I know we have LEOs and some members in parts of the country where this civil forfeiture is tightly regulated and not abused, but most of us live in areas where it has been abused beyond belief. I lived in TN where entire LEO task forces were funded solely on seized assets - all equipment, pay and overtime were funded only by what they could seize. Obviously that was a recipe for disaster and completely unconstitutional. Surely this practice will eventually be overturned nationwide, it is obviously unconstitutional.

https://reason.com/2019/10/23/...t&utm_medium=twitter

S.C. Judge Rules the Obvious: It's Unconstitutional for Police to Seize and Keep People's Property Without Proving They Committed Crimes
Law enforcement and prosecutors have seized millions from people they’ve arrested. That might be coming to an end.

Thanks to chronic abuse and misuse by local police departments, the days may be numbered for South Carolina's forfeiture system that allows cops to seize and keep cash and property of the people they arrest in order to fund their own departments.

Circuit Judge Steven H. John has ruled that the South Carolina's civil asset forfeiture regulations violate the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the citizens.

Civil asset forfeiture has been in the crosshairs across the country for years now because it allows police and prosecutors to declare that any money or property owned by a suspect is "connected" to a crime, seize it, and then ultimately keep it for themselves. And because this is a civil process, police and prosecutors can do this without having to convict anybody. It's the assets that are considered the defendants (in this case, the respondent is actually the $20,771 that Horry County wants to seize from a man charged with trafficking cocaine), prosecutors typically have a lower threshold to make their case than "beyond a reasonable doubt," and people who are pulled into these forfeiture cases don't have access to public defenders and have to fund their own lawyers.

The end result: Police trying to keep whatever they can grab off anybody they arrest, claiming it's all proceeds or property connected to criminal activities, and using it to line their own pockets. This incentivizes police to look for people who have assets that can be seized. Local newspapers in South Carolina teamed up to investigate the extent of abuses and discovered police agencies across the state had seized more than $17 million in assets across three years. In one-fifth of the cases, nobody was charged or even arrested for a crime.

Judge John notes all of these problems in a decisive ruling that smacks down the practice of civil asset forfeiture. In his 15-page opinion, he writes that South Carolina's forfeiture practice violate both the U.S. Constitution and the state's because the statutes "(1) place the burden on the property owner to prove their innocence, (2) unconstitutionally institutionally incentivizes forfeiture officials to prosecute forfeiture actions, and (3) do not mandate judicial review or judicial authorization prior to or subsequent to the seizure." He also notes that the statutes violate citizens' Eighth Amendment protections against excessive fines.

South Carolina's asset forfeiture system is particularly terrible because 75 percent of the seized assets go directly to the law enforcement agency that seized the property, while 20 percent goes to the state solicitor's offices (the prosecutors). The money seized goes directly to the people trying to seize it. The money seized is supposed to be used solely for "drug enforcement activities," but John observes that this restriction has very little oversight; law enforcement ends up approving spending above and beyond what their agencies have budgeted, with the understanding that they'll make up the difference from seizures. That doesn't even get into the issue that tying a police department's budget to proceeds from fighting the drug war warps their priorities to such a degree that they're not focusing on crimes that have actual victims.

Later in the ruling, John painstakingly goes through a checklist to show exactly how the state's forfeiture system leads to bad incentives and a cycle of revenue-seeking:


"We have to find more money to seize or our budget will run out and we'll lose our jobs," is not a model for a policing system that is focused on fighting actual crime.

But the fight to reform South Carolina's system is far from over. The decision doesn't extend statewide, and Horry County's Solicitor's Office has filed a motion asking John to reconsider his ruling, noting that, among other things, the defendant in this case pleaded guilty to the crimes and the seized cash is worth much less than the potential maximum fine of $50,000 he could have faced.

Writing at Forbes, Nick Sibilla notes that in the wake of local reporting about the expansive abuse of asset forfeiture in South Carolina, lawmakers attempted to pass a bill which would have eliminated civil forfeiture entirely. It stalled due to some technical issues with the wording, but Sibilla expects a revised version to return in the next legislative session. If it passes, South Carolina would join New Mexico, Nebraska, and North Carolina in completely eliminating civil asset forfeiture. A conviction would be required in order for police and prosecutors to try to keep somebody's cash and property for themselves.

Read John's ruling here: https://publicindex.sccourts.o...79956547352996611785

South Carolina has always been one of those states I drive through without stopping.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
South Carolina has always been one of those states I drive through without stopping.

Because of this??

This is a good start. Now they should be required to return every penny of cash that was confiscated along with the current fair market value of any property seized to the people they victimized i.e. those not convicted of a crime related to the seizure. They should also pay interest at the same rate their State Treasury charges delinquent taxpayers.

so has the judge figured out how to make the victims whole?

If you care for videos, a channel on Youtube called "Lehto's Law" covers this kind of stuff. Lehto is a lawyer in Michigan specializing in automobile cases, but does videos on anything that catches his eye.

His video on this case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu2-dF-n718&t=432s

quote:

Originally posted by DonDraper:

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
South Carolina has always been one of those states I drive through without stopping.

Because of this??

Yes. Coworker of mine wired some of the cell towers that were being built in SC (and other states in the southeast) in the mid 90’s. One day he was pulled over for speeding somewhere around Abbeville and Calhoun Falls in the middle of nowhere. He always carried several hundred dollars on him because he was always working away from home and he also kept a bag of tobacco on top of his dash since he rolled his own cigarettes. The cop saw the tobacco and then confiscated his tobacco and his money claiming the tobacco was pot.

He reported what happened to the owner of the company about what happened and the owner told him to let it go and he would reimburse him through his expense account. Since then, if I’m headed north, before I leave Georgia I make sure the gas tank is full.

I forget the name of the town, but just after you crossed over from Georgia to South Carolina, there was a town that was a notorious speed trap.

About time.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I forget the name of the town, but just after you crossed over from Georgia to South Carolina, there was a town that was a notorious speed trap.

It’s been several years ago but the last time I went into SC on I-85 the SC highway patrol would set up around Fair Play about 5-10 miles inside SC.

[drift]

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I forget the name of the town, but just after you crossed over from Georgia to South Carolina, there was a town that was a notorious speed trap.

I95-Midway Ga...mile marker 76....cost me three hundred dollars in 1992 ...the deputy started out the conversation with,”why are you going that fast on my highway”...I knew I was getting one after that.

Also don’t speed one mile over the limit in Starke or Lawty Florida on 301....been that way since the 70s.

[/drift]

Conway, SC...

The only place in the US I've ever observed a police officer wearing sunglasses... at night.

His words after pulling me over for 58 in a 55- "You going to a fire, boy?"...

I'm all for this nonsense ending.


As one who travels a lot with work, I can 100% say that the small towns here in SC are littered with cops hiding in the perfect spots as speed limits change 5-6 times within a stretch of 2-3 miles - often 20mph differences in a few hundred yards. I loathe taking some of these back roads to get to I95 or I20. Most of these tiny towns are flat ass broke it appears, yet they ALL have an abundance of brand new flashy SUV's and Chargers for their police departments, fuckers.

Years ago in Bay County, FL (Panama City) a man was busted for selling pot. He stayed with his daddy sometimes. The sheriff confiscated the old man's car and tried to get his trailer home. I warned my youngest son that if he was arrested for having pot in Bay County, his car would thereafter be driven by some deputy's son.

More recently, the feds confiscated the iconic Sandshaker Lounge on Pensacola Beach; the home of the famous Bushwacker drink. The task force turned the drug dealer and watched while he sold powdered cocaine out of his beach condo to people he met at the Sandshaker. They videoed for months and months. When his regular customers (local businessmen, a female lawyer, a rich guy I play golf with and a private yacht captain for a famous lawyer) had 15 grams of accumulated purchases they were all arrested for trafficking.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: cne32507,

If you think local asset forfeiture is bad, wait till you see the IRS in action.
We, at one point, had an IRS enforcement agent on our dope task force. Say goodbye to all your stuff once he got involved.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
If you think local asset forfeiture is bad, wait till you see the IRS in action.
We, at one point, had an IRS enforcement agent on our dope task force. Say goodbye to all your stuff once he got involved.

Great reason to keep assets in tangible goods / cash.

They sucked about $20K out of one of our guys bank accounts once - zero fucking notice, dude was on a job and getting a Subway sammich and his card was declined. They thought he had underpaid taxes but due to deployment to Iraq the previous year, lots of it was tax free. 4-6 weeks and he got his money back.

Fuckers. I'm pretty sure that guy keeps cash in a safety deposit box now.

Years before I retired as a LEO, I asked a supervisor a hypothetical question about asset forfeitures being abused: If officers investigating a high level drug dealer learned that a shipment had arrived, but held off on executing a warrant until after most of the drugs had been sold so there'd be plenty of money to seize (but less drugs to prevent from reaching the streets), wouldn't he see an ethical problem? After all, isn't the point of narcotics enforcement to reduce the amount of illicit narcotics reaching the street and being consumed?

I never really got a satisfactory answer from him and never was assigned to our narcotics unit either. Probably just a coincidence!

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
If you think local asset forfeiture is bad, wait till you see the IRS in action.
We, at one point, had an IRS enforcement agent on our dope task force. Say goodbye to all your stuff once he got involved.

Yeah, my old dept sent an officer to work with the IRS in Raleigh...we never saw her until one day they (the feds) showed up on a search warrant service on a known drug dealer...our narc guys joined the IRS guys to completely destroy his little fiefdom...and seized everything. Based on his years of sales they had documented historically. He was sent federally and got several decades for his plea to trafficking.

I was on a raid once and saw the dealer get caught with dope and cash. I drove by the house a month or so later and an auction was going on. Everything went, including the house and land. All brought about by our IRS dude, and all done before the doper was convicted!
Kinda like Al Capone.

quote:

I'm pretty sure that guy keeps cash in a safety deposit box now.

That won't help you. To have a safe deposit box at a bank you have to have an account. When the Feds get on their computer to send their seizure notices, every bank where you have an account gets one.

If you have a box there, the odds of you getting into it are very slim.