their books and it hasn't stopped CAFs yet.
It's likely that another CAF case would result in the court deeming federal CAFs to violate the Sixth Amendment where the CAF is not actually related to a criminal conviction. (This is conjecture based on certain justices' remarks to the Federalist Society before they were appointed to SCOTUS.)
For context, there was a recent case on civil orfeiture in the Supreme Court (Timbs v Indiana 2019), but it was on whether or not the Eighth Amendment was incorporated (i.e., required to be upheld by the states and not just the federal government).
"The Supremes" have long since failed the People of the United States and have proven all of Jefferson's fears about what the court would become to be true.
"The Supreme's" can not be trusted to protect the constitution, and because of their failure the constitution has more exemptions, and holes than swiss cheese
>Civil Asset Forfeiture is one of the greatest constitutional crises of the modern era United States.
Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) goes back to 17th century Britain[0], and such laws were first enacted and ruled constitutional from the very beginnings of the United States.
You won't get any argument from me that CAF is a serious issue that needs to be addressed, but the idea that it's somehow a recent development doesn't comport with reality.
>It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties and I truly hope that the people can find a way to get rid of it.
While the Federal government certainly engages in CAF, they took action[1] in 2015 to reduce (woefully inadequately, but action nonetheless) the incentive of state and local law "enforcement" to engage in CAF.
As such, while I agree in general (CAF is antithetical to liberty, is routinely abused and should almost never be used), your characterization of the history and main offenders/benefactors is flat wrong.
It's states and localities that engage in this sort of abuse much more frequently (and much more capriciously) than the Federal government.
I would argue the fact it was deemed legal in 17th century Britain and incorporated into the US early on doesn’t have any bearing on whether it’s a modern issue in a way that it wasn’t, or that it’s not a constitutional issue. Lots of things were legal and constitutional back then that would be a constitutional crisis now.
It’s a modern issue because of what’s changed. Now small police forces in on the cut shake people down in rural America like highway robber barons.
The institution of asset forfeiture is funky and stale IMO but, that notwithstanding, the modern constitutional crisis is that this literal highway robbery likely violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment.
Civil Asset Forfeiture stems from older in rem cases, which were intended as a remedy when the owner of some object is unknown, or potentially not subject to the country's jurisdiction, and thus prosecuting the owner is not feasible.
I'm fine with use of in rem based seizures in the following cases:
1. The object in question is unlawful, or creating a problem, and nobody claims ownership of the object in question. (E.G. police find a stash house full of contraband, and the actual owners don't want to claim it for obvious reasons.) Please note that I would allow for in rem to be used when the owner is obvious if said owner claims "not mine". This of course would not prevent separate prosecution of the obvious person if the state feels they can prove ownership.
2. The owner is known (claimed), but is not subject to US jurisdiction, and is unwilling to subject themselves to US jurisdiction. (e.g. somebody from overseas owns a boat to be seized for non-payment of fees, or somebody from overseas is found to be unlawfully flying a drone in the United Sites and the drone is to be seized and auctioned because we cannot do anything to the actual owner.)
Notice how neither of these are even remotely like the common scenario in civil asset forfeiture.
I think the difference now is that the war on drugs turned a large percentage of the population into criminals and an even larger percentage of the population into suspects.
It is useful to understand the origins of CAF and I appreciate your comment. I don't think it significantly changes the discussion, but it does enhance and inform it.
Most people aren't even aware of CAF. I think the ones that are, are either folks who have been stung by it or civil libertarians. The civil libertarians appreciate how serious the problem is, but I also think they may have a slightly inflated sense of the preponderance due to the news outlets they follow. In any case, I hope we fix it soon.
> It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties
The federal government doesn't have ideas of it's own.
It's steered by elected officials.
Politicians winning votes for "showing strength" being "tough on crime" and "standing with the police", is why some in the government might have a mindset where this makes sense.
Electing better politicians probably won't fix civil forfeiture anytime soon though, because there is far more pressing matters to fix -- say improve police training, or restore credibility of government agencies.
> 84 percent of Americans reportedly oppose it, and I often have a hard time understanding how the Supreme Court hasn't struck it down
That is because you shouldn't be looking to SCOTUS to decide cases based on popular vote. That's the responsibility of state and federal legislatures, either by adding constitutional laws or changing the constitution.
SCOTUS' job is just to make sure those laws are legal and followed. So only legal arguments are relevant.
It isn't a constitutional crises any more than time manner and place restrictions on protests, or warrant-less searches of cars, or stops for DUI checkpoints without any suspicion, or a hundred other things are, or requiring a clear background check before purchasing a firearm.
Your constitutional rights are not absolute. With the appropriate level of scrutiny, in furtherance of a valid interest the government can restrict these rights
Civil forfeiture is a shakedown on the face of it. The fourth amendment to the US Constitution specifically prohibits it, as long as one reads its language as being written simply and plainly. The logical contortions in having this meeting the simplest sniff test must be very creative.
They are not unlike the contortions engaged in to disjoint the "well-regulated militia" from the "right of the people to keep and bear arms," when the defense of the Second Amendment in the Federalist Papers was heavily couched in the idea that it was intended as an alternative to a standing army.
The Federalists were generally against the Bill of Rights on the premise that it was unnecessary under a republican form of government. The Anti-federalists had pushed for it on the premise that all power is derived from the people and that they wanted protections from possible government overreach (if they were alive today...).
Ignoring that, if the purpose was to avoid a standing army, then what was the intended purpose of avoiding a standing army? Then we also have to ask, who owns the arms of the militia if the concern was a tyrannical government? How were the weapons sourced for the suppression of the whiskey rebellion? Also, how is militia defined (check out US Code 10 ss 246)?
We can also look at state constitutions that were created around that same time and how their wordings do include it as an individual right.
Am I missing something? "The police can take your stuff without proof of wrongdoing" seems like a 100% literal violation of the 4th Amendment's prohibition on, and I quote, "unreasonable searches and seizures".
You're not missing anything. Police are allowed to rob you under the guise of "preventing future crime". Don't ever get caught with large sums of cash, even if your use is legitimate.
They could also prevent future crime by imprisoning all suspects, executing people arbitrarily or forcing those on the edges of the justice system directly into its maw.
Lots of ways for police to be effective in their role.
"Police Say Civil Asset Forfeiture Reduces Crime. New Study Shows They’re Wrong"
Well if we count the fact that asset seizure without a trial is a crime itself (no due process and a violation of the 4th ammendment), then it should be obvious that it would increase crime directly in its actions and and indirectly by delegitimizing government authority.
I'm sure police departments and associations will object. But as Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
People in this thread seem to be a little confused about amendments. The constitutional case against CAF is strongest in the Due Process Clause of A5:
>No person shall be [...]; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The SCOTUS interpretation of this clause allowing civil asset forfeiture was written by Rehnquist in 1996 Bennis v. Michigan, because the acceptance of such forfeitures was too "firmly fixed" to displace:
I don't understand why we are subjecting a practice that is objectionable on the grounds of violating property rights to "studies". It frankly doesn't matter if the correlation is 1. Taking people's personal property when they have not even circumstantial suspicion of having done anything wrong other than having the property and putting the legal burden of proof on them to reclaim their ownership is frankly just as abusive as a medieval lord plucking whatever he likes, and not even half as honest.
I think the way the researchers might phrase it is "the cops are doing this activity, I might as well watch them."
Hell, from the article: "according to a new study set to be published on Tuesday by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that has been advocating reforms to forfeiture laws."
Readit News
Say that you like the parks and forests in places like Montana, Arkansas, Utah, New Mexico, etc. You're going to do a lot of driving along state highways with a lot of nice things packed away, and maybe a small water/dirt vehicle.
Most of those state highways have small towns every 20-80 miles where the speed limits briefly drop in increments of 10mph down to 30-40mph. In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one. You can feel the desire to just take everything that you own; it's palpable. I've gotten enough "warnings" to make a suit out of carbon-copy paper.
That's to say nothing of racial prejudices in many areas of the US, and you'll probably have to stop for CBP checkpoints in states like New Mexico, even in the middle of 80mph+ interstates.
It was a bad situation in 2018-2019, and I can't see it getting much better when restrictions start to lift in 2021. We badly need our courts to strongly re-assert the 4th Amendment.
It seems the courts treat the 4th amendment about as well as they do the 2nd and the 10th.
This is one of the primary things that lead me to be a political and philosophical libertarian, and why I oppose prohibition completely (even for so called hard drugs)
Most people think anyone that oppose prohibition on weed or other drugs simply wants to use them, but for me it is recognition that the War on Drugs has lead to the complete subversion of every single right protected by the US Bill of rights, every single one.
Not just the 4th, 2nd, and 10th, but all of them
https://texasmonitor.org/in-small-town-texas-speeding-driver...
These are the people who erase the visceral horror of slavery from textbooks, who detest cosmopolitanism, who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants). But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so, that they have to move. That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism. But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s
Dead Comment
Then I moved to NM and have lived here for over a decade (with NM plates) and have been pulled over once and let go with a warning.
I have to back OP up on the little towns, rapidly dropping speed limits and desire for revenue because it matches my experience completely.
Interstates are a different situation so maybe that's the difference in perception. Or maybe I just got unlucky. There were no dogs in any of the pull overs although in one case they did want to look through the car.
Yes, plenty of people unjustly have their property seized.
No, the chance of it happening to you just driving through these states on a vacation is very, very low. For example, there were 400 total forfeitures in Utah in 2015[1] and well over 10M tourist visit the national parks in Utah alone.[2]
But yes, that 400 is 400 too many.
[1]https://ij.org/new-data-shows-utah-law-enforcement-overwhelm... [2]https://gardner.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019-TTtrifold.p...
E.g., a town is off a highway that's a known part of a drug route. A consultant comes in to the police dept. and does a powerpoint showing an average annual amount of drug money they can confiscate in order to fund the police/town budget. And the consultant probably has numbers from other towns who did the same. Boom-- you've got yet another civil asset forfeiture program in yet another small town.
So you get this town's police pulling over a larger and larger set of people who fit whatever description they've taught themselves rakes in the dough. There's a big incentive to do this, and to enlarge the set of who can be pulled because-- until relatively recently-- there has been very little risk.
I'm going to rankly speculate that the value of the OP's stuff he was lugging was high enough for such officers to take the time to pull OP over. But since OP didn't fit the drug runner description and the officer couldn't find any other pretense, they let them go.
I'll also rankly speculate you've carried stuff of much less value visible to an officer who sees you drive by.
Race almost certainly plays into this as well, but I haven't read a study to know the numbers on that.
But I do have a lot of them, and no actual tickets from those areas. I have had multiple K-9 searches with a clean car, and I did regularly get pulled over for doing less than the posted speed limit.
I can't prove that civil asset forfeiture is the reason, but my vehicle would have been a juicy target because of the things attached to it.
Deleted Comment
Do you know whether they have in fact refused to hear a case against CAF, or heard such a case and upheld it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_St...
It ruled that civil asset forfeitures are subject to the 8th Amendment prohibition against excessive monetary fines. This doesn't mean that they necessarily violate the 8th Amendment, only that they are subject to it. Unfortunately, almost every state already has such a restriction on their books and it hasn't stopped CAFs yet.
It's likely that another CAF case would result in the court deeming federal CAFs to violate the Sixth Amendment where the CAF is not actually related to a criminal conviction. (This is conjecture based on certain justices' remarks to the Federalist Society before they were appointed to SCOTUS.)
[0] https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-poli...
Dead Comment
"The Supreme's" can not be trusted to protect the constitution, and because of their failure the constitution has more exemptions, and holes than swiss cheese
Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) goes back to 17th century Britain[0], and such laws were first enacted and ruled constitutional from the very beginnings of the United States.
You won't get any argument from me that CAF is a serious issue that needs to be addressed, but the idea that it's somehow a recent development doesn't comport with reality.
>It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties and I truly hope that the people can find a way to get rid of it.
While the Federal government certainly engages in CAF, they took action[1] in 2015 to reduce (woefully inadequately, but action nonetheless) the incentive of state and local law "enforcement" to engage in CAF.
As such, while I agree in general (CAF is antithetical to liberty, is routinely abused and should almost never be used), your characterization of the history and main offenders/benefactors is flat wrong.
It's states and localities that engage in this sort of abuse much more frequently (and much more capriciously) than the Federal government.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/120799/holder-ends-most-equi...
It’s a modern issue because of what’s changed. Now small police forces in on the cut shake people down in rural America like highway robber barons.
The institution of asset forfeiture is funky and stale IMO but, that notwithstanding, the modern constitutional crisis is that this literal highway robbery likely violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment.
I'm fine with use of in rem based seizures in the following cases:
1. The object in question is unlawful, or creating a problem, and nobody claims ownership of the object in question. (E.G. police find a stash house full of contraband, and the actual owners don't want to claim it for obvious reasons.) Please note that I would allow for in rem to be used when the owner is obvious if said owner claims "not mine". This of course would not prevent separate prosecution of the obvious person if the state feels they can prove ownership.
2. The owner is known (claimed), but is not subject to US jurisdiction, and is unwilling to subject themselves to US jurisdiction. (e.g. somebody from overseas owns a boat to be seized for non-payment of fees, or somebody from overseas is found to be unlawfully flying a drone in the United Sites and the drone is to be seized and auctioned because we cannot do anything to the actual owner.)
Notice how neither of these are even remotely like the common scenario in civil asset forfeiture.
It is useful to understand the origins of CAF and I appreciate your comment. I don't think it significantly changes the discussion, but it does enhance and inform it.
Most people aren't even aware of CAF. I think the ones that are, are either folks who have been stung by it or civil libertarians. The civil libertarians appreciate how serious the problem is, but I also think they may have a slightly inflated sense of the preponderance due to the news outlets they follow. In any case, I hope we fix it soon.
The federal government doesn't have ideas of it's own.
It's steered by elected officials.
Politicians winning votes for "showing strength" being "tough on crime" and "standing with the police", is why some in the government might have a mindset where this makes sense.
Electing better politicians probably won't fix civil forfeiture anytime soon though, because there is far more pressing matters to fix -- say improve police training, or restore credibility of government agencies.
Constructed minds have goals and desires like any other mind. Weather or not the federal government is conscious is another question.
That is because you shouldn't be looking to SCOTUS to decide cases based on popular vote. That's the responsibility of state and federal legislatures, either by adding constitutional laws or changing the constitution.
SCOTUS' job is just to make sure those laws are legal and followed. So only legal arguments are relevant.
Your constitutional rights are not absolute. With the appropriate level of scrutiny, in furtherance of a valid interest the government can restrict these rights
The Federalists were generally against the Bill of Rights on the premise that it was unnecessary under a republican form of government. The Anti-federalists had pushed for it on the premise that all power is derived from the people and that they wanted protections from possible government overreach (if they were alive today...).
Ignoring that, if the purpose was to avoid a standing army, then what was the intended purpose of avoiding a standing army? Then we also have to ask, who owns the arms of the militia if the concern was a tyrannical government? How were the weapons sourced for the suppression of the whiskey rebellion? Also, how is militia defined (check out US Code 10 ss 246)?
We can also look at state constitutions that were created around that same time and how their wordings do include it as an individual right.
Even so, it's a preamble, not a qualification. The second part is explicit it's an individual right, not a state right.
Lots of ways for police to be effective in their role.
Well if we count the fact that asset seizure without a trial is a crime itself (no due process and a violation of the 4th ammendment), then it should be obvious that it would increase crime directly in its actions and and indirectly by delegitimizing government authority.
>No person shall be [...]; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The SCOTUS interpretation of this clause allowing civil asset forfeiture was written by Rehnquist in 1996 Bennis v. Michigan, because the acceptance of such forfeitures was too "firmly fixed" to displace:
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...