The injustice of "policing for profit" -- and how to end it

Many countries have an active, centuries-old law that allows government agencies to take your things -- your house, your car, your business -- without ever convicting you of a crime. Law researcher Dick M. Carpenter II exposes how this practice of civil forfeiture threatens your rights and creates a huge monetary incentive for law enforcement to pocket your possessions -- and he lays out a path to end "policing for profit" once and for all.

Picture yourself driving
down the road tomorrow,

heading somewhere to buy an item
you found on Craigslist,

perhaps a nice mountain bike
for 3,000 dollars.

At that price, it's probably
one of those bikes

with a little electric motor on it --

(Laughter)

maybe some streamers from the handlebars.

(Laughter)

The seller has declared this
a cash-only deal,

so you have, in the console
of your car, 3,000 dollars.

Suddenly, you are pulled over.

During the stop, the officer asks,

"Do you have any drugs, weapons
or large amounts of cash in your car?"

You truthfully answer, "Yes,"

not to the drugs or to the weapons,

but to the cash.

In the blink of an eye,
you are ordered out of your car.

The officer searches it
and finds your cash.

On the spot, he seizes it,

and he says he suspects
it's part of a drug crime.

A few days later,

the local district attorney files
paperwork to keep your money --

permanently.

And all of this happens

without you ever being charged
or convicted of any crime.

Now, you might be saying,

"Ah, this would never happen
in the United States."

(Laughter)

Incidents like this occur
every day in our country.

It's one of the most significant threats
to your property rights

most people have never even heard of.

It's called "civil forfeiture."

Most of you are generally aware
of criminal forfeiture,

although the term itself
might be a little unfamiliar,

so let's begin with forfeiture.

When we forfeit something,
we give up that thing,

or we're forced to give it up.

In criminal forfeiture,

someone is charged
and convicted of a crime,

and therefore, they have to give up
property related to that crime.

For example, suppose you use your car
to transport and deal drugs.

You're caught and convicted;

now you have to give up
or forfeit your car

as part of the sentencing.

That's criminal forfeiture.

But in civil forfeiture,
no person is charged with a crime --

the property is charged
and convicted of a crime.

(Laughter)

You heard that correctly:

the government actually convicts
an inanimate object with a crime.

It's as if that thing itself
committed the crime.

That's why civil forfeiture cases
have these really peculiar names,

like, "The United States of America
v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird."

(Laughter)

Or "The State of Oklahoma
v. 53,234 Dollars in Cash."

(Laughter)

Or my personal favorite:

"The United States of America
v. One Solid Gold Object

in the Form of a Rooster."

(Laughter)

Now, you're thinking:

How does something like this happen?

That's exactly what I said when
I first learned about civil forfeiture

while on a road trip with my wife.

No, we did not get pulled over.

(Laughter)

I was reading about
the history of civil forfeiture

as part of my work as a research
director at the law firm,

and I came across
one of the cases I just mentioned,

"The United States of America
v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird."

In that case, Carol Thomas
loaned her car to her son.

While in the car, her son committed
a minor drug crime.

Carol didn't commit any crime,

so law enforcement couldn't
convict her and take the car,

but they could -- and did --

use civil forfeiture
to "convict the car" and take it.

Carol was completely innocent,
but she lost her car nonetheless.

In other words,

she was punished for a crime
she did not commit.

When I read this, I was gobsmacked.

How could this occur?

How is this even legal?

It turns out, it began in our country
with maritime law.

Early in our republic, the government
sought to fight piracy --

yes, actual pirates.

The problem was the government
often couldn't catch the pirates,

so instead it used civil forfeiture
to convict the pirates' property

and take it,

and therefore deny the pirates
their illegal profits.

Of course, the government could've simply
taken and kept the booty

without necessarily
using civil forfeiture,

but doing so would have violated

our most basic due process
and property rights.

Now, the government rarely used
civil forfeiture until the 1980s

and the war on drugs.

We expanded civil forfeiture law
to cover drug crimes

and then later, other types of crime.

Canada and the European Union
adopted similar provisions

so that now all kinds of people
are ensnared in the forfeiture web,

people like Russ Caswell.

Russ Caswell owned a small budget motel
in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.

His father built the motel in 1955,
and Russ took it over in the 1980s.

During the years
that Russ owned the motel,

from time to time,
people would rent rooms,

and they would commit drug crimes.

Russ didn't condone the activities --

in fact, whenever he found out about it,
he would immediately call police.

Russ was entirely innocent of any crime,

but that did not stop the US Department
of Justice from seizing his motel

simply because other people
committed crimes there.

But Russ's case was not alone.

Between 1997 and 2016,

the US Department of Justice
took more than 635,000 properties.

This means each year,

tens of thousands of people
lose their properties

in cases in which they're never charged
or convicted of any crime.

And we're not necessarily talking about
major drug kingpins

or headline-grabbing financial fraudsters

whose cases involve hundreds of thousands
if not millions of dollars.

Many of these seizures and forfeitures
involve just everyday people

like Russ Caswell

or you

or me.

But it gets worse.

Are you wondering:

Where does all this cash
and property end up?

In most places, law enforcement keeps it.

And they use it to buy equipment

or pay for building repairs

or even pay salaries and overtime.

This is a clear conflict of interest.

It creates a perverse profit incentive
that can distort law enforcement.

And this is a problem that's not lost
on those in law enforcement, either.

Former chief of police in Rochester,
Minnesota, Roger Peterson,

described the choice
that police officers often face.

As he described it:

suppose I'm a police officer,

and I see a drug deal.

Now I face a choice:

Do I go after the buyer
and remove from the street illegal drugs,

or do I go after the seller

and get cash for my agency to use?

So it's easy to see why
a police officer might go for the cash.

It was just such a circumstance

that compelled police officers
in Philadelphia to seize an entire house.

In 2014, Chris and Markela Sourovelis' son
sold 40 dollars worth of drugs

down the street from their house.

Forty dollars.

The police watched the deal go down.

They could've arrested the buyer
and confiscated the drugs,

but they didn't.

They could've arrested
the Sourovelises' son

right there on the street

and grabbed 40 dollars.

But they didn't.

They waited to arrest him at home,

because then they could seize
their entire house.

The house was worth 350,000 dollars.

That is what I mean
by a perverse profit incentive.

But the Sourovelises' case was no outlier.

Philadelphia, the "City
of Brotherly Love,"

the "Athens of America,"

the "Cradle of Liberty,"
birthplace to the Constitution,

home to the Liberty Bell
and Independence Hall,

the "City that Loves you Back" --

(Laughter)

that Philadelphia was running
a forfeiture machine.

Between 2002 and 2016,

Philadelphia took more than 77 million
dollars through forfeiture,

including 1,200 homes.

Cars, jewelry, electronics --
all of it they sold,

the proceeds they kept.

And they would have
kept right on doing it,

had it not been
for a class-action lawsuit --

our team's class-action lawsuit --

(Applause and cheers)

Thank you.

We forced them to change
their forfeiture practices

and to compensate victims.

(Applause and cheers)

When our team first began
researching forfeiture in 2007,

we had no idea how much
forfeiture revenue there was.

In fact, no one knew.

It wasn't until our groundbreaking study,
"Policing for Profit,"

that we found federal law
enforcement agencies have taken in

almost 40 billion dollars --

billion with a B --

since 2001,

more than 80 percent of that
through civil forfeiture.

Unfortunately, we have no idea

how much state and local
agencies have taken in,

because in many states,
they don't have to report it.

So until we reform forfeiture,

we'll never know how much
forfeiture activity actually occurs

in the United States.

And we desperately need reform.

Legislatures should abolish
civil forfeiture

and replace it with criminal forfeiture.

And all forfeiture proceeds
should go to a neutral fund

such as a general fund.

When forfeiture proceeds stop hitting
law enforcement budgets directly,

that is when we will end
policing for profit.

(Applause)

Now, as you can imagine,

law enforcement officials
don't love these recommendations.

(Laughter)

They stand to lose a lot of money,

and they believe civil forfeiture
is an effective crime-fighting tool.

The trouble is,

it's not.

In June 2019, we released a study

that found forfeiture does not
improve crime-fighting.

And the report also found

that law enforcement agencies
pursue more forfeiture money

during economic downturns.

So when city and county budgets are tight,

law enforcement will use forfeiture
to find the money.

So it's no wonder, then,

that law enforcement officials
predict a criminal apocalypse --

(Laughter)

if these reforms are adopted.

But some states have
already implemented them,

and we're pushing for reform
all across the country,

because until we reform forfeiture,

this is something that could
happen to any of us.

It can happen in the United States,

it can happen in the United Kingdom,

it can happen in countries
throughout the European Union

and beyond.

People like you and me
and the Sourovelises and Russ Caswell,

just doing the everyday stuff of life,

can be caught in a scheme
we never thought possible.

It is time we end policing for profit

once and for all.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)