Oklahoma Police Just Made It Easier Than Ever To Seize Someone’s Money
Source: Think Progress
This builds on the vagueness of the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws in general. Oklahoma law only requires the department to prove that seized property is connected to a crime by a preponderance of evidence.
Vincent argues that if someone believes their funds were wrongly seized, they can get them back. “If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we’ve done that in the past,” he said. But under state law, anyone who wants to try and get their assets back bears the burden of proving that they had nothing to do with illegal use of their property.
Both Vincent and T. Jack Williams, president of ERAD Group, the company that makes and sells the card readers, argue that seizure is not the primary goal of the readers, and instead that is “tertiary,” as Williams put it; catching identity theft is. “This isn’t solely about asset forfeiture. This isn’t about money. We’re not in the business of making money. We’re in the business of solving crimes,” Vincent said.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/06/09/3786458/oklahoma-cards-asset-forfeiture/
CASH COPS: HOW CIVIL FORFEITURE ENRICHED U.S. LAW ENFORCEMENT
In 2013, Vice reported that a district attorney in Georgia used the funds to “to buy football tickets and home furnishings,” whereas “officers in Bal Harbor, Florida, took trips to LA and Vegas and rented luxury cars, and other DAs and police chiefs have bought everything from tanning salons to booze for parties.”
The Washington Post also reported that police are using the funds to militarize themselves, buying an array of items such as “Humvees, automatic weapons, gas grenades, night-vision scopes and sniper gear. Many departments acquired electronic surveillance equipment, including automated license-plate readers and systems that track cellphones.” And this spending is on top of the military surplus gear police receive from the Pentagon.
While there is a federal force to ensure that funds are used appropriately, it's wildly understaffed; the Justice Department has about 15 employees assigned to oversee compliance, with some five employees responsible for reviewing thousands of annual reports. Essentially, then, police are free to spend the money they gain from civil forfeitures on anything they want, without fear of punishment.
Besides the previously noted conflict of interest and burden of proof issues, there are also other major problems with civil forfeiture – notably, the disproportionate racial impact and harm it causes to innocent people.
http://www.occupy.com/article/cash-cops-how-civil-forfeiture-enriched-us-law-enforcement
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