The Morristown, Tenn., deputy who was ordered by the state comptroller to return $6,000 cash and several vehicles taken from people suspected of crimes. The Iowa state patrol officers who snatched $100,000 in winnings from California poker players who were driving through the state. The $63,530 taken from an Air Force veteran in Nebraska on his way to Los Angeles to place a down payment on a house. Officers took his plastic bag full of cash, and Mark Brewer never saw the money again.

Examples like these have fueled calls for reform of civil asset forfeiture, a practice that allows law enforcement officers to take property when there is simply a suspected link to criminal activity. And when people are carrying bricks of cash, officers are all too eager to claim they must be fueling the drug trade. After all, the rise of civil asset forfeiture in the 1980s coincides with an effort to combat drug kingpins during that time, with the goal that seizing cash and property would take away the assets that could grow their empires.