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Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other Department of Homeland Security agents seized more than $2 billion in cash from travelers in U.S. airports between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. The institute's report is the first to comprehensively analyze the use of civil asset forfeiture by federal law enforcement in airports, where multiple news investigations have revealed horror stories of passengers having their money taken even though they weren't ever charged with a crime. Take a case that Reason covered: Rustem Kazazi, a U.S. citizen who...

When he heads to airports now, Samuel Haile thinks of that day at Buffalo's airport a few years ago. The government took $12,000 from his carry-on and wouldn't give it back. Haile was not charged with a crime ... Dozens of passengers have suffered such a loss in recent years in Buffalo. With an X-ray machine, a screener spots a dense mass in a piece of luggage. If it's an unusually large sum of cash, the government takes it on the suspicion that it's drug money. At Buffalo and every other airport in the country, the TSA screens bags and...

The killing of George Floyd and the subsequent nationwide uproar has rightfully forced needed conversations about law enforcement and the criminal justice system. While Congress has so far fumbled on working toward tangible, passable legislation, Sens. Rand Paul, R–Kentucky, Mike Lee, R–Utah, Mike Crapo, R–Idaho, and Angus King, I–Maine, have reintroduced legislation to limit the use of civil asset forfeiture. Through the practice, law enforcement is able to seize cash and other assets from individuals suspected or accused of criminal activity without so much as a criminal conviction or even bringing criminal charges. The practice of civil asset forfeiture in...

It’s all about the revenue. Civil forfeiture brings in money, and lawmakers are more worried about their budgets than residents’ due process and property rights. An Arizona bill requiring police and prosecutors to get a criminal conviction before they could attempt to force defendants to forfeit their assets died Thursday at the hands of a bloc of mostly Democrat lawmakers. Civil asset forfeiture is a mechanism that lets law enforcement seize and keep the assets of people believed to have committed crimes. Many states do not require defendants to actually be convicted — or sometimes even charged — with a...

-Smith charged in connection with alleged misuse of county forfeiture funds MACOMB COUNTY, Mich. – Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith has been hit with 10 criminal corruption charges -- including running a criminal enterprise, a 20-year felony -- in connection with the alleged misuse of county forfeiture funds. Smith faces considerable jail time if he’s found guilty, but the case reaches far beyond the prosecutor. He’s accused of turning the top law enforcement office in the state’s third-most populated county into a criminal enterprise. After the state raided Smith’s office last April, and then his home a month later, Smith...

SOUTH FAYETTE TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A local man’s life savings of more than $82,000 was seized at Pittsburgh International Airport in August, and now he and his daughter are suing, Channel 11’s news exchange partners at TribLIVE reported. Rebecca Brown, 54, of Lowell, Mass., told TribLIVE her 79-year-old retired father, Terry Rolin, of South Fayette Township, asked her to help manage the cash he and his late parents had hidden in hiding spots throughout the family home. “It was late Saturday night after the banks closed when he gave me the money, and I had an early (Monday) morning flight...

Governor Phil Murphy today signed legislation (S1963) mandating comprehensive disclosure and transparency requirements for the system of civil asset forfeiture. “New Jersey law enforcement agencies currently have no permanent statutory requirement to disclose civil asset forfeitures,” said Governor Murphy. “This legislation would boost confidence in our justice system by requiring county prosecutors to track and report data on this practice. Allowing the public to understand how assets are being seized, where seized funds go, and where forfeited property is going is a huge step forward for transparency and accountability.” Under the bill, county prosecutors would submit quarterly reports to the...

When police arrested Luis Melendez on drug charges, they found $2,928 in cash alongside drugs and weapons in his bedroom. The drugs and weapons became evidence in his criminal case, but prosecutors also went after the money in civil court using a common but little-understood practice called civil asset forfeiture. When Melendez fought to keep the money, they used his statements against him in his criminal case. New Jersey’s highest court on Wednesday declared this practice an abuse of power, though the ruling upheld Melendez’s conviction based on the other evidence against him. The decision places additional limits on New...

LEWISBURG, W.Va. — A financial services company coming after Gov. Jim Justice personally for $2.79 million is asking the Greenbrier County sheriff to seize personal property and for Justice assets in a dozen banks to be checked. Meanwhile, a legal ad says the sheriff of Logan County has been authorized to sell shares of two Justice-owned companies to settle yet another debt in the court system. This has been quite a week for Governor Justice and his family’s vast holdings. Court cases, including some from afar, keep resulting in local law enforcement officers being asked to assess what personal property...

The law of civil forfeiture allows police and prosecutors to seize and keep cash, cars, homes, businesses and property of all kinds without ever criminally charging or convicting the owners. As originally conceived, it was to be a deterrent by which law enforcement would transfer the ill-gotten gains of crime to the public treasury. But, as so often happens with governmental power, it has transmuted over the years into a semi-criminal operation in and of itself. In 2014, Chris Sourovelis’ son was arrested for selling $40 worth of drugs. Three weeks later, the Philadelphia police forcibly evicted the entire Sourovelis...

WASHINGTON — Siding with a small time drug offender in Indiana whose $42,000 Land Rover was seized by law enforcement officials, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Constitution places limits on civil forfeiture laws that allow states and localities to take and keep private property used to commit crimes. Civil forfeiture is a popular way to raise revenue, and its use has been the subject of widespread criticism across the political spectrum. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Eighth Amendment, which bars “excessive fines,” limits the ability of the federal government to seize property. On Wednesday, the...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that may rein in abusive property seizures by state and local governments through the highly controversial legal tool known as civil asset forfeiture. The case at issue involves a man named Tyson Timbs, who sold $225 worth of heroin to undercover police officers on two occasions, as a means of raising money to support his own drug habit. Police arrested Timbs while he was driving to a third drug deal, and he ultimately pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a year of home confinement and five years of...

After four years of litigation, city agrees to end “policing for profit,” ensure due process and establish $3 million compensation fund for victims of city’s forfeiture practices Share Facebook Twitter Email Print Related Case Philadelphia Forfeiture Press Release    |    September 18, 2018 Andrew Wimer Assistant Director of Communications PHILADELPHIA—The Institute for Justice (IJ) today announced a major settlement with the city of Philadelphia, ending the city’s draconian civil forfeiture machine. In documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania today, city officials agreed to a set of reforms that will end the perverse financial...

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Utah Supreme Court to decide whether police can avoid ban on taking money from motorists not charged with any crime by calling in the feds. Voters in Utah banned state officials from seizing property from people who committed no crime almost two decades ago -- or so they thought. Ever since Initiative B passed with 69 percent of the vote, police have evaded its provisions by seizing cash, turning it over to federal authorities, and then taking a cut of the proceeds in a way that is prohibited under state law. The Utah Supreme Court last week held oral arguments...

Courts in 14 Alabama counties awarded $2.2 million to law enforcement agencies through civil asset forfeiture actions filed in 2015 – a practice some Alabama lawmakers is hoping to end. Civil asset forfeiture essentially allows law enforcement take and keep property even if its owner isn’t convicted of a crime. On Wednesday, the Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to change the civil asset forfeiture process in hopes of protecting the property and due process rights of Alabamians. Under current state law, law enforcement agencies can seize property on the mere suspicion that it was either involved in a...

The national revulsion against abusive civil asset forfeiture has not kept police from trying to pocket as much as they can from people who are innocent of any wrongdoing. A recent case shows how police can pressure motorists into waiving their right to contest seizure of money during a highway traffic stop. Phil Parhamovich is a musician who lives in Wisconsin. For years, he’s been saving money for a music studio for his band – “The Dirt Brothers” – and had accumulated $91,800 by early 2017. He doesn’t much trust financial institutions and did not want to leave that large...

DENVER -- The Problem Solvers have uncovered a city law that's making Denver millions of dollars before defendants have even been convicted of a crime. The Denver statute is called a Public Nuisance Abatement Ordinance and it allows police to confiscate property, usually cars, for a crime you may later be found innocent of. It's exactly what happened to 57-year-old Semere Fremichael, a native of Eritrea. The immigrant from East African has been driving a taxi in Denver for the past 28-years. In April, he was arrested in an undercover prostitution sting. An undercover female cop tapped on Fremichael's taxi...

A lucrative battle against Mexican drug cartels is being fought on the sides of an interstate in three of Alabama's more rural counties. Civil asset forfeiture has come under fire in recent years, as some law enforcement agencies across the country have deployed the tactic in ways that have been widely criticized as abusive. But a small drug task force operating in Greene, Marengo and Sumter counties - collectively, Alabama's 17th Judicial Circuit - has leveraged the practice to take millions of dollars worth of cash, drugs and other property off the street in recent years, much of which they...

Civil forfeiture remains a controversial issue in America since it's "a process by which the government can take and sell your property without ever convicting, or even charging, you with a crime." The procedures are civil, which means defendants do not receive the same protections given to criminal defendants.Connecticut has put an end to this procedure when the legislature passed a law that bans civil forfeiture without a criminal conviction.Video - "Policing for Profit Visualized: How Big Is Civil Forfeiture?"The Law Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy signed HB 7146 into law on Monday after it "passed both the House and Senate...