How Cops Got a License to Steal Your Money

This week a

series of stories in The Washington
Post described the threat that civil forfeiture and the
war on drugs pose to innocent drivers carrying large amounts of
cash. In my latest Forbes column, I highlight three
features of forfeiture law and five Supreme Court decisions that
have made it easy for cops to take money from motorists. Here is
how the piece starts:

One afternoon in August 2012, Mandrel Stuart was driving with
his girlfriend into Washington, D.C., when a Fairfax County cop
pulled him over on Interstate 66, ostensibly because the windows of
his SUV were too dark. Lacking the device necessary to check
whether the tinting of the windows exceeded the legal limit,
Officer Kevin Palizzi instead cited Stuart for having a video
running within his line of sight. While Palizzi was filling out the
summons, another officer arrived with a drug-detecting dog.
Claiming the dog alerted to the left front bumper and wheel of
Stuart’s GMC Yukon, the cops searched the car and found $17,550 in
cash, which they kept, assuming that it must be related to the
illegal drug trade.

Stuart, who had planned to use that money to buy equipment and
supplies for his barbecue restaurant in Staunton, Virginia, was
astonished that a routine traffic stop could so easily turn into
grand theft. But as Washington Post reporters
Michael Sallah, Robert O’Harrow Jr., and Steven Rich
explain in a revealing and troubling series of
stories that ran this week, taking Stuart’s hard-earned money
was perfectly legal, thanks to civil forfeiture laws that turn cops
into highway robbers.

Read the whole thing.