Free Republic

Thirty years ago, the Department of Justice created a civil asset forfeiture program known as “Equitable Sharing.” Though originally created for the purpose of separating drug dealers from their ill-gotten assets and cash, since 2001 Equitable Sharing has been employed by the nation’s police to score $2.5 Billion in cash and assets from citizens “who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued.” It is a high-dollar confiscation scam through which 298 police departments and 210 task forces have seized as much as 20 % of their operating budgets “…despite a federal ban [on the use...

After 9/11, the federal government “…called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways.” But if the new, more aggressive agenda of seeking out suspicious individuals was embraced by officers as part of their interdiction training by the federal government, their policing behavior turned out to be worlds removed from the mundane yet somehow historically reassuring promise to “protect and serve” the American public. For law enforcement officers throughout the nation were eagerly learning and practicing the fine art of “policing for profit,” that is, the barely legal method of confiscating money and assets...