Reason’s Jacob Sullum has a piece deflating Friday’s big news of forfeiture reform—or as he titles it, “How the Press Exaggerated Holder’s Forfeiture Reform.”
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday afternoon that he would slash a popular federal program that aids local police in confiscating citizen property without a warrant. Under civil forfeiture law, police can take property–including cash– without ever charging its owners with a crime, but some states require local police to use their profits in a specific way. The federal government’s “equitable sharing” program allows police to skirt these state laws by turning cases over to the Justice Department, and then keeping up to 80 percent of seized assets for their own departments.
Holder’s move to curb the program was immediately hailed by groups who have long been advocating an end to warrantless civil seizures—and even Sullum admits he “initially got caught up in the excitement too.”
But as it turns out, Holder’s reform is extremely narrow: he is only ending the practice of “adoption,” where police abdicate a case entirely over to the Justice Department. It does not affect cases where the two “collaborate.” Adoption makes up just 14 percent of equitable sharing payments—leaving intact the 86 percent of police profits that come through federal seizures where police and the feds cooperate.
Sullum knocks the Wasington Post, which scooped the news, for exaggerating the impact of Holder’s move. The Post wrote that axing the program “would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the [equitable sharing] program,” and that “most” seizures are not done under collaboration. According to Reason, the numbers say otherwise.
Read the full piece here.
