D.C. Police’s Asset Forfeitures Are Very Lucrative and Very Petty

The Washington Post’s
original
three-part, in-depth look at the use and abuse of police civil
asset forfeiture seems to have transformed into an open-ended,
ongoing series. Over the weekend they posted a sixth installment
exploring grabby police departments taking their citizens’ cash and
belongings.

This time they kept it local, noticing that Washington, D.C.’s,
police are actually attempting to plan in its budget for asset
forfeiture proceeds in advance. This is considered a no-no for any
law enforcement agency participating in the Department of Justice’s
Equitable Sharing Program, the program where the feds and local
enforcement agencies team up, and the local police get to keep 80
percent of whatever’s seized. This planning came to light to the
Post last week because members of D.C.’s Council are
attempting to overhaul the city’s asset forfeiture guidelines to
increase the threshold of proof and requiring all asset
seizures—including the ones that come from the DOJ program—to be
placed in D.C.’s general fund, rather than the police’s budget,
thus seriously reducing the police’s incentives for snatching
whatever they can.

And just
look at what they’ve snatched:

Since 2009, D.C. officers have made more than 12,000 seizures
under city and federal laws, according to records and data obtained
from the city by The Washington Post through the District’s open
records law. Half of the more than $5.5 million in cash seizures
were for $141 or less, with more than a thousand for less than $20.
D.C. police have seized more than 1,000 cars, some for minor
offenses allegedly committed by the children or friends of the
vehicle owners, documents show.

They’re literally just taking the money out people’s wallets at
this point. And the authorities cash in even more whenever somebody
fights back:

One case cited by the Public Defender Service involves Sharlene
Powell, who had worked for three decades as a Postal Service
employee. She loaned her car to her son, who was stopped and
arrested on a misdemeanor drug offense. Prosecutors dropped the
charges, but District police kept the car. To get her car back,
Powell had to pay a $1,772 “penal sum” bond to challenge the
seizure, the Public Defender Service said in a statement last year
to the judiciary committee.

Read more
here. The city is in a legal fight with the Public Defender
Service to try to get rid or reduce those massive bonds. The city
could lose $670,000 annually from the DOJ Equitable Sharing Program
if it can no longer participate. The program’s guidelines require
that law enforcement agencies keep the money, not put it into the
general fund.

Below, Reason TV interviews economist Bart Wilson about the
twisted incentives induced when law enforcement officers are
permitted to keep money and assets they grab when fighting
crime: